There are existing threads but I figured it might be best to start a new one.
The Supreme Court is poised to deliver rulings on two cases: SFFA vs. Harvard and SFFA vs. University of North Carolina. Rulings will probably come out in June. In both cases, it appears that the plaintiff will win and affirmative action is going to be struck down in some form or other.
Are we going to see student bodies that look something like: 80% white and Asian, 20% all other races as a result of this?
Also, I would expect schools and universities to try to skirt SCOTUS by somehow implementing some form of stealth affirmative action, but not actually call it that.
And also, if there is such a ruling, it will likely lead to employment, etc. becoming the next field as well, since one could similarly argue likewise that AA shouldn’t be used in the workforce any more than it could be used in college admissions.
Is AA used in the workplace at all? An employer would never set out those kinds of guidelines in hiring rules – it would be just begging for a lawsuit.
As far as the implications, there will be far fewer non-Asian minorities at top schools. Some schools may try to implement some method that uses income level or something, I suppose.
Not necessarily directly in the workplace or hiring, but I believe there are laws that require the federal government to award a certain amount of contracts to racial-minority-owned companies. If SCOTUS strikes down AA, such things could very likely be next to go down, too.
Maybe. It might be harder to find a plaintiff in that case, though. The SBA benefits all minorities, unlike AA which was claimed to be harmful to Asians.
Yeah, but that’s a terrible look, going to SCOTUS to complain about that. Plus, it’s not like the majority of the SBA business goes to minorities, so I think it would be a tough road to hoe.
But, who knows with this SCOTUS? In any event, that kind of case would be years away.
Yes. We have diversity goals. They don’t mandate whom you should hire, but they does mandate attempts towards diversity in the interview team and sometimes among the candidates you interview.
Another example - admittedly, a very niche one - of AA in hiring would be the NFL’s Rooney Rule, for instance, which mandates that NFL teams interview at least one racial-minority candidate any time they’re hiring a coach.
FWIW, with the Fisher vs. Texas case eight years ago, it was indeed a white plaintiff who went up against the University of Texas. She would have won, too, if it weren’t for the sudden death of Scalia, which caused a 4-4 tie and maintained the status quo. Had Scalia lived it would have likely struck down affirmative action 5-4.
So the opponents of AA have not been particularly afraid to go with white plaintiffs.
I wonder if the idea here was something along the lines of: get a nonwhite plaintiff for this, and thereby get a case in front of the Supreme Court that could get ruled on as narrowly as possible against this sort of thing (in terms of, say, no longer coming down quite as hard on Asian-Americans) — but could instead get ruled on in sweeping general terms, talking about impartiality and justice and colorblindness and so on, for to strike down the whole thing: with the results being just as good as they would have been for a hypothetical white plaintiff, but while only ever actually showcasing the wrong done to this nonwhite plaintiff right here…
But the way, i am a volunteer alumni interviewer for Harvard admissions, so i know a great deal about their process. And if it’s what they claim it is, i am a wholehearted supporter.
There’s some evidence that they are cheating to keep down the number of Asians, though. In particular, one of the items the admissions staff look at is “personality” (would this person be a good roommate? Would they be a positive addition to class and extracurricular activities?) And I’ve seen it claimed that the scores the admission staff give Asian candidates are lower than the scores the alumni interviewers give them. And that statistically, the alumni interviewer scores look a lot more like the scores for the non-Asian candidates.
In the short term, more Asian students might wind up being admitted, bypassing what now are effectively quotas. Race-based admissions criteria might shift more to guidelines based on favoring lower-income applicants.
In any case, universities will probably be deft enough to manipulate admissions along diversity lines to get around Supreme Court rulings, leading to more lawsuits in the future.
Well, I guess it would be pretty ironic if these changes affect the SBA and other hiring practices, and lots of companies go right back to the old (white) boy network.
I’m pulling this quote from Cornell Law School so you should be able to trust the links. Most employers use the 4/5ths rule which is: A selection rate for any race, sex, or ethnic group which is less than four-fifths ( 4/5) (or eighty percent) of the rate for the group with the highest rate will generally be regarded by the Federal enforcement agencies as evidence of adverse impact, while a greater than four-fifths rate will generally not be regarded by Federal enforcement agencies as evidence of adverse impact.
So if I notice that we have a lack of diversity in say, the marketing depatment, one of the first things I’ll do is collect any available demographic information on candidates and see if we’re violating the 4/5ths rule and if we are find out why and fix it. If the problem is a lack of minority candidates, we’ll come up with a plan to direct recruiting efforts to encourage them to apply.