Yale dodges affirmative action lawsuit after changes to admissions process

Zachary Schermele, USA TODAY
·3 min read
22
Protesters gather outside as the U.S. Supreme Courts hears oral arguments in two affirmative action college admission cases on Oct. 31, 2022.

Yale University skirted a challenge to its admissions process this week after the same group that persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down affirmative action dropped a similar lawsuit against the school.

Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) dismissed its challenge Thursday after the university doubled down on a promise to not consider race as a factor in admissions. The suit was originally filed in February 2021 in federal court in Connecticut.

The litigation was put on hold two years ago while the Supreme Court mulled over the merits of affirmative action policies at other colleges. In late June, the majority-conservative justices issued a long-awaited ruling declaring that the approaches of those selective schools – Harvard and the University of North Carolina, in particular – in considering applicants' races violated the 14th Amendment. The decision dealt a blow to diversity efforts, both on college campuses and in workplaces across the country.

Edward Blum, a longtime affirmative action critic and conservative activist who runs SFFA, said he was pleased with Yale’s approach to obliging the Supreme Court decision.

“SFFA is satisfied, for now, that Yale’s new admissions policies comport with the opinion rendered by the Supreme Court in the Harvard and UNC cases,” he wrote in a statement to USA TODAY.

Though most colleges and universities in the U.S. already don't consider race as a factor in admissions, Yale is among a significant sliver of the nation's most selective institutions that spent the summer scrambling to figure out how to retrofit their policies to a new normal – what critics have likened to admissions "Armageddon." A groundbreaking study released earlier this summer revealed the extent to which getting into those selective schools “dramatically changes children’s life trajectories."

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Erasing race from Yale admissions

The changes that appeased SFFA include an update to the university’s training materials, which will now clarify that race won’t be used as a factor in admissions decisions. Admissions officers won’t be able to check boxes with applicants’ races either, and the admissions office won’t gather aggregated data about the racial composition of admitted students during its review cycle. In court documents, the university also clarified that race won’t be a factor in calculating or awarding financial aid.

Jeremiah Quinlan, the dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid, told the Chronicle of Higher Education on Thursday the school has never considered race in calculating financial aid.

“We don’t look at race at all. We look at students’ family income and assets. Our formula is completely driven by those, and that’s the way it has been for decades,” he said.

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The school announced a spate of other reforms, including the incorporation of census-based data that tracks the economic mobility of applicants. A new essay prompt was added, too. Yale's application questions, the university said in a press release, “will invite students from all backgrounds to reflect on the experiences that have shaped their character and strengths."

A Yale spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Zachary Schermele is a breaking news and education reporter for USA Today. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Yale affirmative action lawsuit narrowly avoided by university