Supreme Court raises bar for affirmative action in college admissions

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed affirmative action to survive in college admissions but imposed a tough legal standard, ruling that schools must prove there are “no workable race-neutral alternatives” to achieve diversity on campus.

While the ruling was not a sweeping pronouncement on the future of affirmative action, it amounts to a warning to colleges nationwide that the courts will treat race-conscious admissions policies with a high degree of skepticism.

By a 7-1 vote, with one justice recusing herself, the court sent a case about the University of Texas admissions policy back to a federal appeals court for review, and directed the appeals court to apply an exacting legal standard known as strict scrutiny.

The case was brought by Abigail Fisher, a white woman who applied to the university in 2008 and was denied, and claimed that her constitutional rights and federal civil rights laws were violated.

“I am grateful to the justices for moving the nation closer to the day when a student’s race isn't used at all in college admissions,” Fisher said in a statement.

The appeals court sided with the university. But the Supreme Court ruled that the lower court did not hold the university to the “demanding burden of strict scrutiny.” Instead, the lower court “presumed that the school had acted in good faith” and required Fisher to show otherwise, the high court found.

While the ruling was favorable to Fisher, civil rights advocates were “really breathing a sigh of relief,” said Tom Goldstein, the publisher of SCOTUSblog and a Supreme Court analyst for NBC News.

“There was the potential that the justices would issue a really major ruling headed in a conservative direction, limiting or eliminating affirmative action,” he said on MSNBC. “Instead the justices did something more modest.”

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