Race-Based Complaint Filed Against University of Texas

The Project on Fair Representation filed a complaint against the University of Texas at Austin at the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C.

In a letter to the university, POFR has written that the law has been violated because UT-Austin, during undergraduate admissions, has reintroduced race and ethnicity as criteria for admissions. This reintroduction is considered illegal and unfair by the director of POFR, Edward Blum, and he, in his letter, has demanded a stop to this system before the next applications are taken in. He has requested the U.S. Department of education to step in and stop it immediately.

The aim of POFR is to help and represent organizations or individuals who have some problems regarding race and ethnicity and would like to challenge the government for it. So they have actively taken up this issue to protest against the introduction racial preferences at UT Austin.

Racial and ethnic preferences during admission to colleges and universities have earlier been granted for a period of 25 years, when the U.S. Supreme Court granted permission to the University of Michigan in 2003, but the condition was to perform the admissions by "race-neutral means", before resorting to racial and ethnic preferences.

In 1996, a court decision was passed by the Hopwood v. State of Texas, after which, in 1998, the Top 10% Plan was granted by the Texas Legislature, in which students in the top 10% of the class automatically get admission and this is facially race-neutral. It has brought diversity into the university and has proved to be an effective system in many universities. This system is already prevalent in UT and the top 10% of the class are given preference in any case. In addition to this UT has reintroduced the admission process according to racial and ethnic preferences, which is a violation of law. Other universities like Texas A&M have abolished the ethnic preferences for admissions, but they still follow the Top 10% Plan.