Monday, June 23, 2003

Updated 3:45 p.m. EDT Supreme Court Upholds Affirmative Action in College Admissions By PETER SCHMIDT Washington The U.S. Supreme Court today upheld the use of affirmative action in college admissions in two cases involving the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, but struck down the mechanics of Michigan's ALSO SEE: THE RULINGS The full texts of the Supreme Court's decisions in Grutter v. Bollinger (the law-school case) and Gratz v. Bollinger (the undergraduate case). Both files require Adobe Reader, available free. INTERACTIVE MAP: Where the Courts Stood -- Until Today (requires Flash, available free from Macromedia) TIMELINE: Showing the history of rulings on the Michigan cases ISSUES IN DEPTH: Background articles on the Michigan cases ISSUES IN DEPTH: Background articles on affirmative action in American higher education undergraduate admissions policy. In a case involving the law school, the Supreme Court upheld Michigan's policy in a 5-to-4 decision. The majority said that the law school had a compelling interest in "obtaining educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body," and that its admissions policy was narrowly tailored to achieve that goal. The majority also said that Michigan's efforts to maintain a "critical mass" of minority students did not amount to using an illegal quota. In the undergraduate case, the court did not reject the use of racial preferences to promote diversity on campuses. But it held, 6 to 3, that the admissions policy used by Michigan's undergraduate College of Literature, Science, and the Arts was not narrowly tailored to achieve the goal of maintaining a diverse student body. The admissions policy at issue in the undergraduate case uses a point system, and awards black, Hispanic, and American Indian applicants a 20-point bonus on its 150-point scale. (To put that bonus in context, 20 points is the difference between what applicants receive for a 4.0 grade-point average and what they receive for a 3.0.) Rejecting Michigan's argument that it needed to use such a point system given the large number of undergraduate applications that it receives, the majority said that any administrative challenge posed by considering applicants on an individual basis "does not render constitutional an otherwise problematic system." The University of Michigan Law School's admissions policy gives more-individual consideration to applicants, but considers race and ethnicity in an attempt to enroll a "critical mass" of underrepresented minority students on the campus. The policy typically has resulted in combined black, Hispanic, and American Indian enrollments of 10 to 17 percent. "We find that the Law School's admissions program bears the hallmarks of a narrowly tailored plan," the court majority said. Its opinion described the law school's admissions policy as "flexible enough to ensure that each applicant is evaluated as an individual and not in a way that makes race or ethnicity the defining feature of the application." Today's rulings mark the first time the Supreme Court has waded into the controversy over affirmative action in college admissions in more than two decades -- a period in which deep divisions have emerged among lower courts over whether colleges can legally use some types of race-conscious admissions policies to promote diversity on their campuses. The court's last major decision on the subject was its landmark 1978 ruling, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In that case, the court struck down the use of quotas in college admissions. But an opinion written by Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., and joined by a majority of the other justices in part, held that colleges could give some consideration to race in an effort to attain a diverse student body. The majority opinion in the Michigan law-school case was written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, widely regarded as the court's key swing vote in affirmative-action cases. She was joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter, and John Paul Stevens, all of whom have generally supported affirmative action in the past. Their opinion sidestepped a long-running debate over whether Justice Powell had spoken for the court's majority in Bakke, saying that resolving the issue is unnecessary because today's majority "endorses Justice Powell's view that student-body diversity is a compelling state interest in the context of university admissions." The opinion also soundly rejected one of the key arguments that the Bush administration had made in a brief filed in opposition to Michigan: that the university's admissions policies were not narrowly tailored because it had not adequately sought race-neutral alternatives. "Narrow tailoring does not require exhaustion of every conceivable race-neutral alternative," the majority held. Moreover, it said, most of the alternatives suggested, such as admissions policies that use lotteries, "would require a dramatic sacrific of diversity, the academic quality of all admitted students, or both." The dissenting opinions were signed by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. Justice Rehnquist's opinion called the law-school