The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a University of Texas policy that uses race as a factor for admissions, another significant victory for the use of affirmative action in higher education.

The case was one of three from Texas before the court directly impacting millions of Americans. Supreme Court Decisions: Immigration and Affirmative Action Rulings Handed Down

In limited instances, to promote a diverse student body, race can be a factor in who's admitted to a college and who is not, the court ruled Thursday.

A decision against the university could have prevented universities from considering race when admitting students.

Vinay Harpalani, a Savannah Law School professor who focuses on race in higher education, told Patch that the ruling is not cut-and-dried and will likely require schools to take certain measures if they are to consider race in admissions. Data Texas kept on its campus diversity was crucial in convincing the court to uphold its policy, he said.

"What this ruling does is it really lays out a blueprint in my mind for what colleges and universities will have to do to justify their race-conscious admissions plans," Harpalani said. "The court discusses in detail all the things UT did" like campus studies and surveys. "That's important," Harpalani added, "because now universities have some sense of how to uphold their plan."

In the majority opinion, authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court said the school will need to continue to study this data to make sure its plan is necessary for a diverse campus.



"The Court's affirmance of the University's admissions policy today does not necessarily mean the University may rely on that same policy without refinement," Kennedy said. "It is the University's ongoing obligation to engage in constant deliberation and continued reflection regarding its admission policies."

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito said that UT did not sufficiently show that the school's policy of admitting all students in the top-10 percent of their high school graduating class did a good enough job of creating diversity, since the state's high schools are already so segregated. "Even though UT has never provided any coherent explanation for its asserted need to discriminate on the basis of race, and even though UT's position relies on a series of unsupported and noxious racial assumptions, the majority concludes that UT has met its heavy burden," he wrote. "This conclusion is remarkable—and remarkably wrong."