Page:Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, 579 U.S. (2016) (slip opinion).pdf/46

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race-conscious plan was necessary to achieve the educa­tional benefits of a diverse student body. As far as the record shows, UT failed to even scratch the surface of the available data before reflexively resorting to racial preferences. For instance, because UT knows which students were admitted through the Top Ten Percent Plan and which were not, as well as which students enrolled in which classes, it would seem relatively easy to determine whether Top Ten Percent students were more or less likely than holistic admittees to enroll in the types of classes where diversity was lacking. But UT never bothered to figure this out. See ante, at 9 (acknowledging that UT submitted no evidence regarding “how students admitted solely based on their class rank differ in their contribution to diversity from students admitted through holistic re­view”). Nor is there any indication that UT instructed admissions officers to search for African-American and Hispanic applicants who would fill particular gaps at the classroom level. Given UT’s failure to present such evi­dence, it has not demonstrated that its race-conscious policy would promote classroom diversity any better than race-neutral options, such as expanding the Top Ten Percent Plan or using race-neutral holistic admissions.

Moreover, if UT is truly seeking to expose its students to a diversity of ideas and perspectives, its policy is poorly tailored to serve that end. UT’s own study—which the majority touts as the best “nuanced quantitative data” supporting UT’s position, ante, at 15—demonstrated that classroom diversity was more lacking for students classi­fied as Asian-American than for those classified as His panic. Supp. App. 26a. But the UT plan discriminates against Asian-American students. UT is apparently