Lawsuit Updates

SFFA v. President & Fellows of Harvard First Circuit Court of Appeals Argument

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SFFA Files Reply Brief in Appeal of Harvard Decision

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Amy Coney Barrett and the Ivies

Amy Coney Barrett has Harvard and Yale worried. Not because her law degree breaks their lock on Supreme Court justices. But because these Ivy League schools’ use of race in their college admissions is now before the federal courts—and they fear Judge Barrett will be the decisive vote against them if she’s confirmed to the Supreme Court. No doubt Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee will ask about affirmative action this week as Judge Barrett goes through her hearings. As the senators’ opening statements Monday indicated, however, for now they are concentrating their fire on the threat she’s said to pose to abortion rights and ObamaCare. But as Judge Barrett herself has pointed out, though the Supreme Court may give states more latitude to regulate or restrict the procedure, the “core holding” of Roe—a woman’s right to an abortion—is unlikely to change. As for ObamaCare, it’s true that a week after the election the Supreme Court will hear a case... Read More

Annual Report of Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA)

Linked below is our Annual Report, reviewing all legislative activities in the past year. Please feel free to share this letter with friends and family. Thank you to all of our members and donors for your new and continued support this year. As always, we will continue to provide you with regular updates of SFFA’s activities throughout the coming year. Membership participation is critical to SFFA’s success. We will again be holding members-only conference calls. Your ideas, comments, and suggestions about the future of our organization and our movement are vitally important. I encourage all of you to join these calls and to converse with me and our Board of Directors. You may find our full annual report... Read More

Students for Fair Admissions Files New Federal Lawsuit Against the Univ. of Texas-Austin

(Arlington, VA) Today, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) announces that it has filed a new lawsuit in federal court challenging the race-based admissions policies of the University of Texas at Austin. SFFA sued the Univ. of Texas in Texas state court in 2018 on behalf of some rejected students alleging the school was not permitted under the Texas Constitution to use racial or ethnic classifications or preferences in the admissions process. This lawsuit was dropped on July 10, 2020. The new complaint can be found here. In 2016, the Supreme Court in Fisher v. University of Texas found that UT-Austin’s race-based admissions policies—as implemented in 2008—were lawful under the Equal Protection Clause. But the Supreme Court warned that “affirmance of the University’s admissions policy today does not necessarily mean the University may rely on that same policy without refinement.” UT‑Austin had an “ongoing obligation to engage in constant deliberation... Read More

Asian American Discrimination at Harvard –Data Analysis

Detecting racial discrimination using observational data is challenging because of the presence of unobservables that may be correlated with race. Using data made public in the SFFA v. Harvard case, we estimate discrimination in a setting where this concern is mitigated. Namely, we show that there is a substantial penalty against Asian Americans in admissions with limited scope for omitted variables to overturn the result. This is because (i) Asian Americans are substantially stronger than whites on the observables associated with admissions and (ii) the richness of the data yields a model that predicts admissions extremely well. Our preferred model shows that Asian Americans would be admitted at a rate 19% higher absent this penalty. Controlling for one of the primary channels through which Asian American applicants are discriminated against—the personal rating—cuts the Asian American penalty by less than half, still leaving a substantial penalty. Read the whole study... Read More

The Attack on Asian-Americans

Asian-Americans have finally made it in America. How do we know? Not from their wealth or educational achievements, but from the way progressives now target those in the community who believe people shouldn’t be judged by skin color. For in so doing, these Asian-Americans have exposed a growing fault line in affirmative-action orthodoxy. More from the Wall Street Journal... Read More