ALITO, J., dissenting
neutral AI/PAI system—UT’s entering class was 4.5% African-American, 17.9% Asian-American, and 16.9% Hispanic. Supp. App. 156a. The 2004 entering class thus had a higher percentage of African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Hispanics than the class that entered in 1996, when UT had last employed racial preferences.
Notwithstanding these lauded results, UT leapt at the opportunity to reinsert race into the process. On June 23, 2003, this Court decided Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306 (2003), which upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s race-conscious admissions system. In Grutter, the Court warned that a university contemplating the consideration of race as part of its admissions process must engage in “serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives that will achieve the diversity the university seeks.” Id., at 339. Nevertheless, on the very day Grutter was handed down, UT’s president announced that “[t]he University of Texas at Austin will modify its admissions procedures” in light of Grutter, including by “implementing procedures at the undergraduate level that combine the benefits of the Top 10 Percent Law with affirmative action programs.” App. 406a–407a (emphasis added).[1] UT purports to have later engaged in
- ↑ See also Nissimov, UT To Resume Factoring in Applicants’ Race: UT To Reintroduce Race-Based Criteria, Houston Chronicle, June 24, 2003, p. 4A (“President Larry Faulkner said Monday his institution will quickly develop race-based admissions criteria by the fall that would be used for the summer and fall of 2004, after being given the green light to do so by Monday’s U. S. Supreme Court ruling”); Silverstein, Hong, & Trounson, State Finds Itself Hemmed In, L. A. Times, June 24, 2003, p. A1 (explaining UT’s “intention, after dropping race as a consideration, to move swiftly to restore its use in admissions” in time for “the next admissions cycle”); Hart, Texas Ponders Changes to 10% Law, Boston Globe, June 25, 2003, p. A3 (“Soon after Monday’s ruling, University of Texas President Larry Faulkner said that the school will overhaul procedures” in order to allow consideration of “[t]he race of an applicant” for “students enrolling in fall 2004”); Ambiguity Remains; High
