Jennifer Gratz was one of the first to successfully argue against race in affirmative action.
Credit: Andrew Burton / Getty

Editor’s note, June 29, 2023: The Supreme Court on Thursday effectively ended affirmative action in higher education in a pair of cases concerning admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Read our latest coverage here. The original story, on a separate 2016 case out of Texas, follows.

The University of Texas Austin was Abigail Fisher’s dream school. Fisher, from Sugar Land, Texas, a wealthy Houston suburb, earned a 3.59 GPA in high school and scored an 1180 on the SATs.

Not bad, but not enough for the highly selective UT Austin in fall 2008; Fisher’s dreams were dashed when she was denied admission.

In response, Fisher sued. Her argument? That applicants of color, whose racial backgrounds were included as a component of the university’s holistic review process, were less-qualified students and had displaced her.

Students graduating in the top 10 percent of any Texas high school are granted an automatic spot at UT Austin. […]

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