KC Johnson

• Richard Sander & Stuart Taylor, amicus brief, Fisher v. Texas
  
• Title IX at 35, pp. 1-14, 33-44 ONLY

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“Dear Colleague Letter,” Office of Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education, 4 April 2011 (The entire letter is here.).

The letter mandated that colleges decrease the threshold for conviction in campus sexual assault cases, and make other changes in procedure.

Dear Colleague:

Education has long been recognized as the great equalizer in America. The U.S. Department of Education and its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) believe that providing all students with an educational environment free from discrimination is extremely important. The sexual harassment of students, including sexual violence, interferes with students’ right to receive an education free from discrimination and, in the case of sexual violence, is a crime.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX) prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs or activities operated by recipients of Federal financial assistance. Sexual harassment of students, which includes acts of sexual violence, is a form of sex discrimination prohibited by Title IX. In order to assist recipients, which include school districts, colleges, and universities (hereinafter “schools” or “recipients”)in meeting these obligations, this letter explains that the requirements of Title IX pertaining to sexual harassment also cover sexual violence, and lays out the specific Title IX requirements applicable to sexual violence.

Sexual violence, as that term is used in this letter, refers to physical sexual acts perpetrated against a person’s will or where a person is incapable of giving consent due to the victim’s use of drugs or alcohol…

Sexual harassment is unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature. It includes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature. Sexual violence is a form of sexual harassment prohibited by Title IX. As explained in OCR’s 2001 Guidance, when a student sexually harasses another student,the harassing conduct creates a hostile environment if the conduct is sufficiently serious that it interferes with or limits a student’s ability to participate in or benefit from the school’s program. The more severe the conduct, the less need there is to show a repetitive series of incidents to prove a hostile environment, particularly if the harassment is physical. Indeed, a single or isolated incident of sexual harassment may create a hostile environment if the incident is sufficiently severe. For instance, a single instance of rape is sufficiently severe to create a hostile environment…

Title IX protects students from sexual harassment in a school’s education programs and activities…

The school’s Title IX investigation is different from any law enforcement investigation, and a law enforcement investigation does not relieve the school of its independent Title IX obligation to investigate the conduct…

OCR also uses a preponderance of the evidence standard [50.1% is enough to determine guilt] when it resolves complaints against recipients…Thus, in order for a school’s grievance procedures to be consistent with Title IX standards, the school must use a preponderance of the evidence standard (i.e., it is more likely than not that sexual harassment or violence occurred). The “clear and convincing” standard (i.e., it is highly probable or reasonably certain that the sexual harassment or violence occurred), currently used by some schools, is a higher standard of proof. Grievance procedures that use this higher standard are inconsistent with the standard of proof established for violations of the civil rights laws, and are thus not equitable under Title IX. Therefore, preponderance of the evidence is the appropriate standard for investigating allegations of sexual harassment or violence…

OCR strongly discourages schools from allowing the parties personally to question or cross-examine each other during the hearing. Allowing an alleged perpetrator to question an alleged victim directly may be traumatic or intimidating, thereby possibly escalating or perpetuating a hostile environment. OCR also recommends that schools provide an appeals process. If a school provides for appeal of the findings or remedy, it must do so for both parties.

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Fisher v. Texas (5th circuit, currently awaiting a decision at the Supreme Court)

We consider a challenge to the use of race in undergraduate admissions at the University of Texas at Austin. While the University has confined its explicit use of race to the elements of a program approved by the Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger, UT’s program acts upon a university applicant pool shaped by a legislatively-mandated parallel diversity initiative that guarantees admission to Texas students in the top ten percent of their high school class. The ever-increasing number of minorities gaining admission under this Top Ten Percent Law casts a shadow on the horizon to the otherwise-plain legality of the Grutter-like admissions program, the Law’s own legal footing aside. While the Law’s ultimate fate is not the fare of this suit, the challenge to the Grutter plan here rests upon the intimate ties and ultimate confluence of the two initiatives. Today we affirm the constitutionality of the University’s program as it existed when Appellants applied and were denied admission…

