9th Circuit Courts Decision On Using Race as an Admission Factor

The 9th circuit court of appeals ruled in favor of a Hawaiian school giving preference to those students of Native decent. A fifteen judge panel deemed it legal for the elite Kamehameha School to use race as an admission factor. The majority of the judges hearing the case said that this case, bought by a white student who was not admitted because of his race, was unique because of the educationally inequality that Hawaiian students experience, just as similar cases in Alaska and with Native American Indians The plaintiffs attorney claimed that he would appeal to the Supreme Court "Discrimination in favor of native Hawaiians and against other persons is racial discrimination," he said. The last time that the Supreme Court ruled in a case similar to this matter was in 2003 when they ruled against a system at University of Michigan that used formulas that awarded points based on race.