That Other Affirmative-Action Case: The Battle Over UNC’s Admissions Policies Heats Up

U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill gives “significant racial preferences” to underrepresented minority applicants while ignoring race-neutral alternatives for achieving diversity, according to documents filed on Friday in federal court in Winston-Salem, N.C. Those allegations come from Students for Fair Admissions, the advocacy group that’s challenging race-conscious policies at two big-name campuses.

In its motion for summary judgment, Students for Fair Admissions, known as SFFA, argued that UNC unfairly uses race “to ensure the admission of the vast majority of underrepresented minorities.” The group leans on an analysis by a Duke University economist who found that Chapel Hill uses races “in a mechanical, formulaic way,” according to court documents.

UNC, which filed its own motion for summary judgment on Friday, rejected those claims, stating that the educational benefits of diversity are critical to its educational mission. “The undisputed material facts,” its filing says, “demonstrate that the university’s admissions approach is constitutionally sound.” And UNC stated that it had “rigorously assessed” race-neutral strategies, yet concluded that none of them would produce desirable results.

Harvard on Trial

Detailed background on the lawsuit over the university’s race-conscious admissions policy, the case’s implications for selective colleges, and coverage of the trial as it unfolded, in a federal court in Boston.

• Harvard Doesn’t Discriminate Against Asian American Applicants, U.S. Appeals Court Rules
• 3 Takeaways From the Appeal of the Harvard Admissions Lawsuit
• A Judge Advised Harvard to Give Its Admissions Officers Training to Stop Bias. Will That Help?

Back in 2014, Students for Fair Admissions filed federal lawsuits against Harvard University and UNC, alleging that both institutions’ admissions practices were discriminatory. Last fall Harvard officials took the witness stand during a three-week trial in Boston (a judge is expected to rule on the case this year). Now one of the nation’s most-prominent public universities is preparing to defend its own admissions practices in court.

If drawn-out legal dramas are your thing, go ahead and get comfy: This will probably be a long-running double feature. Legal experts expect one or both cases to end up at the Supreme Court.

The two lawsuits are similar but not identical. The Harvard case hinges on the question of whether the university discriminates against Asian-American students by holding them to a higher standard than other applicants. The lawsuit against UNC claims that the university puts a heavy thumb on the scale for underrepresented minority students. Both lawsuits accuse the universities of going beyond what the Supreme Court has allowed when considering race in admissions.

The plaintiff in the UNC case, a white male from North Carolina whose name has not been disclosed, applied for a spot in the university’s 2014 freshman class, but was denied. His credentials included a 1510 (out of a possible 1600) on the SAT, a 32 (out of a possible 36) on the ACT, and perfect scores on four Advanced Placement exams, according to the lawsuit. The applicant, it says, “was denied the opportunity to compete … on equal footing with other applicants on the basis of race or ethnicity due to UNC-Chapel Hill’s discriminatory admissions policies.”

Students for Fair Admissions submitted evidence that, it argues, reveals a keen focus on applicants’ race among admissions officers.

‘An Endless Game of Whack-a-Mole’

Chapel Hill strongly disputed each of SFFA’s allegations. In its holistic review of each applicant, admissions officers may consider his or her race or ethnicity, according to its legal filing, “but only in the context of a everything else known about the applicant.”

The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the constitutionality of race-conscious admissions programs, which, it has said, must be narrowly tailored to achieve the educational benefits of diversity. UNC argued that its policy is just that: While race might be a “plus” for a given applicant, it isn’t a dominant factor. The university said that it does not use racial quotas or set-asides.

In its motion, UNC described its efforts to achieve the educational benefits of diversity as “significant and ongoing.” The university said it “continues to face challenges” in enrolling underrepresented minority students, especially black males, Hispanics, and Native Americans, hindering its ability to provide the benefits of diversity to the campus.

UNC also cited evidence that minority students are underrepresented in some classes and majors, and that they report feelings of “isolation and unfair pressure to represent their race and ethnicity.”

Questions about race-neutral strategies loom large in this case. Students for Fair Admissions contends that Chapel Hill could achieve racial diversity without considering applicants’ race. And the group has tried to turn the university’s own evidence against it.

In its lawsuit, Students for Fair Admissions cites an amicus brief that UNC submitted in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the case that was the Supreme Court’s last consideration of race-conscious admissions. The brief, which supported the University of Texas, was based on a 2012 study in which Chapel Hill’s admissions office analyzed the potential effects of adopting an admission plan similar to the one in Texas, which guarantees admission to students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high-school class.

Such a plan would increase the percentage of underrepresented students at Chapel Hill by one percentage point (to 16 percent), UNC found. Yet it also concluded that the academic quality of the class would decline. The average SAT score of the incoming class would drop by 56 points, for instance, and the predicted grade-point average of first-year students would decline, to 3.16 from 3.26. (In its lawsuit, SFFA called the projected decrease in average SAT scores “trivial.”)

UNC later convened a Working Group on Race-Neutral Alternatives, which examined the potential impact of five different admission plans. None of those race-neutral plans, the panel determined, would allow the university to maintain the level of both diversity and academic quality achieved through its current process, according to court documents.

The Supreme Court has affirmed that colleges using race-conscious programs must make good-faith efforts to assess the viability of race-neutral alternatives. Yet UNC argued in its motion that Students for Fair Admissions can’t force it “to play an endless game of Whack-a-Mole in which it must systematically test every concept that SFFA can imagine.”

UNC received about 43,000 applications for the Class of 2022. It accepted about 9,000 of them.

The university has spent nearly $17 million on legal fees and expenses related to the case, The News & Observer reported in August.

By filing motions for summary judgment, both parties argued that the judge should rule in their favor based on their written filings, instead of holding a trial. In an email to the campus on Friday, Carol L. Folt, the university’s chancellor, and Robert A. Blouin, executive vice chancellor and provost, wrote: “Our admissions policies and practices comply with the spirit and letter of the law, and we will continue to defend our position in this nationally significant case.”

Edward J. Blum, the conservative activist who founded Students for Fair Admissions, also led the legal challenge to Texas’ race-conscious admissions program.

“It is our hope,” he said in a written statement, “that the court will carefully study the statistical and testimonial evidence amassed against UNC and end these unfair, unnecessary, and unlawful practices.”

Eric Hoover writes about admissions trends, enrollment-management challenges, and the meaning of Animal House, among other issues. He’s on Twitter @erichoov, and his email address is eric.hoover@chronicle.com.