Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin

Abigail Fisher, a white applicant denied undergraduate admission, sued the University of Texas at Austin, arguing its consideration of race in a holistic review process violated the Equal Protection Clause. After lower courts upheld the policy, the Supreme Court granted certiorari. In a 4-3 decision authored by Justice Kennedy, the Court held that the university’s limited use of race met the standard of strict scrutiny. The admissions program pursued the compelling interest of student body diversity through a narrowly tailored, individualized assessment in which race was merely a factor of a factor, consistent with precedent.

The Supreme Court upheld the university’s admissions policy, ruling 4-3 that its holistic, limited consideration of race was constitutional and sufficiently narrowly tailored.

Whether the University of Texas at Austin’s race-conscious undergraduate admissions program satisfied strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause, specifically if its means of achieving diversity were narrowly tailored.

The ruling reaffirmed the viability of affirmative action in higher education, allowing universities to continue pursuing diversity through race-conscious holistic review. It served as controlling precedent until the Supreme Court effectively overruled the diversity rationale in 2023 with Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.