In 1994, while I was a law student at the University of Houston, I received a call from a lawyer in Austin. He wondered whether I would be interested in joining a class-action lawsuit against the University of Texas (UT) School of Law. “Why would I want to do that?” I asked. Because, he replied, my application to the law school had been rejected primarily on the basis of my race. Had I been black, based on my test scores and grades, I would have been more-or-less automatically admitted to UT Law School. However, since I am white, I was placed in a “discretionary zone,” and UT decided to exercise its discretion to reject me.
My grades and scores were, however, good enough for the University of Houston, which is a perfectly respectable law school, albeit not one of the nationwide top 10 like the University of Texas. I had, the lawyer insisted, been discriminated against on account of my skin colour. If I wanted to do so, I could join other rejected white applicants in the class-action lawsuit he was preparing, and potentially receive a settlement if the lawsuit were successful. It was a contingency-fee case, so it would cost me nothing. I could even remain anonymous while suing Texas’s top law school.
I declined. I was well into my law degree at the University of Houston and I already had enough…
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