AUSTIN, Texas — Yet another lawsuit has been filed against the University of Texas at Austin, claiming that the school's use of racial preferences in its admissions process is unconstitutional.
The lawsuit was filed May 16 in the District Court of Travis County by a nonprofit group called "Students for Fair Admissions." It's an organization based out of Virginia, according to its website. The same group filed a similar lawsuit against the university several months ago, but dropped it after judges said the lawsuit was flawed because no one who was suing had actually been affected by such a policy.
The new lawsuit names the school, UT President Greg Fenves and other members of the university as defendants in the case.
The lawsuit claims that UT "uses a 'diversity' rationale as a 'pretext to justify the admission of underqualified, well-connected applicants.'" The lawsuit also argues that the university's claim that student body diversity is a compelling state interest under the Texas Constitution.
J.B. Bird, UT's director of media relations, told KVUE that as of May 22, the school had not yet received the new lawsuit.
"The university has not yet received the new lawsuit from SFFA," Bird said. "We agreed with the judge's decision to dismiss SFFA's previous lawsuit, and we remain confident in the lawfulness and constitutionality of UT Austin’s holistic admissions policy, which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in 2016."
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Students for Fair Admissions sued Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2014, alleging discriminatory admissions practices.
Edward Blum, the president of the group behind the lawsuit, was also behind the lawsuit, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, in 2008. That case eventually ended with the U.S. Supreme Court siding with the university in 2016, upholding its race-conscious policy.
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