Affirmative
Decision Affirmative
Decision
Circuit Court rightly rules for diversity; Supreme Court eventually should, too
May 15, 2002
Affirmative action lives -- at least for now and, ideally, for as long as it is needed to foster racial integration throughout a society in which race isn't supposed to matter but plainly does. In a decision released Tuesday, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the University of Michigan Law School's use of race as a factor in admissions.
The ruling by the court in Cincinnati means that federal circuits have now split 2-2 in affirmative action cases, so the U.S. Supreme Court is the likely next stop for this issue, and it should be. The values at stake are fundamental to the prolonged struggle for racial equality. Tuesday's 5-4 ruling in favor of the U-M Law School's quest for a racially diverse body of students -- reflective of their society -- repudiated a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Bernard Friedman of Detroit, who said there was no compelling state interest in such a goal.
Given that Michigan remains among the most segregated places in the nation, it's hard to conceive of a more compelling state interest for an institution of higher learning. Friedman also said courts were no longer bound by the 1978 Bakke decision that race could be used as a factor in university admissions. In dismissing that rationale, Chief Judge Boyce Martin of the appeals court said Bakke was still the law of the land, and endorsed U-M's diversity goal.
The appeals court majority also said the evidence in the case showed that the law school's admissions policy was properly balanced and did not provide an unfair advantage to minorities. The decision recognized -- as do most educators and much of the business community -- that diversity in education is critical to a healthy, functioning, diverse society.
If the broad objective of higher education is to shape young minds to become the motivated, productive and visionary leaders of that society in the future, a university is entitled to use a variety of tools -- including affirmative action -- to achieve it. The reaffirmation of Bakke in Tuesday's ruling is profoundly important toward advancing the integration that for much of this nation exists more in law than in fact.
In Southern states where other court rulings have gone against affirmative action, top-tier universities are seeing a trend toward resegregation. The days of such regional disparity should be long past. The nation should have only one standard, and it should be integration -- the standard laid down 48 years ago this week in the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
That 1954 ruling should have laid this issue to rest, too, but it didn't. The U-M case -- which should be followed soon by a similar ruling involving undergraduate admissions -- gives the Supreme Court an opportunity to do so. But that battle lies ahead. For now, the university -- and a student group that intervened effectively in support of U-M -- can take pride and satisfaction in charting a progressive course toward the future.
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