Project on Fair Representation
1150 Seventeenth Street NW #901
Washington, DC 20036
(703) 505-1922

CONTACT: Edward Blum
(703) 505-1922

University of Texas Admissions Policy to be Challenged by Legal/Advocacy Group

April 30, 2007 -- Today, the Project on Fair Representation (POFR) announces the launch of a project to end the use of racial and ethnic preferences in undergraduate admissions by the University of Texas-Austin.

POFR encourages Texas residents to visit a new website -- www.utnotfair.org -- to learn how they can influence their legislative representatives and the UT administration to end the illegal and unfair use of race and ethnicity in the undergraduate admissions process.

Edward Blum, director of POFR, said “UT’s recent reintroduction of racial preferences in undergraduate admissions is illegal, to say nothing of being unfair and polarizing. I encourage all Texas high school students and their families to contact us to learn how this policy can be challenged.”

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a pair of cases from the Univ. of Michigan that under certain circumstances, and for a period of only 25 years, colleges and universities could use racial and ethnic preferences in their admissions process in order to create a more “diverse” student body. However, the Court wrote that before resorting to preferences, a school must make a good faith effort to use race-neutral means to accomplish this goal.

Following the Hopwood v. State of Texas court decision in 1996, the Texas Legislature passed the Top 10% Plan in 1998. The Top 10% Plan is facially race-neutral because it grants automatic college admissions to any student graduating in the top-10 percent of his or her class. Under the Top 10% Plan, racial diversity at UT is higher today than it was when UT employed a race-based quota system. In spite of this, the University of Texas reintroduced racial and ethnic preferences into the admissions process of the UT system, unlike Texas A&M which correctly rejected reintroducing preferences in their admissions considerations.

The mission of the Project on Fair Representation (POFR) is to facilitate pro bono legal representation to political subdivisions and individuals that wish to challenge government distinctions and preferences made on the basis of race and ethnicity.

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