Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College et al

Filing 445

AMICUS BRIEF filed by Brown University, Case Western Reserve University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Emory University, George Washington University, John Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt University, Washington University in St. Louis, Yale University in Support of Defendants. (Orkand, Seth)

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC.,
Plaintiff,
v.
PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD
COLLEGE (HARVARD CORPORATION),
Defendants.

)
)
)
)
)
)
) Civil Action No.
) 1:14-cv-14176-ADB
)
)
)
)
)

AMICUS BRIEF OF BROWN UNIVERSITY,
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY,
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, CORNELL
UNIVERSITY, DARTMOUTH COLLEGE,
DUKE UNIVERSITY, EMORY UNIVERSITY, GEORGE
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY,
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY,
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, STANFORD UNIVERSITY,
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, VANDERBILT
UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS,
AND YALE UNIVERSITY IN SUPPORT OF DEFENDANTS

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF AUTHORITIES .................................................................................................... ii
STATEMENT OF INTEREST AND INTRODUCTION....................................................1
ARGUMENT ................................................................................................................................2
I.

Student Body Diversity Is Essential to Achieving the Educational Missions
of Amici. .............................................................................................................................2

II.

Individualized, Holistic Evaluation of Applications, With Consideration of
Race, Is Necessary to Achieve the Benefits of Diversity...........................................6
A.

B.
III.

Holistic Review of Individual Applications Enables Amici to
Consider How Each Individual Student Can Contribute to the
Diversity of the Student Body. ...........................................................................6
Facially Race-Neutral Approaches to Admissions Do Not Provide
Amici With A Meaningful Alternative For Obtaining Diversity..................9

It Would Be An Extraordinary Intrusion To Mandate The Use Of One
Particular Method Of Selection Here Or Prohibit All Consideration Of Race
In The Admissions Process. ..........................................................................................13

CONCLUSION ...........................................................................................................................16

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TABLE OF AUTHORITIES
CASES
Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, 570 U.S. 297 (2013) ................................6, 9, 13, 15
Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, 136 S. Ct. 2198 (2016) ..............................3, 5, 9, 13
Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003) ....................................................................................15
Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) .................................................2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14
Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District Number
1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007) ..................................................................................................8, 12, 14
Regents of University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978) ................................3, 14,
University of Pennsylvania v. EEOC, 493 U.S. 182 (1990) .................................................14
OTHER AUTHORITIES
Brief of the President and the Chancellors of the University of California
as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondents, Fisher v. University of
Texas at Austin, 136 S. Ct. 2198 (2016) (No. 14-981), 2015 WL 6735847 ......................10
Brown’s Mission, Brown University, https://www.brown.edu/about/
mission (last visited July 25, 2018) .......................................................................................3
Martha Minow, After Brown: What Would Martin Luther King Say?, 12
Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 599 (2008) .........................................................................................9
Mission Statement, Dartmouth College, https://home.dartmouth.edu/
mission-statement (last visited July 25, 2018) ....................................................................4
Adriane Kayoko Peralta, A Market Analysis of Race-Conscious University
Admissions for Students of Color, 93 Denv. L. Rev. 173 (2015)....................................10
Shirley M. Tilghman, President, Princeton University, 2005 Opening
Exercises Greeting and Address (Sept. 11, 2005), http://www.princeton.
edu/president/ speeches/ 20050911 .......................................................................................5
What Yale Looks For, Yale College Undergraduate Admissions, https://
admissions.yale.edu/what-yale-looks-for (last visited July 25, 2018) ..............................7

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STATEMENT OF INTEREST AND INTRODUCTION
Amici Brown University, Case Western Reserve University, Columbia
University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Emory
University, George Washington University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of
Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt University, Washington University in St. Louis, and Yale
University are American institutions of higher education. Amici have longstanding
admissions policies similar to those that the Supreme Court upheld in Grutter v.
Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003). Accordingly, Amici have substantial experience with
admissions policies that consider an applicant’s background and experience, including the
applicant’s racial or ethnic background.
Amici speak with one voice to emphasize the profound importance of a diverse
student body for their educational missions. The diversity that Amici seek in their
admissions policies is nuanced and multifaceted, and it encompasses a diversity of
perspectives, experiences, goals, backgrounds, races, ethnicities, and interests. Amici
strive to enroll a diverse student body because in their experience Amici have found that
doing so significantly deepens the students’ educational experience.