admissions policy "a naked effort to achieve racial balancing." The majority opinion in the undergraduate case was written by Chief Justice Rehnquist. Justices Breyer, Kennedy, O'Connor, Scalia, and Thomas concurred on the decision's key elements, while Justices Ginsburg, Souter, and Stevens dissented. The majority in that decision held that the undergraduate admissions policy does not provide enough individual consideration to applicants, and therefore "is not narrowly tailored to achieve the interest in educational diversity" that the university claimed as its justification. The law-school case involves a lawsuit filed by Barbara Grutter, a white woman rejected by the school in 1997. Her lawyers brought the case, Grutter v. Bollinger, before the Supreme Court in hopes of persuading the justices to overturn a May 14, 2002, ruling, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, that upheld the law school's admissions procedures as constitutional. Ms. Grutter's lawyers argued that the appeals court had erred in its ruling, which accepted Michigan's arguments that the government has a compelling interest in maintaining racial and ethnic diversity on campuses, and that the admissions policies used by the law school are narrowly tailored to give just enough consideration to race without unduly harming nonminority applicants. They said that the law school discriminated against white and Asian applicants, and was essentially operating an illegal quota system in seeking to maintain a "critical mass" of minority students. In petitioning the Supreme Court to review the case, Ms. Grutter's lawyers noted that the Sixth Circuit was deeply divided in its 5-to-4 decision. The majority held that the law school's admissions policy is permissible under the Constitution, because the educational benefits offered by a racially diverse campus justify the use of race-conscious admissions policies, where needed, to maintain enrollments of black, Hispanic, or American Indian students. But the four dissenting judges said that the case "involves a straightforward instance of racial discrimination by a state institution." The Sixth Circuit's decision reversed a March 2001 U.S. District Court ruling by Judge Bernard A. Friedman, who concluded that Michigan was operating an illegal quota system because the law school consistently kept minority enrollments above certain levels. Also urging the Supreme Court to take the case were lawyers representing several students who had intervened in the lawsuit to defend Michigan's race-conscious admissions policies as necessary to remedy past and present racial discrimination. Although they agreed with the Sixth Circuit's decision to leave Michigan's policy intact, they argued that the appeals court ignored evidence of racial discrimination by the university. The University of Michigan had urged the Supreme Court to let the Sixth Circuit's ruling stand. In a brief submitted to the Supreme Court, the university's lawyers argued that the law school's consideration of race in admissions "is moderate in scope, treats all applicants as individuals, and does not employ quotas or set-asides (or their functional equivalent)." They argued that the Supreme Court cannot strike down the law school's admissions policies without overturning the Bakke decision, and that Ms. Grutter's lawyers have offered "no persuasive justification for making such a radical and disruptive break with settled precedent." Ms. Grutter's lawyers argued that the diversity rationale articulated by Justice Powell in Bakke did not represent the views of the four other justices in the majority. Moreover, their brief said, several subsequent Supreme Court decisions -- in cases involving the government's use of preferences for minority candidates for jobs or contracts -- have taken a dim view of preferences used for reasons other than remedying specific acts of discrimination. The lawsuit challenging Michigan's undergraduate admissions policies, Gratz v. Bollinger, was filed in 1997 on behalf of two white applicants rejected by the university's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, its main undergraduate college, at Ann Arbor. U.S. District Court Judge Patrick J. Duggan had ruled in Michigan's favor in the case in December 2000. The Sixth Circuit subsequently heard both the law-school and undergraduate cases at the same time, but its panel of judges became mired in a bitter internal feud in the course of deciding the law-school case, with judges in the minority in that decision contending that judges in the majority had manipulated court procedure to ensure a ruling in Michigan's favor. The undergraduate case remained undecided for months after the law-school decision, and the Supreme Court took it up before the Sixth Circuit had a chance to rule. Like the law-school case, the undergraduate case also was the subject of intervention by students who were trying to convince the courts that Michigan needs to grant racial preferences to overcome past and current discrimination on the campus. The lawyers for the plaintiffs in the undergraduate case had sought to depict the point system used by Michigan's admissions officers as evidence that many applicants were being accepted or rejected