Abigail Fisher: Affirmative action plaintiff 'proud' of academic record

"I'm a plaintiff in a pretty interesting Supreme Court case that's been to the Supreme Court twice," says the young woman sitting across the table from me, introducing herself for the tape as I adjust the levels on my recorder.

That's putting it mildly. Abigail Fisher's case against the University of Texas at Austin (UT) thrust her into the very centre of heated and overlapping public debates about race and identity, integration, privilege and education in the United States.

Fisher brought the case because she wanted to stop the university from using race in the admissions process, arguing that as a white woman she had lost out on a place because preferential treatment was given to black and other minority students.

But in June 2016 the Supreme Court decided to uphold UT's affirmative action practices and reject her complaint.

Read the full BBC story here.

Will Supreme Court end affirmative action in college admissions?

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected soon to issue a ruling on affirmative action in college admissions, in a case called Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. Plaintiff Abigail Fisher, a white woman denied admission to UT, is challenging the constitutionality of UT’s consideration of race and ethnicity as a factor in assembling an undergraduate class. A ruling could come as early as Thursday morning.

Read the story here.

Occupy Wall Street and Affirmative Action

The Root
The protests -- and Abigail Fisher's lawsuit -- remind us that inequality affects white people, too.
By: John McWhorterPosted: November 25, 2011 at 12:32 AM

The Occupy Wall Street phenomenon has a thing or two to teach us about, of all things, affirmative action.
One of those affirmative-action-all-the-time spells will most likely be on us again -- soon. Abigail Fisher has appealed to the Supreme Court in her 2008 case against the University of Texas at Austin -- denied by the 5th Court of Appeals -- for not admitting her despite an academic record that would have gained a black or Latino applicant admission.
Forecasts suggest that the Supremes will likely hear the case before June -- unless UTA succeeds with its current strategy of stonewalling in response to the high court's request for a preliminary response to the challenge of its admissions policy. However, that will work for only so long, in which case the decision would happen in late 2012 or soon thereafter.

Full Story: http://www.theroot.com/views/occupy-wall-street-and-affirmative-action

Affirmative Action Suit Challenges UT Admission Policy

The Texas Tribune
by Morgan Smith July 21, 2010

If two young women have their way, the University of Texas may soon rival the University of Michigan as the nation's top breeding ground for affirmative action jurisprudence.
Abigail Fisher and her co-plaintiff, Rachel Michalewicz, are the faces of a movement to overturn a landmark 2003 U.S. Supreme Court opinion allowing the use of race in the admissions process at the Michigan Law School. Their chosen target is UT, which denied them both admission in 2008. They believe that happened because they're white.
On Aug. 3, the federal 5th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in their lawsuit, which has attracted widespread attention from the legal community, including an amicus brief from the Obama administration in support of the university’s position. The case threatens to reinvigorate an ideological skirmish that reached its peak in the late 1990s.
Fisher and Michalewicz’s challenge to the use of race is the first in an undergraduate setting since the high court handed down Grutter v. Bollinger and its companion case, Gratz v. Bollinger — a pair of decisions that articulated how schools could use race-based affirmative action to select their incoming classes. The current plaintiffs lost in district court, in a 2009 ruling that affirmed the university’s policies were within constitutional bounds set forth in Grutter, which allows schools to use race as factor in the holistic consideration of candidates. (Explore annotated versions of both sides' appellate briefs and the district court's opinion here.)

Full Story: http://www.texastribune.org/texas-education/higher-education/affirmative-action-suit-challenges-ut-policy/