Diversity

encourages students to question their own assumptions, to test received truths, and to
appreciate the complexity of the modern world. This larger understanding prepares
Amici’s graduates to pursue innovation in every field of discovery, to be active and
engaged citizens equipped to wrestle with the great questions of the day, and to expand
humanity’s learning and accomplishment.

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Amici rely on decades of experience in finding that individualized and holistic
review of applications is the best means that universities can employ in pursuit of
meaningful diversity. Amici consider race and ethnicity as one factor among many in
order to better understand each applicant and the contributions he or she might make to
the university environment. The plaintiffs here suggest that holistic review should be
conducted without regard to race, but it is artificial to consider an applicant’s experiences
and perspectives while turning a blind eye to race. For many applicants their race has
influenced, and will continue to influence, their experiences and perspectives.
A decision by this Court forbidding all consideration of race in the admissions
process would compromise Amici’s efforts to attain diverse student bodies, and it would
be inconsistent with the letter and spirit of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, which
has for decades upheld holistic admissions policies like Amici’s. In light of the momentous
interests at stake, Amici urge the court to affirm the right of educational institutions to
structure admissions programs that appropriately consider race and ethnicity within the
context of an individualized and holistic review.
ARGUMENT
I.

Student Body Diversity Is Essential to Achieving the Educational Missions
of Amici.
Justice Powell recognized in Regents of University of California v. Bakke, 438

U.S. 265 (1978), and the Supreme Court held unequivocally in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539
U.S. 306, 328 (2003), that universities “ha[ve] a compelling interest in attaining a diverse
student body.” In the Court’s most recent statement on the subject, the Court credited
the University of Texas’ argument that a diverse student body “provid[es] an academic

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environment that offers a robust exchange of ideas, exposure to differing cultures,
preparation for the challenges of an increasingly diverse workforce, and acquisition of
competencies required of future leaders.” Fisher v. Univ. of Tex. at Austin, 136 S. Ct.
2198, 2211 (2016) (hereinafter Fisher II) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Decades of experience with admissions policies have convinced Amici that a
diverse student body provides irreplaceable value to the quality of their students’
education. Amici strive for the type of student body diversity that “encompasses a ...
broad[] array of qualifications and characteristics of which racial or ethnic origin is but a
single though important element.”

Bakke, 438 U.S. at 315 (opinion of Powell, J.).

Enrolling a diverse student body “promotes cross-racial understanding, helps to break
down racial stereotypes, and enables students to better understand persons of different
races,” while also “promot[ing] learning outcomes” and “better prepar[ing] students for
an increasingly diverse workforce and society.”
quotation marks and alterations omitted).

