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" You should keep a close eye on this case that&amp;#039;s now bubbled up from Texas all the way to the nine wise souls on 1st ST NW in D.C. This may be the one for which the affirmative-action rollback critters have been waiting for decades. The Court has been narrowing the basis on which race can be a factor in college admissions for going on 40 years now. This could be the case that eliminates the possibility entirely, in that the University of Texas&amp;#039;s policies only cover a quarter of the admissions every year and, if even that is deemed too heavily weighted toward minority applicants, it would be hard to see what would be left. Also, too: The justice that saved minority-based applicants in 2003 was Sandra Day O&amp;#039;Connor. She since has been replaced by Samuel Alito. This is not promising. And then there&amp;#039;s the usual problem of the Weathervane, about whom I did not know this, but am not in any way surprised.... But the court has changed dramatically since then, with a conservative majority now highly skeptical of \u2014 even hostile to \u2014 racial preferences. The justice most likely to decide the case for the divided court \u2014 Anthony M. Kennedy \u2014 has agreed in principle that diversity is important but has never voted to approve an affirmative-action plan. I&amp;#039;d hate to be behind this guy at a salad bar. (And I&amp;#039;d like to take this opportunity once again to thank the Democratic members of the &amp;quot;Gang of 14,&amp;quot; who saved the filibuster by rendering it next to useless in their hands against Republican nominees like Alito. I would also note how thoroughly the Republicans have played them all for suckers over the last three years. Well-played, folks. Really.) The problem is that the Court has split its opinion on these programs between the Gratz decision that ruled unconstitutional the University of Michigan&amp;#039;s policy of awarding bonus points in the admission process, and the Grutter decision, the one in which O&amp;#039;Connor&amp;#039;s support was decisive, in which it said that the University of Michigan&amp;#039;s Law School could consider race as part of a general evaluation of an applicant because the school had a compelling interest in developing and maintaining a diverse student population. If the Court decides in the Fisher case to reconcile these two decisions, I don&amp;#039;t like the university&amp;#039;s chances, what with O&amp;#039;Connor gone, and Mr. Justice Thomas getting grumpy about nothing again. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a16025/affirmative-action-texas-court-case-13167127/?src=rss>