We begin with Grutter v. Bollinger because UT’s race-conscious admissions procedures were modeled after the program it approved. In rejecting constitutional challenges to the University of Michigan Law School’s admissions program, Grutter held that the Equal Protection Clause did not prohibit a university’s “narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.” Mapping on Grutter, UT evaluates each application using a holistic, multi-factor approach, in which race is but one of many considerations…

In contrast, Justice O’Connor, writing for the Court, explained that critical mass must be “defined by reference to the educational benefits that diversity is designed to produce.” Her opinion recognizes that universities do more than simply impart knowledge to their students. Synthesizing, we find at least three distinct educational objectives served by the diversity she envisioned. Increased Perspectives . . . Professionalism . . . Civic Engagement…

Texas applicants are divided into two subgroups: (1) Texas residents who are in the top ten percent of their high school class and (2) those Texas residents who are not. Top ten percent applicants are guaranteed admission to the University, and the vast majority of freshmen are selected in this way, without a confessed consideration of race…

The remaining Texas applicants, who were not within the top ten percent of their high school graduating class, compete for admission based on their Academic and Personal Achievement Indices. The Academic Index is the mechanical formula that predicts freshman GPA using standardized test scores and high school class rank. Some applicants’ AI scores are high enough that they receive admission based on that score alone. Others are low enough that their applications are considered presumptively denied. If an application is presumptively denied, senior admission staff review the file and may, on rare occasions, designate the file for full review notwithstanding the AI score.

The Personal Achievement Index is based on three scores: one score for each of the two required essays and a third score, called the personal achievement score, which represents an evaluation of the applicant’s entire file. The essays are each given a score between 1 and 6 through “a holistic evaluation of the essay as a piece of writing based on its complexity of thought, substantiality of development, and facility with language.”…

The Academic Index and Personal Achievement Index now employed by UT have been in continuous use since 1997. The lone substantive change came in 2005, following the Grutter decision, when the Board of Regents authorized the consideration of race as another “special circumstance” in assessing an applicant’s personal achievement score…

Judicial deference to a university’s academic decisions rests on two independent foundations. First, these decisions are a product of “complex educational judgments in an area that lies primarily within the expertise of the university,” far outside the experience of the courts. Second, “universities occupy a special niche in our constitutional tradition,” with educational autonomy grounded in the First Amendment. As Justice Powell explained in Bakke, “[a]cademic freedom. . . . includes [a university’s] selection of its student body.”…

A university may decide to pursue the goal of a diverse student body, and it may do so to the extent it ties that goal to the educational benefits that flow from diversity. The admissions procedures that UT adopted, modeled after the plan approved by the Supreme Court in Grutter, are narrowly tailored — procedures in some respects superior to the Grutter plan because the University does not keep a running tally of underrepresented minority representation during the admissions process. We are satisfied that the University’s decision to reintroduce race-conscious admissions was adequately supported by the “serious, good faith consideration” required by Grutter…

Judge Garza, concurrence [but really challenging the intellectual basis of the Texas policy]

Whenever a serious piece of judicial writing strays from fundamental principles of constitutional law, there is usually a portion of such writing where those principles are articulated, but not followed. So it goes in Grutter, where a majority of the Court acknowledged strict scrutiny as the appropriate level of review for race-based preferences in university admissions, but applied a level of scrutiny markedly less demanding. To be specific, race now matters in university admissions, where, if strict judicial scrutiny were properly applied, it should not.