Grutter, 539 U.S. at 330 (internal

The admissions policies of Amici vary

somewhat, but they share a common commitment to the basic principle that student body
diversity is one of those “intangible ‘qualities which are incapable of objective
measurement but which make for greatness.’” Fisher II, 136 S. Ct. at 2214 (quoting
Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629, 634 (1950)).
Essential to the educational missions of Amici is a commitment to “prepar[e]
students for work and citizenship,” a core component of which is “exposure to widely
diverse people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints.” Grutter, 539 U.S. at 330, 331. See, e.g.,
Brown’s Mission, Brown University, https://www.brown.edu/about/mission (last visited
July 25, 2018) (“The mission of Brown University is to serve the community, the nation,
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and the world by discovering, communicating, and preserving knowledge and
understanding in a spirit of free inquiry, and by educating and preparing students to
discharge the offices of life with usefulness and reputation.”); Mission Statement,
Dartmouth College, https://home.dartmouth.edu/mission-statement (last visited July 25,
2018) (“Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for
a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to
teaching and the creation of knowledge.”).
Indeed, for Amici, diversity is meant to benefit the student body both inside and
outside the classroom. Because Amici are all residential institutions, each strives to
create a learning environment in which education occurs both within the classroom and
through myriad other student interactions—in residences and dining halls, in
performance, artistic, athletic, and recreational spaces, in student organizations and
activities, and throughout the campus. Amici aim to create an environment in which
students learn as much from one another outside as within the classroom. As one
university president has explained:
Princeton ... offers you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to
connect with men and women whose lives have differed
dramatically from your own; who view the world from a
different vantage point. Never again will you live with a
group of peers that was expressly assembled to expand your
horizons and open your eyes to the fascinating richness of the
human condition. ... The reason [the Admission Office] took
such care in selecting all of you—weighing your many talents,
your academic and extracurricular interests, your diverse
histories—was to increase the likelihood that your entire
educational experience, inside and outside the classroom, is as
mind-expanding as possible. When you graduate you will
enter a world that is now truly global in perspective, and in
which success will require that you have a cosmopolitan
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attitude. You must be equipped to live and work in not one
culture, but in many cultures.
Shirley M. Tilghman, President, Princeton University, 2005 Opening Exercises Greeting
and Address (Sept. 11, 2005), http://www.princeton.edu/president/speeches/20050911.
Amici’s admissions policies are based on the principle that, in a free society,
inquiry proceeds best when views and goals must withstand examination from the widest
possible range of perspectives. Amici’s experiences bear this out: a student body that is
diverse in many dimensions, including racial and ethnic background, produces enormous
educational benefits. Like the University of Texas and Harvard, Amici seek the type of
diversity that “provid[es] an educational setting that fosters cross-racial understanding,
provid[es] enlightened discussion and learning, [and] prepar[es] students to function in
an increasingly diverse workforce and society.” Fisher II, 136 S. Ct. at 2211 (quotation
marks omitted).

Such diversity significantly improves the quality of students’

educational experiences by leading them to examine and confront themselves and their
tenets from many different points of view. It also prepares them for life, work, and
leadership in a nation and world that constantly are confronting new challenges. Indeed,
as Justice O’Connor wrote in Grutter, “[i]n order to cultivate a set of leaders with
legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly
open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.” Grutter, 539 U.S.
at 332.
In short, for many students, a university may be the first place in which they are
exposed to others whose experiences, opinions, faiths, and backgrounds differ
remarkably from their own. Through that exposure, students are encouraged to question

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their own assumptions and biases and to appreciate the full texture of our society and the
world.
II.

Individualized, Holistic Evaluation of Applications, with Consideration of
Race, Is Necessary to Achieve the Benefits of Diversity.
A.

Holistic Review of Individual Applications Enables Amici to Consider
How Each Individual Student Can Contribute to the Diversity of the
Student Body.

After Grutter and Fisher II, it is the law of the land that individualized and holistic
review of university applications is an appropriately narrowly tailored mechanism for
taking into account racial and ethnic origin in support of the compelling interest in
enrolling a diverse student body.

Individualized and holistic consideration of each

applicant presents universities the opportunity to evaluate all of the characteristics that
determine an applicant’s expected contributions to campus diversity. In both ambition
and operation, such individualized and holistic review adheres to the Supreme Court’s
directive that admissions processes “ensure that each applicant is evaluated as an
individual and not in a way that makes an applicant’s race or ethnicity the defining feature
of his or her application.” Fisher v. Univ. of Tex. at Austin, 570 U.S. 297, 309 (2013)
(hereinafter Fisher I) (quoting Grutter, 539 U.S. at 337).
By design, the admissions programs of Amici are “flexible enough to consider all
pertinent elements of diversity in light of the particular qualifications of each applicant.”
Grutter, 539 U.S. at 334. In an effort to ensure that all applicants are examined on their
individual merits, Amici engage in holistic reviews that take into account a wide range of
detail regarding each applicant.

