The Obama administration has issued new guidelines to colleges and universities instructing them on how best to address the issue of affirmative action while steering clear of potential legal sanctions in the wake of the recent U.S. Supreme Court case Fisher v. University of Texas.
The guidelines were announced as college administrators continue to struggle with how to best diversify their campuses. The 7-1 ruling by the court in June said that race could be used in the admission process but only “if no workable race-neutral alternatives would produce the educational benefits of diversity.”
In a letter issued to college and university presidents on Friday, Jocelyn Samuels, acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department and Catherine E. Lhamon, the assistant secretary for the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, reiterated that affirmative action remains legal.
“The Court preserved the well-established legal principle that colleges and universities have a compelling interest in achieving the educational benefits that flow from a racially and ethnically diverse student body and can lawfully pursue that interest in their admissions program,” the two wrote.
In 2011, the departments jointly issued a report titled Guidance on the Voluntary Use of Race to Achieve Diversity in Postsecondary Education and has now published the three-page Questions and Answers that administration officials say was designed to help with the implementation of “lawful programs consistent with the recent Fisher decision and prior Supreme Court decisions, to promote diversity on your campus.”
Abigail Fisher sued the University of Texas, claiming that she was not offered a spot at the school in 2008 because she is White. If the Supreme Court had ruled in Fisher’s favor, education advocates worried that it would become much more difficult for minorities to gain admittance into majority institutions.
