“ UT’s race-conscious admissions program cannot satisfy strict scrutiny. UT says that the program furthers its interest in the educational benefits of diversity, but it has failed to define that interest with any clarity or to demonstrate that its program is narrowly tailored to achieve that or any other particular interest. By accepting UT’s rationales as sufficient to meet its burden, the majority licenses UT’s perverse assumptions about different groups of minority students—the precise assumptions strict scrutiny is supposed to stamp out. ”

“ At its center, the Top Ten Percent Plan is a blunt instrument that may well compromise the University’s own definition of the diversity it seeks.
In addition to these fundamental problems, an admissions policy that relies exclusively on class rank creates perverse incentives for applicants. Percentage plans “encourage parents to keep their children in low-performing segregated schools, and discourage students from taking challenging classes that might lower their grade point averages.” ”

“ Nor can we determine whether considering race is necessary for the University to achieve ‘critical mass,’ or whether there are effective race-neutral alternatives, when it has not described what ‘critical mass’ requires. ”

“ The Constitution abhors classifications based on race because every time the government places citizens on racial registers and makes race relevant to the provision of burdens or benefits, it demeans us all. ”

“ The University of Texas at Austin has a special opportunity to learn and to teach. The University now has at its disposal valuable data about the manner in which different approaches to admissions may foster diversity or instead dilute it. The University must continue to use this data to scrutinize the fairness of its admissions program; to assess whether changing demographics have undermined the need for a race-conscious policy ”

“ The University has thus met its burden of showing that the admissions policy it used at the time it rejected petitioner’s application was narrowly tailored.
* * *
A university is in large part defined by those intangible “qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness.” Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U. S. 629, 634 (1950) . 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. ”

“ Finally, it seems clear that the lack of classroom diversity is attributable in good part to factors other than the representation of the favored groups in the UT student population. UT offers an enormous number of classes in a wide range of subjects, and it gives undergraduates a very large measure of freedom to choose their classes. UT also offers courses in subjects that are likely to have special appeal to members of the minority groups given preferen­tial treatment under its challenged plan, and this of course diminishes the number of other courses in which these students can enroll. ”

“ UT complained that the Top Ten Percent Law hinders its efforts to assemble a broadly diverse class because the minorities admitted under that law are drawn largely from certain areas of Texas where there are majority-minority schools. These students, UT argued, tend to come from poor, disadvantaged families, and the University would prefer a system that gives it substantial leeway to seek broad diversity within groups of underrepresented minorities. In particular, UT asserted a need for more African-American and Hispanic students from privileged backgrounds. ”

“ UT claims, “African-American and Hispanic holistic admits have higher SAT scores than their Top 10% counterparts.” Brief for Respondents 43, n. 8. As a result, UT argues that it needs race-conscious admissions to enroll academically superior minority students with higher SAT scores. Regrettably, the majority seems to embrace this argument as well. See ante, at 16 (“ [T] he Equal Protection Clause does not force universities to choose between a diverse student body and a reputation for academic excellence”) . ”

“ Formalistic racial classifications may sometimes fail to capture diver­sity in all of its dimensions and, when used in a divisive manner, could undermine the educational benefits the University values. Through regular evaluation of data and consideration of student experience, the University must tailor its approach in light of changing circumstances, ensuring that race plays no greater role than is necessary to meet its compelling interest. ”

“ UT never explains why the Hispanic students—but not the Asian-American students—are isolated and lonely enough to receive an admissions boost, notwithstanding the fact that there are more Hispanics than Asian-Americans in the student population. ”

“ And unless the University is engaged in unconstitutional racial bal­ancing based on Texas demographics (where Hispanics outnumber Asian-Americans) , see Part II–C–1, supra, it seemingly views the classroom contributions of Asian-American students as less valuable than those of Hispanic students. In UT’s view, apparently, “Asian Americans are not worth as much as Hispanics in promoting ‘cross-racial understanding,’ breaking down ‘racial stereotypes,’ and enabling students to ‘better understand persons of differ­ent races.’ ” Brief for Asian American Legal Foundation et al. ”