Today, we follow Grutter‘s lead in finding that the University of Texas’s race-conscious admissions program satisfies the Court’s unique application of strict scrutiny in the university admissions context. I concur in the majority opinion, because, despite my belief that Grutter represents a digression in the course of constitutional law, today’s opinion is a faithful, if unfortunate, application of that misstep. The Supreme Court has chosen this erroneous path and only the Court can rectify the error. In the meantime, I write separately to underscore this detour from constitutional first principles…

The deference called for in Grutter seems to allow universities, rather than the courts, to determine when the use of racial preferences is no longer compelling. See id. at 343(“We take the Law School at its word that it would `like nothing better than to find a race-neutral[*250]admissions formula’ and will terminate its race-conscious admissions program as soon as practicable.”). This new species of strict scrutiny ensures that only those admissions programs employing the most heavy-handed racial preferences, and those programs foolish enough to maintain and provide conclusive data, will be subject to “exacting judicial examination.”  Others, like the University of Michigan in Grutter, and the University of Texas here, can get away with something less…

All that truly remains of strict scrutiny’s narrow tailoring inquiry post-Grutter is the requirement of “individualized consideration.” But what does this term mean specifically? Grutter never tells us. Moreover, the weight given to race as part of this individualized consideration is purposefully left undefined, making meaningful judicial review all but impossible…

The Court’s unusual deference to educators’ academic judgments that racial diversity is a compelling interest, coupled with the deference allegedly owed to their determination of when the use of race is no longer necessary, see id. at 343, would appear to permit race-based policies indefinitely. For example, notwithstanding that a university’s race-conscious policies had achieved 25% African-American and 25% Hispanic enrollment in the student body generally, that university could still justify the use of race in admissions if these minority students were disproportionately bunched in a small number of classes or majors. In fact, the majority’s application of Grutter today reaches just such a result…

Assuming a critical mass of minority students could perceptibly improve the quality of classroom learning, how would we measure success? By polling students and professors, as the University of Texas has done? How would we know whether the substantial social harm we are tolerating by dividing students based on race is worth the cost? That classroom discussion is, in fact, being enhanced? How can a party prove that it is? How can an opposing party prove that it is not?

My concern with allowing viewpoint diversity’s alleged benefits to justify racial preference is that viewpoint diversity is too theoretical and abstract. It cannot be proved or disproved….

Grutter sought to have it both ways. The Court held that racial diversity was necessary to eradicate the notion that minority students think and behave, not as individuals, but as a race. At the same time, the Court approved a policy granting race-based preferences on the assumption that racial status correlates with greater diversity of viewpoints…

As mentioned at the outset, I concur in the opinion because I believe today’s decision is a faithful application of Grutter‘s teachings, however flawed I may find those teachings to be. I am compelled [as a lower-court judge] to follow the Court’s unusual deference towards public university administrators in their assessment that racial diversity is a compelling interest, as well as the Court’s refashioned narrow-tailoring inquiry. My difficulty is not necessarily with today’s decision, but with the one that drives it…

Post-Grutter, universities need not inflict the least harm possible so long as they operate in good faith. And in assessing good faith, institutions like the University of Texas need not even provide the type of metrics that allow courts to review their affirmative action programs. As long as these public institutions remain sufficiently opaque in their use of race, reviewing courts like ours will be hard pressed to find anything short of good faith and narrow tailoring. In the world post-Grutter, courts are enjoined to take universities at their word…

For the most part, college admissions is a zero-sum game. Whenever one student wins, another loses. The entire competition, encouraged from age five on, is premised on individual achievement and promise. It is no exaggeration to say that the college application is 18 years in the making and is an unusually personal experience: the application presents a student’s best self in the hopes that her sustained hard work and experience to date will be rewarded with admission. Race-based preferences break faith with this expectation by favoring a handful of students based on a trait beyond the control of all…

Yesterday’s racial discrimination was based on racial preference; today’s racial preference results in racial discrimination. Changing the color of the group discriminated against simply inverts, but does address, the fundamental problem: the Constitution prohibits all forms of government-sponsored racial discrimination. Grutterputs the Supreme Court’s imprimatur on such ruinous behavior and ensures that race will continue to be a divisive facet of American life for at least the next two generations. Like the plaintiffs and countless other college applicants denied admission based, in part, on government-sponsored racial discrimination, I await the Court’s return to constitutional first principles.