On Nov. 17, 2014, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. filed this lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1983, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against the University of North Carolina (UNC). The plaintiff, represented by private counsel, asked the court for declaratory and injunctive relief to prohibit the consideration of race in college admissions, claiming that UNC's current admissions policy discriminated against Asian American applicants.

Specifically, the plaintiff claimed that UNC's current admissions policy held Asian American students to a higher standard based on their race, that UNC was engaged in a prohibited form of racial balancing, that UNC was not limiting its consideration of an applicant's race to "merely a plus factor," and that a racially neutral alternative was available to achieve the same goals of diversity.

As evidence of this, the plaintiff pointed to admissions data that showed a disparity between acceptance for Asian American students at UNC and at other schools (for example, the University of California) that did not employ racial considerations in their admissions process. Additionally, the plaintiff pointed to the steady rate of acceptance of Asian American students despite the change in application rates and qualifications for those applicants. According to the plaintiff, this was evidence of a policy indistinguishable from racially based quotas for admissions. The plaintiff also pointed to a long history of admissions discrimination at UNC as evidence suggesting the current policy may have similar aims.

The case was assigned to Judge Loretta C. Biggs on Jan. 12, 2015.

On Mar. 20, 2015, the parties filed a joint stipulation of voluntary dismissal of a subset of the plaintiff's claims. The parties dismissed the UNC Board of Trustees and the individual trustees named as defendants, arguing that the Board did not play an active role in creating the admissions policy. The parties also dismissed all Title VI claims against the individually named defendants from the Board of Governors, the UNC president, and various other UNC Chapel Hill administrators. Finally, the parties dismissed the 42 U.S.C. § 1981 claim against all defendants.

On Jun. 30, 2015, a series of individual UNC students and parents of students intending to apply to UNC moved to intervene on behalf of the defendants. The intervenors identified themselves as African American, Black, Moorish, Indian, and Hispanic.

On Jul. 6, 2015, the defendants moved to stay the proceedings in light of the Supreme Court's pending decision in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. Although the plaintiff initially opposed the motion, the parties filed a joint motion to partially stay proceedings on Sept. 30. They sought partial stay of the proceedings pending the resolution of Fisher in the Supreme Court, but on the condition that defendants produce "certain agreed-upon materials." The court granted the partial stay motion and then stayed all proceedings on Oct. 1.

The Supreme Court decided Fisher on Jun. 23, 2016, holding that the University of Texas' use of race in the admissions process did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 136 S. Ct. 2198. The court here lifted the stay on Aug. 1, 2016 and discovery continued. The court granted permissive intervention to the current and prospective students on Jan. 13, 2017. 319 F.R.D. 490.

On Oct. 25, 2017, the defendants moved to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction, arguing that the plaintiff brought suit as "an organizational plaintiff asserting representational standing" but did not meet its burden of showing its members had "indicia of membership in an organization." The court held on Sep. 29, 2018, that the "indicia of membership" test did not apply to Students for Fair Admission, since it was a voluntary membership association with actual members. The court held that Students for Fair Admission had standing because four of its members were recent high school graduates who had applied to the University of North Carolina and were denied admission. 2018 WL 4688388

On Jan. 18, 2019, the defendants moved for summary judgement, arguing that the University employed a narrowly tailored admissions policy, using the type of holistic review endorsed by the Supreme Court. The plaintiffs filed a cross-motion for summary judgment on Mar. 4, 2019, asking the court to find as a matter of law that the University's admissions policy was not narrowly tailored.

On Sep. 30, 2019, Judge Biggs denied both motions for summary judgement. She found that there was an issue of material fact regarding UNC's use of race as a "plus" factor. UNC presented evidence that their system, which lists "background" as a factor in admissions decisions but does not assign points to students based on their race or ethnicity as it does with other categories, takes the kind of holistic approach endorsed by the Supreme Court. UNC presented expert evidence based on four years of admissions decisions that their approach considers each student individually. The plaintiffs presented conflicting expert evidence, which they claimed showed that race was a predominant factor in admissions decisions. 2019 WL 4773908

Judge Biggs also found an issue of material fact regarding UNC's efforts to explore race neutral alternatives. UNC presented expert evidence that concluded that no race blind alternatives were available that would allow the university to maintain both its academic standards and racial diversity. The Plaintiffs countered that UNC had not sufficiently attempted to use race neutral alternatives such as increasing financial aid, adopting policies using geographic diversity, including percentage plans and the use of zip codes and Census tract data, reducing or eliminating preferences for legacies, or eliminating the Early Acton admissions options.

A bench trial was set for May 11, 2020.

The case is ongoing.

Patrick Branson - 02/16/2015
Virginia Weeks - 01/24/2018
Jonah Feitelson - 04/09/2020


compress summary