by Kwanzaa Imani

Last week, Abigail Fisher’s case against The University of Texas at Austin gained media attention when she announced that she would once again be taking it before the Supreme Court. In 2008, Fisher filed a discrimination suit against the school, making the claim that they had denied her admission while accepting less qualified students of color because affirmative action laws gave them an unfair advantage due to their race.

In a long-running affirmative-action case, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Tuesday upheld the University of Texas at Austin’s consideration of race as one of many factors in admissions.

“We are persuaded that to deny U.T. Austin its limited use of race in its search for holistic diversity would hobble the richness of the educational experience in contradiction of the plain teachings of Bakke and Grutter,” Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham wrote, referring to two previous affirmative-action rulings by the Supreme Court.

Brooke Kimbrough always dreamed of becoming a University of Michigan Wolverine. Her score on the ACT--a college readiness evaluation test--dwarfs the scores of most of her classmates. Earlier this month, she was part of a winning team at the National Urban League Debate Championship in Washington, D.C. Last week, she became a powerful symbol for exactly how Michigan's race-blind college admissions policies have failed.

Related: Student Stages Protest Against Rejection from University of Michigan