Updated at 4:50 p.m. to include comments from the Office of Enrollment Services.
On Thursday, the United States Supreme Court — in a ruling on one of many controversial and heated cases on its docket this year — narrowly upheld the race-conscious affirmative action admissions plan of the University of Texas at Austin.
The high court's decision effectively sanctioned the use of race as one of many factors in determining admission application decisions. The ruling, however, will not affect Auburn because the University does not specifically review race in their application process, according to Wayne Alderman, dean of enrollment services.
Auburn has two admissions programs: Early Action and holistic reviews. Students with high ACT and SAT scores are given preference in the Early Action admissions process.
"For students who do not qualify for Early Action, Auburn does a holistic review of applicants," Alderman said. "This holistic review includes such factors as ACT/SAT scores, the ACT/SAT subscores, high school GPA and transcripts of courses taken, responses to short answer questions on the application, Alabama residency, first generation students, intended major and other factors that we believe will indicate the applicant will be successful at Auburn while meeting our enrollment goals."
African-American enrollment at Auburn has dropped from 7.8 percent in 2010 to 6.9 percent in the fall of 2015, according to the Office of Institutional Research, while the state of Alabama's African-American population makes up nearly 27 percent of the state's total population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
In 2001, the percentage of African-American enrollment at Auburn was higher than in 2015. The University is currently working to diversify the applicant pool, which should in turn increase minority enrollment at the University.
"We do not specifically review for ethnicity although one of our goals is to have a diverse student body," Alderman said. "To improve our diversity numbers, we are focusing on increasing the diversity of our applicant pool."
The ruling
Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by three of the court's liberal justices, penned the court's majority opinion.
Kennedy is known for being the deciding swing vote in several controversial cases including last year's historic same-sex marriage decision.
The court's three remaining conservative justices — Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas and Associate Justice Samuel Alito — dissented in the case.
In upholding the university's admissions program, Kennedy also wrote that race-conscious admissions plans must continually and regularly reevaluate their plans.
"Through regular evaluation of data and consideration of student experience, the University must tailor its approach in light of changing circumstances, ensuring that race plays no greater role than is necessary to meet its compelling interest," Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion.
According to Texas law, the University of Texas at Austin must admit around the top 10 percent of graduating high-school students. The petitioner, Abigail Fisher, was denied admission under the university's race-neutral Top 10 admissions program. About three quarters of the school's freshman class is regularly admitted under that program.
This case challenged another portion of the university's admissions program: the holistic admissions approach, one to which Fisher was subjected after she was denied admission under the main admissions program.
In this subjective and flexible program, admissions staff at the university consider several different aspects of each individual student including their academic achievement, involvement and experiences — as well as their race and ethnicity.
Many universities across the country use a solely holistic approach to admissions.
Fisher was denied admission in 2008 under the holistic admission approach as well. She later sued and her legal team has asserted through several different appeals that the inclusion of race in the university's decision making was unconstitutional.
On Thursday, the high court finally put this case to rest after eight years of confusion.
Kennedy wrote that universities are defined in large by abstract "qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness." He was quoting one of the high court's earlier cases, Sweatt v. Painter, which in 1950 successfully challenged the standing "separate but equal" doctrine.
"Considerable deference is owed to a university in defining those intangible characteristics, like student body diversity, that are central to its identity and educational mission," Kennedy wrote. "But still, it remains an enduring challenge to our nation's education system to reconcile the pursuit of diversity with the constitutional promise of equal treatment and dignity."
Kennedy went on to say that universities, like states, can serve as public laboratories for experimentation. Some states have chosen to ban race-conscious admissions programs through public referenda — Michigan, California, Arizona, Washington and Arizona are among them. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush banned affirmative action in that state via executive order.
Alito wrote a 51-page dissent, joined by Roberts and Thomas.
"What is at stake is whether university administrators may justify systematic racial discrimination simply by asserting that such discrimination is necessary to achieve 'the educational benefits of diversity,' without explaining — much less proving — why the discrimination is needed or how the discriminatory plan is well crafted to serve its objectives," Alito wrote in his dissent.
"Instead of focusing on the benefits of diversity, UT seems to have resorted to a simple racial census," he wrote.
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