Affirmative Action Guidelines Rescinded by Trump Administration
On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced it would be rolling back Obama administration policies regarding affirmative action in college admissions. According to The New York Times, the administration will encourage colleges and universities to “adopt race-blind admissions standards,” returning to Bush administration recommendations on the use of affirmative action in education.
Affirmative action was first introduced in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, who filed an executive order stating that government contractors “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or natural origin.”
During Obama’s time in office, affirmative action policies saw renewed validation, including in the Fisher v. University of Texas case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld affirmative action in a 4–3 decision, in June 2016. The majority opinion in that case was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who last week announced he would be stepping down from the court. “A university is in large part defined by those intangible qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness,” he wrote in the decision. “Considerable deference is owed to a university in defining those intangible characteristics, like student body diversity, that are central to its identity and educational mission.” In 2011, the Obama administration also provided guidance on the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights’s (OCR) page on how schools could build affirmative action policies that would withstand legal scrutiny, according to The New York Times.
The Trump administration, though, appears to have made dismantling affirmative action policies one of its educational goals. Following rumors in August 2017 that the Justice Department, under the leadership of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, would be taking on the investigation of such policies, Sessions tasked the DOJ in November with reviewing past policies that the AG believed went beyond what the law and Supreme Court required. Seven policy guidances from the OCR will be rescinded, according to the Times. “The executive branch cannot circumvent Congress or the courts by creating guidance that goes beyond the law and — in some instances — stays on the books for decades,” said Devin M. O’Malley, a spokesman for the Justice Department.
As Politico points out, the announcement comes as another high-profile education case moves through the courts system. The Justice Department is currently investigating whether Harvard has discriminated against Asian-American applicants in its admissions process. Harvard is being sued by Students for Fair Admissions, which claims the Ivy League school has systemically discriminated against Asian-American applicants and that those applicants have a lower chance of getting into the school than do white, black, and Latinx applicants with the same educational qualifications. In 2017, Harvard announced that its class of 2021 would be its first majority nonwhite class, but it remains to be seen whether the outcome of the lawsuit or new recommendations by the government could change its admissions policies or the racial makeup of future classes.
Related: This Is How Affirmative Action Actually Works
