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Bush examines University of Michigan affirmative action policies
By Corrie Navis
Guest Writer
The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear two cases regarding the constitutionality of the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policies.
This is not the first time the Supreme Court has heard arguments concerning affirmative action; in 1978 the court ruled in favor of white student Alan Bakke after he was denied admission to medical school at the University of California at Davis.
While the court ruled 5-4 that the university could not use a quota system for ensuring a certain number of minority students, the decision left some uncertainty about the place of race in admissions.In his written opinion, the late Justice Lewis Powell said according to CNN, “The goal of achieving a diverse student body is sufficiently compelling to justify consideration of race… under some circumstances.”
Over the last quarter century, schools have been writing affirmative action policies to legally fit under this ambiguous ruling.
The part of Michigan’s admissions policy currently under fire is a 150-point scale which was at one time used to rate applicants.
Among other graded factors, minority students were automatically given twenty points for their race.
On average, total scores of over 100 points were accepted to the university.
The Supreme Court decided last month to hear two cases challenging this admissions policy.
The first is the case of Barbara Grutter, who in 1995 was denied admission to Michigan’s law school. She and two other applicants sued the university, accusing them of favoring less-qualified minority applicants.
In May, the sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Grutter’s rejection was constitutional under the 1978 Bakke ruling.
The second case is that of Jennifer Gratz and Patrick Hamacher, who in 1995 and 1997, respectively, were denied admission as undergraduates.
It is alleged that Latino and African-American applicants with similar grades and test scores were admitted, while the two white students were turned down.
While the Court of Appeals has not yet ruled on Gratz’s case, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear both the law school and undergraduate case, since they deal with similar Michigan policies.
The court will determine whether the policies violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment or Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination by federally funded institutions.
Last week, President Bush sub mitted a brief to the Supreme Court concerning the Michigan cases, describing the affirmative action policy as “fundamentally flawed,” and asserting that such quota systems are “divisive, unfair and impossible to square with the Constitution,” according to a White House Press release from the Office of the Press Secretary.
Bush prefers alternate measures, such as economic assistance, for ensuring racial diversity in colleges.
The administration’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year includes a five percent funding increase for grants to historically black and Hispanic colleges and universities. Even within the White House, however, opinions differ. Secretary of State Colin Powell, one of two black members of Bush’s cabinet, has voiced his support for Michigan’s policies and says he remains “a strong proponent of affirmative action," according to the Associated Press.
Powell has expressed similar disagreements with the party in the past, criticizing the GOP’s affirmative action positions in a speech to the Republican National Convention in 2000.
Both sides of the debate agree that whatever the ruling, the Supreme Court’s clarification of the muddy Bakke ruling will set an important precedent for how colleges and graduate programs admit students in the future.
NAACP associate counsel Ted Shaw has called the Michigan suits, according to CNN, “the most significant civil rights cases the Supreme Court will have decided in the last quarter century…This issue is nothing less than whether the doors of opportunity remain open for students of color.”
The Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger early this year, with a ruling on the affirmative action cases expected by June.
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