Judge throws out
race-based admissions Judge throws out
race-based admissions
On Michigan campus, two distinct policies
By Patrick Healy, Boston Globe Staff, 3/28/2001
A federal judge said yesterday that it was unconstitutional for the University of Michigan Law School to consider race in admissions, muddying the waters of the national affirmative-action debate and creating a novel situation at Michigan, where the undergraduate college is allowed to take race into account but the law school is not.
The judge struck down a policy that made it easier for black, Hispanic, and Native American applicants to gain admission to the law school. University officials immediately announced that they would appeal. The ruling is the latest in a series of mixed signals sent by federal courts about whether colleges can consider race in admissions, and increases the likelihood that the US Supreme Court will rule on the legality of affirmative action in universities.
In 1996, a federal appellate court ruled that the University of Texas Law School could not take the race of its applicants into account. In a decision last December involving the University of Washington Law School, a different appellate court ruled the opposite. The legal confusion over affirmative action is underscored by the fact that Michigan has received two contradictory rulings: Yesterday's decision barred the law school from using race in admissions, but a different judge ruled in December that the university could consider race when admitting undergraduates.
''The legal record in the law school case could have easily supported another conclusion,'' said Theodore Shaw, associate director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which is representing minority students in the Michigan undergraduate case. ''In this case, I think this judge knew where he wanted to go, and he went there.'' Race-based admissions policies, aimed at increasing the diversity of schools that were once largely white, have been in place at elite American colleges for decades.
Yet such preferences have come under fire in recent years from critics who say that elite universities, competing for minority students, put extraordinary weight on race in admissions and reject some white students with higher grades and test scores. Opponents of affirmative action have targeted the University of Michigan in particular. Michigan law school officials say that they want a ''critical mass'' of minority students, and that the school would have far fewer if preferences were not used. But those challenging the Michigan policy say the goal has amounted to a quota, with the school trying to ensure that at least 10 percent of its students are black, Hispanic, and Indian.
The university, meanwhile, has fought its court battles with relish. President Lee C. Bollinger - a lawyer who was dean of Michigan's law school when the affirmative action policy was adopted - has spent millions of dollars compiling a wealth of social science research and testimony to fight both lawsuits. His lawyers have argued that education is richer and more nuanced in diverse classrooms than in those that are predominantly white. ''Today's decision conflicts with settled Supreme Court law and the policies of virtually every selective university in the country for nearly 30 years,'' Bollinger said yesterday. ''Our policy is fully constitutional.''
Michigan's appeal sends the law school case to the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and puts it on track for a possible review by the Supreme Court. The high court is already considering a request to rule on the December decision in the University of Washington Law School case, in which an appellate court upheld the school's use of affirmative action. A 1998 referendum banned affirmative action in Washington state, however, and legal specialists said the justices are now less likely to review that case.
The forces fighting over affirmative action are essentially pitting the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause against the Supreme Court's 1978 Bakke decision, which many college officials see as their version of the Brown v. Board of Education decision for schools. The Equal Protection Clause bars schools from favoring one student over another on the basis of race, unless a compelling government interest is shown. But more than two decades ago, the Supreme Court ruled that colleges had such a compelling interest in enrolling a diverse student body.
The court, citing a Harvard University admissions policy as one model, said race could only be a single, narrow admissions criterion among many. The Michigan law school suit was filed in 1997 by a white student, Barbara Grutter, after her application was rejected. Her lawyers, who work for a Washington, D.C., firm that also challenged the Washington and Michigan undergraduate cases, argued that Grutter lost out because race is considered a ''super factor'' in law school admissions.
Judge Bernard A. Friedman, who wrote yesterday's decision, agreed with Grutter's lawyers that Michigan puts ''a very heavy emphasis on an applicant's race'' in order to ensure that 10 to 17 percent of the law school's students are black, Hispanic, or Native American. Friedman suggested that the goal amounted to discrimination. He also noted that the Supreme Court frequently takes a dim view of policies that benefit one racial or ethnic group over others.
This story ran on page 3 of the Boston Globe on 3/28/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
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