Group urges court to overturn Harvard admissions case ruling
BOSTON (AP) — A group that opposes affirmative action is urging a federal appeals court to overturn a ruling that cleared Harvard University of discriminating against Asian American applicants.
Students for Fair Admissions has accused the Ivy League college of deliberating holding down the number of Asian Americans accepted in order to preserve a racial balance on campus.
But U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs ruled in October that Harvard’s admissions process, while “not perfect,” passes constitutional muster and that there is “no evidence of any racial animus whatsoever.”
Lawyers for Students for Fair Admissions said in a brief filed with the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Harvard “imposes a racial penalty on Asian-American applicants” and that the school’s “transparent regime of racial balancing flagrantly violates settled law.”
“It is quite unusual for a civil-rights defendant to confess. Yet Harvard admits that its goal is to ensure racial balance, and that it has engineered the admissions process to achieve that illegal pursuit,” lawyers for the group told the appellate court.
The group has said it will appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.
Harvard has denied any discrimination and and said race is considered only in the narrow way that has been upheld in earlier Supreme Court cases.
The school said in an emailed statement it will “vigorously defend” the lower court’s decision.
“Today’s filing by Students for Fair Admissions further exposes their ultimate goal of removing the consideration of race in college and university admissions,” Harvard said.
Intellectual disability cited in death row inmate’s appeal
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The attorney for an Arkansas death row inmate convicted for fatally shooting a police officer during a 2011 traffic stop told the state Supreme Court Thursday the inmate has an intellectual disability that makes him ineligible to be executed.
Attorneys for the state and Jerry Lard appeared before the court over Lard's appeal of his death sentence for the fatal shooting of Trumann police officer Jonathan Schmidt. Lard was the passenger of a car Schmidt pulled over during an April 2011 nighttime traffic stop.
An attorney for Lard cited an psychologist who found that the inmate had a “mild” intellectual disability.
Lee Short, Lard's attorney, also said the lower court was wrong to accept the inmate's request to waive his post-conviction relief and accept his death sentence.
“His condition of mild intellectual disability impairs his ability to think rationally and make reasonable judgments," Short said.
The state, however, said a psychiatrist with the state hospital found Lard to be competent to waive his post-conviction relief and had “borderline intellectual functioning” that didn't affect his ability understand the choice between life and death, the state said.
The Supreme Court did not indicate when it would rule in Lard's latest appeal.
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