Amici obtain and review extensive information

regarding the life experiences, accomplishments, talents, interests, and goals of each

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applicant, to assess both the applicant’s academic potential and the contribution that the
applicant may make to the class as a whole. See, e.g., What Yale Looks For, Yale College
Undergraduate Admissions, https://admissions.yale.edu/what-yale-looks-for (last visited
July 25, 2018) (“As we carefully and respectfully review every application, two questions
guide our admissions team: ‘Who is likely to make the most of Yale’s resources?’ and ‘Who
will contribute most significantly to the Yale community?’”). Such application processes
should allow—indeed encourage—applicants to provide any information about
themselves, including their background, that the applicant thinks is relevant.
Accordingly, Amici consider a wide range of race-neutral factors in seeking to
compose broadly diverse and excellent student bodies. For example, Amici review
applicants’ socioeconomic background, parental education level, and whether languages
other than English are spoken in the home. They consider the applicants’ demonstrated
leadership skills, their recommenders’ assessment of their achievements and character,
and all the other intangible characteristics that are crucial to ascertaining how an
applicant will contribute to the university community. These admissions policies “weigh[]
many other diversity factors besides race that can make a real and dispositive difference”
for applicants of all races and ethnicities, “sufficiently tak[ing] into account, in practice as
well as in theory, a wide variety of characteristics besides race and ethnicity that
contribute to a diverse student body.” Grutter, 539 U.S. at 338-39.
These admissions reviews also consider the racial and ethnic backgrounds of
applicants as “one factor among many.” Grutter, 539 U.S. at 340. Consistent with Grutter
and Fisher II, Amici’s consideration of race and ethnicity does not “make[] race or
ethnicity the defining feature of the application.” Grutter, 539 U.S. at 309. No seats in
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the class are reserved for applicants of any race or ethnic background, nor are applicants
of any race or background limited to a certain number of places. Instead, Amici consider
applicants’ races and ethnicities with extraordinary care and only in the most limited
fashion necessary to ensure a meaningful contribution to the diversity of their student
bodies.
Amici take race into consideration because they understand that “the reality is
that” “race [does] matter[].” Parents Involved in Cmty. Sch. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1,
551 U.S. 701, 787 (2007) (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment);
accord Grutter, 539 U.S. at 332-33. To say that race continues to matter is to acknowledge
forthrightly that for many reasons race continues to shape the backgrounds,
perspectives, and experiences of many in our society, including Amici’s students.
Unsurprisingly, race and ethnic background may significantly impact applicants’
experiences, perspectives, and areas of accomplishment. Under the admissions policies
of Amici, no applicant is excluded from discussing how their race or ethnicity has
influenced their interests, goals, and experiences. The decision to invoke those identities
as formative of a particular worldview is instead left to the applicants themselves, and
Amici evaluate the salience of those experiences in conjunction with other formative
factors, like socioeconomic status. Such a flexible system of individualized and holistic
review enables Amici to identify those applicants who will contribute most significantly
to Amici’s respective communities.
In Amici’s educational judgment, based on years of experience, individualized and
holistic review provides the most effective path toward a diversity of backgrounds,
perspectives, and interests that shape students’ educational experiences and learning
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during their time on campus. That review is intended to produce a student body that is
talented and diverse in many ways, including in intellectual interests, goals, geographic
origin, socioeconomic status, background and experience (including race and ethnicity),
perspective, and areas of accomplishment.
B.

Facially Race-Neutral Approaches to Admissions Do Not Provide
Amici with a Meaningful Alternative for Obtaining Diversity.