“ A court cannot ensure that an admissions process is narrowly tailored if it cannot pin down the goals that the process is designed to achieve. UT’s vague policy goals are “so broad and imprecise that they cannot withstand strict scrutiny.” ”

“ Does critical mass depend on the relative size of a particular group in the population of a State? For exam­ ple, is the critical mass of African-Americans and Hispan­ics in Texas, where African-Americans are about 11.8% of the population and Hispanics are about 37.6%, different from the critical mass in neighboring New Mexico, where the African-American population is much smaller (about 2.1%) and the Hispanic population constitutes a higher percentage of the State’s total (about 46.3%) ? ”

“ The study further suggested that only 21% of these classes had two or more African Americans, 67% had two or more Asian-Americans, and 70% had two or more Hispanics. See ibid. Based on this study, UT concluded that it had a “compelling educational interest” in employing racial preferences to ensure that it did not “have large numbers of classes in which there are no students—or only a single student—of a given un­derrepresented race or ethnicity.” Id., at 25a.
UT now equivocates, disclaiming any discrete interest in classroom diversity. ”

“ According to UT, a critical mass is neither some absolute number of African-American or Hispanic students nor the percentage of African-Americans or Hispanics in the general population of the State. The term remains undefined, but UT tells us that it will let the courts know when the desired end has been achieved. ”

“ Under this longstanding, secret process, university officials regularly overrode normal holistic review to allow politically connected individuals—such as donors, alumni, legislators, members of the Board of Re­gents, and UT officials and faculty—to get family members and other friends admitted to UT, despite having grades and standardized test scores substantially below the median for admitted students. ”

“ This argument fails for a number of reasons. First, it is simply not true that Top Ten Percent minority admittees are academically inferior to holistic admittees. In fact, as UT’s president explained in 2000, “top 10 percent high school students make much higher grades in college than non-top 10 percent students,” and “ [s] trong academic performance in high school is an even better predictor of success in college than standardized test scores.” ”

“ On the other hand, asserting an interest in the educa­tional benefits of diversity writ large is insufficient. A university’s goals cannot be elusory or amorphous—they must be sufficiently measurable to permit judicial scrutiny of the policies adopted to reach them.
The record reveals that in first setting forth its current admissions policy, the University articulated concrete and precise goals. ”

“ For all these reasons, although it may be true that the Top Ten Percent Plan in some instances may provide a path out of poverty for those who excel at schools lacking in resources, the Plan cannot serve as the admissions solution that petitioner suggests. ”

“ Because UT has failed to provide any evidence whatsoever that race-conscious holistic review will achieve its diversity objec­tives more effectively than race-blind holistic review, it cannot satisfy the heavy burden imposed by the strict scrutiny standard. ”

“ Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 911 (1995) (internal quotation marks omitted) . “Race-based assignments embody stereotypes that treat individuals as the product of their race, evaluating their thoughts and efforts—their very worth as citizens— according to a criterion barred to the Government by history and the Constitution.” ”

“ Under the University’s race-conscious holistic review, 58 African-American fresh­ men from Texas and 158 Hispanic freshmen from Texas were enrolled in 2008, thus reflecting an increase of only 15 African-American stu­dents and 18 Hispanic students. ”

“ A recent survey reported that 26% of Hispanics and 28% of Asian-Americans marry a spouse of a different race or ethnicity. [8] UT’s crude classification system is ill suited for the more integrated country that we are rapidly becoming. UT assumes that if an applicant describes himself or herself as a member of a particular race or ethnicity, that appli­cant will have a perspective that differs from that of appli­cants who describe themselves as members of different groups. ”

“ In support of this argument, they cite only demographic data and anecdotal statements by UT officials that some students (we are not told how many) feel "isolated." This vague interest cannot possibly satisfy strict scrutiny.
If UT is seeking demographic parity to avoid isolation, that is impermissible racial balancing. See Part II–C–1, supra. And linking racial loneliness and isolation to state demographics is illogical. Imagine, for example, that an African-American student attends a university that is 20% African-American. ”