I'm Virginia Allen, and I'm Jillian Richards, and this is the Daily Signals Top News

for October 31st.

Here are today's headlines.

The Supreme Court heard arguments today for a major case on affirmative action.

The ruling on this case could ultimately affect college students across America.

Affirmative action policies permit universities to use race as a determining factor when considering

college admissions.

Law suits were brought against the University of North Carolina and Harvard University

for their affirmative action policies, and now it's up to the court to decide what the

law of the land is moving forward.

John Carlo Canaparo is a senior legal fellow in the Edwin Mease III Center for Legal

and Judicial Studies here at the Heritage Foundation.

He joins us now to discuss that, John Carlo, thanks so much for being here.

Thanks for having me, Virginia.

So tell us what the justices are deciding in this case.

Yes, so as you said, Harvard and UNC use race in their admissions, and what is alleged

here and what was found at trial is that because admissions are a zero-sum game, right, there

are limited number of spots, and the universities want to increase the number of

some minorities on campus, they have to discriminate against others.

So Asians tend to do very well academically, and so if they—academics was all that

was considered, they would become what's called overrepresented in colleges with respect

to the—compared to the percentage of the total population.

...