Who Else Will Get Sued Over Their Admissions Policies?

The recent trial that challenged Harvard University’s consideration of race in its admissions process brought the issue of affirmative action back into the spotlight. The university could be one of many that is put on the defensive over the issue, legal scholars say.

U. of California at Los Angeles

In what may be just the tip of the iceberg, a law professor filed a lawsuit on Thursday seeking the University of California system’s undergraduate admissions and enrollment data for the past 12 years. The professor, Richard Sander, who teaches at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law, studies racial preferences in admissions and has argued that affirmative action hurts the people it is intended to help by placing students in universities that they are underqualified to attend.

Sander is joined in his lawsuit by a group called the Asian American Community Services Center. The group’s president, George Shen, said in a written statement that the Harvard trial “has demonstrated real reason for concern” about whether universities are treating Asian-American applicants unfairly.

Shen contacted Sander over the summer because he was interested in looking into discrimination against Asian-Americans. Sander had already been trying to get data from the University of California. He said Shen offered to help fund a public-records lawsuit.

“My main purpose is to further research on this,” Sander said. “My co-plaintiff’s purpose is to find out if there’s systematic anti-Asian-American discrimination going on.”

In 1996, voters in California approved a ban on considering race in college admissions. Sander said the University of California gave scholars “an extensive database covering students admitted between 1992 and 2006 — data that was instrumental in producing several articles in top academic journals” on the effects of the ban. But, he said, the university has refused to turn over the same data for the years since 2007. Sander and the Asian American Community Services Center are suing for those data.

A spokeswoman for the University of California system said any allegation that the university is covering up its use of race in admissions decisions is not true.

“Sander has asked us to prepare for him a specific data set that we do not have, and, apparently, he is suing to compel us to do so,” she said. “Under the California Public Records Act, we are not legally obligated to do so.”

She said that the University of California “does not consider race, ethnicity, or gender in admissions decisions,” but that it believes in the value of diversity and has worked hard since the ban on race-conscious admissions was imposed “to ensure that a UC education is accessible to all segments of our state population.”

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?

Sander and Shen are probably not the only people interested in this kind of data about universities. Peter F. Lake, a law professor at Stetson University, said there will be more lawsuits challenging universities’ race-conscious admissions processes in the coming years. The Harvard trial, the more conservative appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Justice Department’s efforts to intervene in the issue have made the continued use of affirmative action seem less certain.

But Lake expects there to be a pause as a result of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ resignation last week. Sessions launched investigations into colleges’ use of race in admissions and filed a brief in support of the plaintiffs suing Harvard. Potential plaintiffs will wait to see how interested his successor is in the issue, Lake predicted.

“To get the Supreme Court’s attention, you would want the Department of Justice on your side,” he said. But he doesn’t expect activists groups to wait long.

“Until we get a real clear statement from the Supreme Court,” he said, “I think people will keep testing the wire.”

Nell Gluckman writes about faculty issues and other topics in higher education. You can follow her on Twitter @nellgluckman, or email her at nell.gluckman@chronicle.com.