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Contact: Jill Farrell, Judicial Watch, 202-646-5188
WASHINGTON, Sept. 16, 2015 /Standard Newswire/ -- Judicial Watch announced today it joined with the Allied Educational Foundation (AEF) to file an amici curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court that argues that raced-based admissions policies are irrational, destructive and are based on illegitimate racial theories that have no basis in biology.
The Judicial Watch and AEF brief was filed on September 10, 2015, in support of Abigail Noel Fisher, who is asking the court to overturn a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decision that allows the continued practice of giving applicants admission preferences, based upon race and ethnicity, to the University of Texas at Austin (UT).
The new amici brief states:
The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit raises important issues of constitutional law that should be addressed by this Court. In particular, amici are concerned that the Fifth Circuit's ruling, if allowed to stand, will serve to increase racial polarization and resentment in this country, needlessly perpetuating a destructive focus on "racial" issues and prolonging the misconception that race is a valid or legitimate concept. Amici argue that, ultimately, the only mention of race in the law should be its prohibition. Any divergence from this principle must be extraordinarily narrow, and for remedial purposes only.
Judicial Watch and AEF cite the American Anthropological Association's position that racial categories only perpetuate misinformation and irrational beliefs about others:
"Race" thus evolved as a worldview, a body of prejudgments that distorts our ideas about human differences and group behavior. Racial beliefs constitute myths about the diversity in the human species and about the abilities and behavior of people homogenized into "racial" categories.
Judicial Watch and AEF make the case that the UT's and the federal government's use of racial identification is absurd, and can never be "narrowly tailored" under the constitution:
UT makes no effort whatsoever to define the term "Asian," which just as commonly refers to the four billion human beings who inhabit the largest and most populous continent on Earth as it does to a single "race" of people. It lumps together the two most populous countries on the planet, China and India, each of which has more than a billion people and a multitude of languages, cultures, and religions. It is unclear whether UT's use of the term "Asian" includes applicants who are or whose ancestors were of full or partial Near or Middle Eastern origin, including persons of full or partial Arab, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian, Kurdish, Persian, or Turkish descent, or whether such applicants are to be considered "White."
The UT policy at issue allows applicants to self-identify their race, which is also a flawed process to distinguish applicants. The brief cites to the case of Rachel Dolezal, the NAACP Spokane Chapter president who self-identified as "Black" despite apparently having only "White" heritage:
