University affirmative action questioned in Supreme Court

Members of the US Supreme Court clashed over the value of university affirmative action policies, and pivotal Justice Anthony Kennedy raised the prospect that the court might put off issuing a broad ruling, writes Greg Stohr for Bloomberg.

In a sometimes-heated argument last week that ran more than 30 minutes beyond its allotted hour, the court’s liberal wing defended the University of Texas programme as a means of fostering diversity. Members of the court’s conservative majority questioned whether racial preferences were warranted.

The court will rule in the case by June. Opponents of racial preferences are hoping the case will put strict new limits on affirmative action programmes. Kennedy, however, raised the prospect of returning the case to a federal trial court so the university can try to prove it met a test the court laid out in 2013. “They weren’t given the chance to add additional evidence in order to meet that standard,” Kennedy told the lawyer for Abigail Fisher, the rejected white applicant challenging the policy. He said there are things “that we should know but we don’t know”.
Full report on the Bloomberg site