As justices return to the bench today for the fall session, the Supreme Court will deal with an affirmative action case involving a university's admission policy.
A lawsuit was filed against the University of Texas at Austin when a white applicant was rejected in favor of less qualified blacks and Hispanics. Horace Cooper is co-founder of Project 21, the group that filed a brief in the case.
"This program was set up not in response to examples and experiences of discrimination, but as a way to try to build diversity," Cooper explains.
"While diversity, we think, is an interesting and noble goal, we don't believe that diversity trumps the Constitution, which says that every American citizen ought to be treated color blind."
He says Project 21 would consider several different approaches to be fair.
"In particular, we would urge them to return back to the top ten percent policy, where at high schools all across the state of Texas, anyone in that top ten percent would be eligible to apply to the University of Texas," Cooper notes. "That was a policy that had been in effect … more than a decade before they repealed it to come up with the new, holistic admissions program."
The case challenges a 2003 Supreme Court decision that permitted schools to take race into account in admission policies for the sake of diversity.
DOMA might be on docket too
The Supreme Court also will decide at some point during this session whether to accept challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
A number of cases filed by homosexual activists have been making their way to the U.S. Supreme Court over several years. Jim Campbell, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), tells OneNewsNow there is no indication yet whether the high court will accept the cases.
"[Their purpose will be] to address the question of whether the federal Defense of Marriage Act is a valid exercise of congressional power," the attorney explains. "So essentially these cases bring to the Supreme Court the question of whether the people of the United States can define and preserve marriage."
DOMA defines marriage as the union between one man and one woman. In their challenges to DOMA, homosexual activists are seeking tolerance of their lifestyle, placing it on a par with heterosexuality -- but as Campbell points out, there are consequences.
"The attempt to redefine marriage -- to change it from what it's historically been, to remove it from its historical purpose of binding parents to their children -- is an effort to deconstruct and undermine marriage," he states.
The attempt to preserve marriage will not rise or fall based on the DOMA lawsuits, so ADF is fully prepared "to defend it as a universal good that has been honored by diverse cultures throughout the entire history of western civilization."
A decision from the court on hearing the legal challenges is expected within the next few weeks.