Page:Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, 579 U.S. (2016) (slip opinion).pdf/39

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narrowly tailored, the University must identify some sort of concrete interest. “Classifying and assigning” students according to race “requires more than. . . an amorphous end to justify it.” Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 551 U. S. 701, 735 (2007). Because UT has failed to explain “with clarity,” Fisher I, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 7), why it needs a race-conscious policy and how it will know when its goals have been met, the narrow tailoring analysis cannot be meaningfully conducted. UT therefore cannot satisfy strict scrutiny.

The majority acknowledges that “asserting an interest in the educational benefits of diversity writ large is insuf­ficient,” and that “[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.” Ante, at 12. According to the majority, however, UT has articulated the following “concrete and precise goals”: “the destruction of stereotypes, the promot[ion of] cross-racial understanding, the preparation of a student body for an increasingly diverse workforce and society, and the cultivat[ion of] a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted).

These are laudable goals, but they are not concrete or precise, and they offer no limiting principle for the use of racial preferences. For instance, how will a court ever be able to determine whether stereotypes have been ade­quately destroyed? Or whether cross-racial understanding has been adequately achieved? If a university can justify racial discrimination simply by having a few employees opine that racial preferences are necessary to accomplish these nebulous goals, see ante, at 12–13 (citing only self-serving statements from UT officials), then the narrow tailoring inquiry is meaningless. Courts will be required to defer to the judgment of university administrators, and affirmative-action policies will be completely insulated