Supreme Court Returns Affirmative-Action Case to Lower Court

[Valin]

WSJ:

 

JESS BRAVIN And BRENT KENDALL

6/24/13

 

The Supreme Court avoided a sweeping ruling on affirmative action in a closely watched case involving the University of Texas, sending the case back to a lower court for a new review.

 

The court's ruling on Fisher v. University of Texas was 7-1, with the majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented, and Justice Elena Kagan, who was solicitor general when the Obama administration weighed in on the case, recused herself from the decision.

 

Justice Kennedy said the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals made legal errors when it upheld the university program. The lower court should have scrutinized the university program more strictly, Justice Kennedy said.

 

The justices were ruling on the case of Abigail Fisher, who alleged the university rejected her because she is white.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

In other news....

 

Supreme Court to Consider Obama Recess Appointments

BRENT KENDALL

6/24/13

 

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide the scope of a president's constitutional authority to make recess appointments, a power that Democratic and Republican administrations have used for decades to install nominees without Senate confirmation.

 

The justices agreed to consider an appeal by the Obama administration, which is seeking to overturn a lower-court ruling that invalidated President Barack Obama's use of recess appointments to fill vacancies at the National Labor Relations Board. That ruling threatened the legitimacy of hundreds of actions the labor board has taken since the president used the recess power to install three new board members on Jan. 4, 2012.

 

(Snip)

 

The Supreme Court will consider the NLRB case during its next term, which begins in October.

Presidents have used the recess-appointment power for decades—but with more frequency in recent administrations—to bypass the Senate and install nominees.

The Constitution gives the president the power to fill vacancies during "the recess" of the Senate. The question before the court is what exactly that means.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

Supreme Court to Review EPA Rule on Air Pollution Across State Lines EPA

Brent Kendall and Ryan Tracy

6/24/13

 

 

WASHINGTON--The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it would consider the Environmental Protection Agency's bid to save a clean-air regulation that limited power-plant emissions blowing across state lines.

 

A federal appeals court in Washington invalidated the EPA's effort last year, handing a significant defeat to the Obama administration's regulatory approach. The regulation required cuts in emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, both associated with higher rates of heart attacks and respiratory illnesses.

The EPA's Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, issued in 2011, sought to set pollution reductions for 28 upwind states whose emissions of soot- and smog-forming air pollution degrade the air quality of states downwind.

 

The regulation would have affected about 1,000 power plants in the eastern half of the U.S. To comply, companies with older coal-fired plants would have had to burn less coal, shut the plants down or pay for credits to offset pollution.

The cross-state rule was to replace a Bush-era rule that the appeals court sent back to the EPA in 2008. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit faulted the Bush rule for allowing states to comply by paying other states to reduce pollution, rather than forcing each state to clean up power plants within its borders. The judges ordered the EPA to rewrite the rule, but also to enforce it in the meantime so as to achieve at least some pollution reduction.

 

(snip)

[Valin]

Supreme Court Blocks Generic Drug Design Defect Lawsuits

24 Jun 2013

 

(Reuters) The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that makers of generic drugs already approved by the Food and Drug Administration cannot be held liable under state law for claims of design defects.

 

In a 5-4 vote, the court ruled for Mutual Pharmaceutical, a unit of URL Pharma, owned by Sun Pharmaceutical Industries. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion.

 

(snip)

[Valin]

Supreme Court moves bar for workplace discrimination

Richard Wolf

June 24, 2013

 

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled narrowly Monday that workplace discrimination can only be pinned on a supervisor who has the ability to hire and fire, rather than merely direct work assignments.

 

The 5-4 ruling is a victory for Ball State University in Indiana, which had been sued by an African-American kitchen worker who claimed she was harassed by co-workers. Justice Samuel Alito said his ruling upholds the definition of a supervisor already used in several parts of the country and "will not thwart recovery from workplace harassment."

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

In case you were wondering It'd the end of civilization as we know it.

 

Doom doom Doom. You die, I die, the girl dies, we all die horrible lingering deaths.

[Draggingtree]

The Affirmative Action Shuffle

 

Posted July 10, 2013

The much anticipated affirmative action case, Fisher v. Texas, handed down on June 24, was a disappointment for both conservatives and liberals, although typically both claimed victory. Writing for a 7-1 majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy argued that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had applied the wrong constitutional standard in reviewing the affirmative action program of the University of Texas. In relying on the "good faith" representations of the university administrators, the lower court departed from the exacting standards of review required by strict scrutiny. Justice Kennedy conceded that some deference is appropriate because of the university's unique First Amendment right to define its academic mission, but where racial classifications are involved, strict scrutiny standards are always triggered and state actors must bear the burden of demonstrating a compelling interest. The state actors must also bear the burden of demonstrating that the racial classifications are narrowly tailored, that no race-neutral program could have achieved the same result, or that a less intrusive classification could have achieved the same result. And in Justice's Kennedy's view, reliance on the "good faith" representations of the administrators that racial classifications used in the admissions program were essential to fulfill legitimate educational

 

http://www.right-reason.org/publications/pubid.840/pub_detail.asp

[Draggingtree]

Lyle Denniston Posted Wed, July 30th, 2014 12:20 am

Reporter

Fisher challenges new college admissions ruling

 

Lawyers for Abigail Noel Fisher, who has been pursuing a lengthy court challenge to the use of race in admitting students to the University of Texas in Austin, on Tuesday asked the full Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a new decision upholding the policy. En banc review is necessary, the new petition argued, because the majority of the three-judge panel disobeyed orders from the Supreme Court to rethink a prior ruling allowing some use of race.

