Introduction

The next and most recent case to challenge affirmative action in college admissions policies in the Supreme Court was the Fisher v University of Texas at Austin (2013 and 2016). Similar to Chapter 5, the purpose of this chapter is to understand precisely what supporters and opponents argued about this controversial policy. That is, how did they frame the debate surrounding affirmative action? We focus again on the amicus briefs submitted by social authorities to the Supreme Court that had an interest in the outcome of the cases. While we were interested in variation in the types of frames used in these two cases (Fisher I and II) relative to the Gratz and Grutter cases, we mainly focused on the authors’ continued use of both color-blind and group threat frames to state their positions.

While some nuanced changes were observed from Gratz/Grutter to Fisher, our findings revealed a great deal of consistency from case to case, and that the briefs continued to rely on these pernicious frames to characterize the policy. Both supporters and opponents of affirmative action deployed color-blind arguments. However, opponents relied more heavily on them while also suggesting that the policy was a threat to the dominant group. Among the opponents’ briefs in particular, threat frames suggested that whites in general and white college applicants and students in particular were losing in a country consumed by liberal agendas of diversification and entitlements only afforded to unqualified and ill-prepared non-whites. This finding is consistent with those found in Chapter 5. Nonetheless, in this chapter, we outline the similarities and differences as we describe the key frames used in the debate.

Although 25 years separated the Gratz and Grutter cases (2003) from the Bakke (1978) Supreme Court case, only 10 years elapsed between Gratz/Grutter and Fisher. While this relatively short time period between cases raised concern among supporters, the societal context was even more disconcerting as it seemed ripe for the final removal of the policy in the US. The President at the time, Barack Obama, who at one time had been a strong advocate of affirmative action, expressed lukewarm support for the continuation of the policy, implying that class-based preferential treatment may be more appropriate (Kahlenberg, 2008).