Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (Fisher I)

After the Fifth Circuit struck down the University of Texas's original race-conscious admissions program in Hopwood v. Texas, Texas adopted the Top 10 Percent Law guaranteeing automatic admission for top-ranked high school students, and the University stopped considering race entirely. In 2004, finding it still lacked a 'critical mass' of minority students, the University revised its process to weigh race as a component of a broader personal-achievement index (alongside an academic index), without assigning race any specific numerical value. Fisher (plaintiff), a white applicant denied admission in 2008 out of roughly 29,500 applicants for 12,843 spots, sued claiming the program violated equal protection; the district court granted the University summary judgment, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed, deferring substantially to the University's own judgment about how it structured its consideration of race.