The legal strategy: With a healthy collection of cases, SFFA’s legal machine looks like it doesn’t have any plans to stop waging war on universities’ race-conscious admissions practices until the Supreme Court rules in its favor. And without outwardly naming a student as a lead plaintiff, the lawsuits remain timeless. SFFA can keep suing without worry that a case would be tossed for not being able to show harm to a student who may have graduated from college already.
Civil rights groups have called SFFA’s barrage of lawsuits against universities “an all-out assault on affirmative action,” after defending universities against SFFA for more than a decade.
“SFFA’s chief goal — I mean, it’s obvious — they want to eliminate the consideration of race all together,” said David Hinojosa, director of the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. The group represented students who testified on UNC’s behalf and others in Harvard’s case.
“They know what the Supreme Court precedent says — yes, you can consider race by meeting the strict scrutiny standards — but they’re just seeking an activist U.S. Supreme Court that will revisit this and reverse the precedent that we have had for the last 40-plus years,” he said.
The case against UNC is a lot like Fisher, Hinojosa said. SFFA is alleging the university’s race-conscious admissions policy is not narrowly tailored and it is not using race-neutral alternatives that are available. But, it differs from the case against Harvard, which also includes a claim that the university intentionally discriminates against Asian American applicants.