based solely on their race or ethnicity. Michigan's lawyers argued that the system awarded bonus points to applicants for a host of other nonacademic qualities -- such as state residency or having relatives who were alumni -- and was too complex for anyone to argue that race was the deciding factor in any particular admissions decision. THE MICHIGAN CASES: A TIMELINE October 1997 Two white students, Jennifer Gratz and Patrick Hamacher, who were denied admission to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor's chief undergraduate college file a lawsuit saying the institution discriminated against them by using different standards to admit students of different races. The students are represented by the Center for Individual Rights, a nonprofit group that opposes race-conscious admissions. December 1997 Barbara Grutter, a white student who was rejected by the university's law school, files a lawsuit contending that it discriminated against white students by looking at the life experiences of applicants in an effort to enroll a "critical mass" of underrepresented minority students. Ms. Grutter is also represented by the Center for Individual Rights. As in the undergraduate case, her suit is based in part on internal admissions documents that university officials produced in 1996 in response to a state open-records request by a Michigan philosophy professor, Carl Cohen. Lee Bollinger, the university's president, promises to fight both lawsuits vigorously. July 1998 A federal judge refuses to let several civil-rights groups, including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, as well as 17 black and Hispanic high-school students, intervene in the undergraduate case. The judge rejects the groups' claim that they could not depend on the university to represent the interests of minority students adequately. The ruling comes a day after another federal judge denies a similar request from several other groups and 41 students seeking to intervene in the law-school case. August 1999 A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rules, 2 to 1, that black and Hispanic students cannot count on the university to represent their interests adequately, and should be considered as "defendant-intervenors" in both lawsuits. The minority students contend that the university needs affirmative action to remedy its own past and present racial discrimination -- an argument Michigan disputes. December 2000 In the undergraduate case, Gratz v. Bollinger, U.S. District Court Judge Patrick J. Duggan rules that the university is justified in considering race in admissions because of the educational benefits of diversity on the campus. He largely bases his decision, he says, on his belief that the admissions policy, adopted in 1999, was "narrowly tailored" to avoid outright, illegal discrimination against white students. March 2001 In the law-school case, Grutter v. Bollinger, U.S. District Court Judge Bernard A. Friedman rules that the admissions policies are unconstitutional because they "clearly consider" race and are "practically indistinguishable from a quota system." May 2002 The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overturns Judge Friedman's decision. In a 5-to-4 ruling, the court says that the university considered race appropriately in trying to enroll a "critical mass" of minority students to contribute to educational diversity on the campus. Although the appeals court heard the undergraduate case at the same time, the judges say they will rule on the case at a later date. They never do. August 2002 Lawyers for the plaintiff in the law-school case ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. The following month, the university asks the court not to hear the appeal. December 2002 The Supreme Court agrees to take up both Michigan cases, even though the Sixth Circuit court has not ruled in the undergraduate case. It marks the first time that the Supreme Court has decided to hear a dispute over affirmative action in college admissions in more than two decades, since its landmark 1978 decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. January 2003 President Bush announces that his administration will urge the Supreme Court to strike down the university's admissions policies, which he condemns as "fundamentally flawed" and as "divisive, unfair, and impossible to square with the Constitution." But briefs in the cases filed by the Justice Department stop short of arguing that all race-conscious admissions policies are unconstitutional. February 2003 The Supreme Court receives more than 60 briefs backing Michigan's use of race in admissions. Legal observers say that seldom in the court's history have so many amicus curiae, or "friend of the court," briefs been filed on behalf of one side in a dispute. April 2003 The justices hear oral arguments in both Michigan cases as thousands of affirmative-action supporters, mainly students, protest outside. June 2003 The court upholds affirmative action in college admissions and the law school's admission practices but strikes down the undergraduate admission policies. SOURCE: Chronicle reporting Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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