 

Last year, the Supreme Court returned the case to the Fifth Circuit, with instruction to apply a new and more restrictive analysis to the part of the Texas admissions plan that relies in part upon the applying students’ race to fill about one-fifth of each freshman class. Earlier this month, the panel upheld the plan for the second time, finding that the university had again made its case.

 

The case involves a young white woman from Sugar Land, Texas

http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/07/fisher-challenges-new-college-admissions-ruling/#more-215969

[Draggingtree]

Still Counting By Race At The University Of Texas

Judicial chaos leaves the University of Texas, and many others, still discriminating against white and Asian students. A pending lawsuit could change that.

By Mark Pulliam JULY 30, 2014

The University of Texas has a long history of discriminating on the basis of race. In 1950, four years before the landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered UT’s law school to admit black students, a rare desegregation ruling under the “separate but equal” regime. In 1950’s Sweatt v. Painter, the High Court concluded that Texas’ newly-established all-black law school (created in response to Heman Sweatt’s legal challenge) was not “substantially equal” to UT’s law school under the rubric of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

 

As a result, UT’s law school opened its doors to black students. The precedent in Sweatt v. Painter is a painful reminder to Texans of the state’s race-conscious past, and the well-deserved source of shame for the Jim Crow era. In 2005, Travis County named the local courthouse, where a state judge rejected Sweatt’s path-breaking lawsuit, in his honor.

 

Alas, Texas has not learned the right lesson of history—the principle of color blindness.

http://thefederalist.com/2014/07/30/still-counting-by-race-at-the-university-of-texas/

[Draggingtree]

Texas newly defends college admissions plan

By Lyle Denniston on Aug 12, 2014 at 3:33 pm

The University of Texas, renewing its defense of its freshman class admissions policy,contended on Monday that the ongoing court battle has become nothing more than an “ideological struggle” over well-established Supreme Court precedent allowing some use of race in selecting new students.

The brief was in response to a request by a white applicant denied admission, who is seeking en banc rehearing of a new round in her challenge at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The challenger, Abigail Fisher, has the support of a dozen amicus briefs. Her case is back before that court after a trip to the Supreme Court.

http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/08/texas-newly-defends-college-admissions-plan/#more-216662

[Draggingtree]

Fisher case on way back to the Court

By Lyle Denniston on Nov 12, 2014 at 3:58 pm

 

Over the dissents of five judges, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit refused on Wednesday to rehear the sequel of the University of Texas affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. The order is here. That decision, supported by ten judges, leaves intact a divided three-judge panel ruling upholding some use of race in selecting the university’s incoming freshman classes. The panel ruled after the Supreme Court ordered it to take a new look.

 

A statement by the organization that has arranged Abigail Fisher’s challenge, indicating that the case will be taken back to the Supreme Court, is here. Ms. Fisher sued the flagship university after being denied admission; she claimed her rejection was due to her race — she is white.

After a Fifth Circuit panel had upheld the university’s first-year admissions program

http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/11/fisher-case-on-way-back-to-the-court/

[Draggingtree]

February 15, 2015

Outrage in Texas over preferences in UT college admissions

By Thomas Lifson

The Dallas Morning News is one of many liberal media outlets outraged over admission preferences at the University of Texas, especially its elite and highly selective flagship Austin campus. No, not racial preferences, appartently they are just dandy. It has been discovered that children of wealthy potential donors and politically connected figures have been getting in when their raw grades and test scores would not have qualified them.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/02/outrage_in_texas_over_preferences_in_ut_college_admissions.html

[Valin]

@Draggingtree

 

What surprises me is, people are surprised.

[Draggingtree]

U.S. Supreme Court still mulling over UT admissions case

Ralph-Haurwtiz / 10:43 a.m. Monday, June 22, 2015 | Filed in: State

 

The U.S. Supreme Court took no action Monday on a request to review for a second time the undergraduate admissions program at the University of Texas that considers the race and ethnicity of applicants.

 

However, the high court scheduled the case, Fisher V. UT, for its closed-door discussion Thursday. That is the sixth Thursday in a row for the case.

 

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/us-supreme-court-still-mulling-over-ut-admissions-/nmhy7/

[Draggingtree]

The mystery of Fisher II review

 

By Lyle Denniston on Jul 21, 2015 at 12:09 am

 

Analysis

 

The volatile constitutional issue of race as a factor in selecting the entering classes at public universities and colleges returns to the Supreme Court next Term, but it is far from clear at this point just why the Justices are stepping back into that enduring controversy, and where it will end up. The Court has a wide range of options on how to decide a new case involving the University of Texas, and lawyers — perhaps necessarily doing some guesswork — may find it quite challenging to shape their written arguments to cover that range.

 

The Court, of course, never explains fully at the outset why it is taking on a case, although it sometimes rewrites the legal questions either to suit its own preference or to narrow the scope of what it plans to decide. But, if it does not do that, the only specific clue of what is at stake is the wording of the questions that the lawyers lay before the Court and the arguments in their opening papers, and those may not be enough to solve the mystery.

http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/07/the-mystery-of-fisher-ii-review/