Race-neutral approaches to admissions decisions do not provide Amici with
“workable means” to attain “the benefits of diversity” they seek. Fisher II, 136 S. Ct. at
2212. Universities are not obligated to adopt race-neutral or race-blind means if they
determine that such means “may preclude the university from conducting the
individualized assessments necessary to assemble a student body that is not just racially
diverse, but diverse along all the qualities valued by the university.” Grutter, 539 U.S. at
340.

Such is the case here: were Amici to adopt exclusively race-neutral means,

compelling evidence from institutions required to adopt race-neutral admissions policies
shows that Amici would no longer be able to effectively pursue the attainment of the type
of diversity that advances their educational missions. Though consideration of such
factors as socioeconomic status is relevant to the attainment of a meaningfully diverse
student body, exclusive reliance on such factors would fail to produce the racial and
ethnic diversity needed to promote “enhanced classroom dialogue and the lessening of
racial isolation and stereotypes,” Fisher I, 570 U.S. at 308; see also Martha Minow, After
Brown: What Would Martin Luther King Say?, 12 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 599, 636 &
n.192 (2008) (collecting studies showing that reliance on socioeconomic status as an
admissions factor alone cannot produce racial diversity).

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The struggles of other universities to enroll diverse student bodies exemplify why
exclusively race-neutral admissions policies are unworkable as a means of advancing
Amici’s compelling interest in diversity. For example, the University of California’s
most selective campuses have been unable to attain the type of student body diversity
that enriches students’ educational experiences since the University system was barred
from considering race in university admissions after Proposition 209 was passed in 1997.
As the President and the Chancellors of the University of California explained in an
amicus brief filed in Fisher II, despite the implementation of numerous race-neutral
approaches that aimed to boost minority representation, “the enrollment rates for
underrepresented minorities still have not rebounded at UC’s most selective campuses”
since 1997, and “the overall enrollment figures at UC have not kept pace with the
demographic changes in California.” Br. of the President and the Chancellors of the Univ.
of Cal. as Amici Curiae in Supp. of Resp’s at 22, Fisher v. Univ. of Tex. at Austin, 136 S.
Ct. 2198 (2016) (No. 14-981), 2015 WL 6735847.
Predictably, at the University of California’s most selective campuses the burdens
of mandated race-blind admissions weigh most heavily on the shoulders of
underrepresented minority students. A survey administered by the university showed
that African-American and Latinx students at UC’s most selective and least diverse
campuses “report[ed] feeling that students of their race are not respected” at
“substantially higher percentages” than at UC’s most diverse campuses. Id. at 32; see
also Adriane Kayoko Peralta, A Market Analysis of Race-Conscious University
Admissions for Students of Color, 93 Denv. L. Rev. 173, 217 (2015) (“[T]he hidden costs
of racial isolation … are greater in race-neutral settings because there are fewer students
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of color. Considering all of these factors, a student of color has a better chance at thriving
at a race-conscious college.”).
Nor would mechanistic admissions plans that rely solely on purportedly objective
factors like college entrance test scores or GPA provide workable means of attaining a
diverse student body. Such an approach would not just result in requiring the admission
of far more students than Amici are able to serve, it would also be at odds with Amici’s
educational missions.

As the Supreme Court explained in Grutter, guaranteed

admissions plans are not workable race-neutral alternatives for many universities
because they “preclude the university from conducting the individualized assessments
necessary to assemble a student body that is not just racially diverse, but diverse
along all the qualities valued by the university.” Grutter, 539 U.S. at 340. For Amici, the
assumption embodied in mechanistic alternatives—i.e., that numerical measures are the
only or even the best gauge of an applicant’s potential—is simply incorrect. A n
exclusive focus on quantifiable factors is entirely inconsistent with Amici’s evaluation of
the qualifications of the whole applicant, as well as how the applicant would contribute to
fulfilling the educational mission of the institution. Moreover, some have voiced concerns
that standardized tests favor affluent students at the expense of students from
disadvantaged backgrounds.

