In a dissenting opinion, Alito takes a potshot at Bush’s signature racial justice program.
The Supreme Court announced on Tuesday that it will not hear Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, a lawsuit attacking a school admissions program that was considered a cutting-edge conservative idea a quarter century ago — and whose most prominent champion was Republican former President George W. Bush.
Two justices dissented, with Justice Samuel Alito writing an angry opinion attacking a school admissions policy that closely mirrors Bush’s signature racial justice program.
In the late 1990s, when Bush was governor of Texas, he signed legislation creating that state’s “top 10 percent” law for university admissions. As the name implies, Bush’s law guaranteed that Texas high school students who graduated in the top 10 percent of their class would be admitted to state-run universities. The program is still in effect, although the state’s flagship school, the University of Texas at Austin, only accepts the top 6 percent or so of students due to increased applications.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
As the name implies, Bush’s law guaranteed that Texas high school students who graduated in the top 10 percent of their class would be admitted to state-run universities.
The program is still in effect, although the state’s flagship school, the University of Texas at Austin, only accepts the top 6 percent or so of students due to increased applications.
As Bush said in 2000 while campaigning for the presidency, top 10 percent-style programs “affect the pool of applicants of minority students available for higher ed in a positive way.”
It did so by leveraging the fact that many American communities remain racially segregated, which causes Black and Latino students to cluster in certain public high schools.
Among other things, the chair of the school board that adopted the new admissions program said it “needed to be explicit in how we are going to address the underrepresentation” of Black and Latino students at TJ.
That said, before the Supreme Court’s decision last year in the Harvard case, selective schools were allowed to take some limited account of race for the purpose of diversifying their student body.
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