Fisher v. University of Texas (2013)

Fisher v. University of Texas
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 10, 2012 Decided June 24, 2013
Full case name	Abigail Noel Fisher, Petitioner v. University of Texas at Austin, et al.
Docket no.	11-345
Citations	570 U.S. 297 (more) 133 S. Ct. 2411; 186 L. Ed. 2d 474
Argument	Oral argument
Case history
Prior	Injunction denied, 556 F. Supp. 2d 603 (W.D. Tex. 2008); summary judgment granted, 645 F. Supp. 2d 587 (W.D. Tex. 2009); affirmed, 631 F.3d 213 (5th Cir. 2011); rehearing en banc denied, 644 F.3d 301 (5th Cir. 2011); cert. granted, 565 U.S. 1195 (2012).
Subsequent	See Fisher v. University of Texas (2016)
Holding
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals failed to apply strict scrutiny in its decision affirming the admissions policy. The decision is vacated, and the case remanded for further consideration.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan
Case opinions
Majority	Kennedy, joined by Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor
Concurrence	Scalia
Concurrence	Thomas
Dissent	Ginsburg
Kagan took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV, Grutter v. Bollinger

Fisher v. University of Texas, 570 U.S. 297 (2013), also known as Fisher I (to distinguish it from the 2016 case),^[1] is a United States Supreme Court case concerning the affirmative action admissions policy of the University of Texas at Austin. The Supreme Court voided the lower appellate court's ruling in favor of the university and remanded the case, holding that the lower court had not applied the standard of strict scrutiny, articulated in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), to its admissions program. The Court's ruling in Fisher took Grutter and Bakke as given and did not directly revisit the constitutionality of using race as a factor in college admissions.^[2]

The suit, brought by undergraduate Abigail Fisher in 2008, asked that the Court declare the university's race-conscious admissions inconsistent with Grutter, which had in 2003 established that race had an appropriate but limited role in the admissions policies of public universities. While reasserting that any consideration of race must be "narrowly tailored", with Fisher the Court did not go on to overrule Grutter, a relief for those who feared that the Court would end affirmative action.^[3]

The United States District Court heard Fisher v. University of Texas in 2009 and upheld the legality of the university's admission policy in a summary judgment. The case was appealed to the Fifth Circuit which also ruled in the university's favor. The Supreme Court agreed on February 21, 2012, to hear the case. Justice Elena Kagan recused herself because she served as the Solicitor General when the Department of Justice filed an amicus curiae, or friend-of-the-court, brief in the Fisher case when it was pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. On June 24, 2013, the Fifth Circuit's decision was vacated, and the case remanded for further consideration in a 7–1 decision, with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissenting. Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas filed concurring opinions.

Applying the Supreme Court's 2013 decision, the Fifth Circuit once again found for UT Austin in 2014. Fisher again appealed the Fifth Circuit's decision, and in 2016 the Supreme Court upheld the lower court in a 4–3 decision.