No mechanical formula can capture the breadth of

experiences, interests, and viewpoints that Amici seek in their applicants, and the
imposition of such admission policies would be entirely inconsistent with Amici’s
educational missions.
A “race-blind” version of holistic review would also defeat the purpose of a truly
individualized assessment for many applicants. The central purpose of a holistic approach
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to admissions is to understand each applicant as a multifaceted individual, with unique
talents, experiences, and opinions to contribute to the diversity of the student body. It
would be entirely antithetical to this approach to ignore a facet of an applicant’s identity
that may, to that individual, play an essential role in shaping his or her outlook and
experience. A person’s race often plays a role in shaping personal identity, see Parents
Involved, 551 U.S. at 787 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in the
judgment), and a categorical bar on its consideration would severely hinder Amici’s
ability to consider each individual applicant on his or her own terms. All applicants have
the opportunity to have considered, as part of their application, any characteristics that
they deem relevant. For many applicants, that includes race and ethnicity. For many,
distinct personal experiences or characteristics ranging from disability, age, veteran’s
status, gender identity, first generation educated, immigrant status, or a wide range of
other human distinctions may explain how the applicant can contribute to diversity and
broaden the understanding and perspectives of fellow students. Moreover, the unique
ways in which a person’s race and ethnicity interact with other characteristics and
experiences can make it impossible to consider these variables in isolation. Universities
should not be ordered to blind themselves to race and ethnicity as they seek to gain
insight into each applicant and to build a class that is more than the sum of its parts.
Reliance on race-neutral measures alone is an inadequate substitute for
individualized, holistic review that takes account of race and ethnicity in the manner
approved of by Grutter.

Amici share the hope that someday “progress toward

nondiscrimination and genuinely equal opportunity will make it safe to sunset affirmative
action,” Grutter, 539 U.S. at 346 (Ginsburg, J., concurring).
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alternative can presently replace race-conscious individualized and holistic review in
effectuating Amici’s compelling interest in the educational benefits that follow from a
diverse student body.
III.

It Would Be an Extraordinary Intrusion to Mandate the Use of One Particular
Method of Selection Here or Prohibit All Consideration of Race in the
Admissions Process.
Amici require that students at their institutions be capable of excelling at

demanding coursework, but their missions extend beyond that singular goal. They aim
to develop active and engaged citizens equipped to address the problems of a rapidly
evolving world—training future city, state, national, and international leaders in every
field of endeavor, including the arts, humanities, government, science, and business.
To accomplish this, Amici must be able to compose a diverse student body. No
Supreme Court decision prescribes that private institutions of higher education must
employ any one particular set of criteria or method for admission, nor does any decision
proscribe those institutions from considering race as one factor among many in seeking
to obtain that diversity. Indeed, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that a university
is entitled to “considerable deference” in defining “intangible characteristics, like student
body diversity, that are central to its identity and educational mission.” Fisher II, 136 S.
Ct. at 2214; see also Fisher I, 570 U.S. at 311 (acknowledging that “Grutter calls for
deference to the University’s conclusion, based on its experience and expertise, that a
diverse student body would serve its educational goals.” (internal quotation marks
omitted)). This deference offers universities the flexibility to “provide that atmosphere
which is most conducive to speculation, experiment, and creation,” an issue that
inevitably “leads to the question of who may be admitted to study.” Fisher I, 570 U.S. at
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308 (quoting Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234, 263 (1957) (Frankfurter, J.,
concurring in the judgment) (internal quotation marks omitted) (alteration in original)).
Admissions decisions are essentially educational judgments that are protected by
the First Amendment and entitled to deference from the courts. “Academic freedom . . .
long has been viewed as a special concern of the First Amendment,” and “[t]he freedom
of a university to make its own judgments as to education includes the selection of its
student body.” Bakke, 438 U.S. at 312 (opinion of Powell, J.). Exercise of this inherently
academic judgment is a core element of “the expansive freedoms of speech and thought
associated with the university environment.” Grutter, 539 U.S. at 329. As a result, it
should be the institutions themselves that evaluate how diversity should be defined
within their academic communities. Parents Involved, 551 U.S. at 792 (Kennedy, J.,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment) (“[P]recedent support[s] the
proposition that First Amendment interests give universities particular latitude in
defining diversity”).

