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Florida banned affirmative action in college admissions years ago; check out the results

July 6, 2023 | | Print Article

If you want to know what will happen in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent rejection of affirmative action in college admissions, you need only look to Florida, which banned the consideration of race for acceptance into colleges long before the SCOTUS ruling.

As BizPac Review reported, last Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that using race to determine who will be admitted to American colleges violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.


Students for Fair Admissions, a student activist group dedicated to ending affirmative action, filed lawsuits against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, accusing the institutions of discriminating against Asian American applicants.

“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s majority opinion. “The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race. Many universities have for too long done just the opposite.”

While liberal heads explode amid cries of “White supremacy,” Florida is applauding the decision, Fox News Digital reports.

“Florida was one of the first states in the nation to ban race and gender preferences in college admissions,” a spokesperson for presidential hopeful, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, told local ABC affiliate WPBF 25. “We are proud to have a system based on merit instead of woke politics.”

“The U.S. Supreme Court issued a historic ruling declaring affirmative action in college admissions unconstitutional. This decision will have no impact on the State University System of Florida,” said the Florida Board of Governors, the governing body for the State University System of Florida, in a statement. “The Free State of Florida has not utilized affirmative action in our higher education system since the One Florida Initiative in 1999.”

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“The State University System of Florida provides students equality of opportunity through color-blind admissions,” the board explained. “In addition to being the No. 1 state in the nation for higher education, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report since 2017, Florida also has one of the most diverse systems in the country. Florida is proof that diversity can be achieved without affirmative action.”

The “One Florida” initiative came into being as a 1999 executive order signed by then-Governor Jeb Bush, and, among other things, it specifically addressed affirmative action in higher education.

“It is the policy of my Administration to support equal educational opportunities for all qualified Floridians, to prohibit discrimination in education because of race, gender, creed, color or national origin, and to promote the full realization of equal educational opportunities throughout the State,” the order reads. “I hereby request that the Board of Regents implement a policy prohibiting the use of racial or gender set-asides, preferences or quotas in admissions to all Florida institutions of Higher Education, effective immediately.”

“Race-based university admissions were replaced with a program that guarantees admission into one of Florida’s public universities for students who graduate from high school in the top 20% of their class, irrespective of their race,” according to Fox News Digital.

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Decades later, the results have been mixed, with some critics of the initiative claiming that the numbers of Black and Hispanic college students have gone down along with their respective populations of high school seniors.

“According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, for example, 23% of Florida public high school seniors were Black in 1999, and 18% of undergraduate university freshmen were Black. Eight years later, 22% of high school seniors were Black, but the share of freshmen had dipped to 15%, according to the Tampa Bay Times,” Fox News Digital reports.

“However, that decline was primarily driven by falling enrollment at Florida A&M University, the state’s historically Black public university. At most of Florida’s other public universities, the share of Black students actually increased.”

At the University of Florida, home to the state’s most rigorous admission standards, between the years of 1999, when the EO was implemented and 2007, the number of Black students increased from 11% to 14%, and “the overall share of Black undergraduates spiked from 7% to 10%,” according to the outlet.

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However, “from 2010 to 2021, Black and Hispanic students have become more underrepresented at Florida’s elite universities, according to National Center for Education Statistics data.”

“In the spring of 2021, 21% of seniors from Florida public high schools were Black,” Fox News Digital reports. “That fall, they made up just 10% of freshmen at one of Florida’s 12 public universities.”

Still, since 2017, U.S. News & World Report has named Florida as the No. 1 state in the nation for higher education.

In a statement following the landmark SCOTUS decision, the University of Florida’s director of strategic communications, Cynthia Roldán, praised her school’s “non-discrimination practices.”

“The University of Florida adheres to non-discrimination practices in admissions, and we do not consider race as a factor in our admissions decisions,” she said. “We are guided by a comprehensive, holistic review process that evaluates the academic and nonacademic criteria of applicants, in addition to requirements under federal and state laws as well as the Florida Board of Governors’ regulations.”

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It’s hard to argue with the results.

“In 1999, when One Florida was signed, 69% of freshmen students at the University of Florida were in the top 10% of their graduating class, according to university data and an analysis by the Tampa Bay Times,” Fox News Digital reports. “That number climbed to 82% by 2020, indicating Florida schools are becoming increasingly competitive.”

And Governor DeSantis isn’t stopping with affirmative action. He’s hitting universities that push “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) agendas where it hurts the most: in their pocketbooks.

“We have eliminated ‘DEI’ from our public universities,” DeSantis said on Friday during a Moms for Liberty convention in Philadelphia. “They say it’s ‘diversity, equity and inclusion.’ But the way it’s practiced, it’s ideology imposed on the institution.”

This weekend, a DeSantis-signed law took effect in Florida, banning colleges and universities from using state or federal money to promote, support or maintain programs that “advocate for” DEI. Programs or activities that “promote or engage in political or social activism” as defined by the State Board of Education or the Board of Governors can not receive school funding.

 

Melissa Fine
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