And once the educational institutions make that inherently

academic determination, courts should heed “the importance of avoiding second-guessing
of legitimate academic judgments.” Univ. of Pa. v. EEOC, 493 U.S. 182, 199 (1990). To
that end, this court should affirm the basic principle that educational institutions have
the requisite expertise and the right to make the inherently academic judgments on how
to set criteria for their student admissions and in particular, what kind, quality, or extent
of diversity will best enhance the educational experience of students and allow those
students to flourish. See Grutter, 539 U.S. at 328 (“The … educational judgment that such
diversity is essential to its educational mission … [is a] complex educational judgment[]
in an area that lies primarily within the expertise of the university.”). It would be an
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extraordinary infringement on universities’ academic freedom to decree that institutions
of higher education cannot consider race at all in seeking to obtain that diversity.
Of course, Amici acknowledge that there are clear boundaries regarding how goals
of diversity may be pursued. A quota system, for example, “would amount to outright
racial balancing, which is patently unconstitutional.” Fisher I, 570 U.S. at 311 (quoting
Grutter, 539 U.S. at 330). Likewise, an admissions program that treated race or ethnicity
as “automatically ensur[ing] a specific and identifiable contribution to a university’s
diversity” would fall outside the scope of permissible consideration of race in university
admissions. Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244, 271 (2003) (emphasis added). But neither of
those concerns is triggered where admissions programs are specifically designed to
advance the very types of diversity that institutions have determined most effectively
contribute to students’ educational experiences and that take race into account only as
“one factor among many.” Grutter, 539 U.S. at 340.
The admissions policies of Amici are reflective of an educational judgment that a
student body that is diverse in perspectives, viewpoints, backgrounds, and experiences
benefits students’ educational experiences. The determination of what that diversity
consists of is entitled to significant deference. These admissions policies, inspired by the
Harvard Plan first extolled by Justice Powell in Bakke and adopted by the Court as
constitutionally permissible in Grutter, are narrowly tailored to the compelling interest
of enrolling a diverse student body. The Supreme Court has long held that independent
universities like Amici are entitled to consider race and ethnicity as one factor among
many in the admissions process; this Court should adhere to those rulings.

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Case 1:14-cv-14176-ADB Document 445 Filed 07/30/18 Page 19 of 20

CONCLUSION
The Court should affirm that institutions of higher education may employ holistic
admissions programs that are not blind to race as set forth by the Supreme Court in
Grutter and Fisher II.
Respectfully Submitted,
/s/ Matthew S. Hellman
MATTHEW S. HELLMAN
(PRO HAC VICE PENDING)
JENNER & BLOCK LLP
1099 New York Avenue, NW
Suite 900
Washington, DC 20001-4412
[phone] (telephone)
[phone] (facsimile)
[e-mail]
/s/ Seth B. Orkand
SETH B. ORKAND (BBO NO. 669810)
DEMEO LLP
200 State Street
Boston, MA 02109
[phone] (telephone)
[phone] (facsimile)
[e-mail]
Counsel for Amicus Curiae

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Case 1:14-cv-14176-ADB Document 445 Filed 07/30/18 Page 20 of 20

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
I hereby certify that this document filed through the ECF system will be sent
electronically to the registered participants as identified on the Notice of Electronic
Filing (NEF) and paper copies will be sent via mail to those indicated as non-registered
participants on July 30, 2018.
/s/ Seth B. Orkand
Seth B. Orkand

17