The left did not like the results of November's election. They are realllly not going to like the outcome of these two Supreme Court Case, IMO.
December 2, 2002
Supreme Court Takes Cases on Race and School Admissions
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
[W] ASHINGTON, Dec. 2 ? The decades-long wait for the United States Supreme Court's next word on affirmative action in university admissions ended today when the justices announced that they would review two cases challenging the University of Michigan's consideration of race to ensure a diverse student body for its law school and undergraduate program.
Coming a generation after the Bakke decision in 1978 invalidated the use of fixed racial quotas while upholding diversity as a valid goal, the new cases, to be decided by early summer, are certain to attract enormous attention and to renew a debate that has never completely died down.
Getting the issue back on the Supreme Court's docket is the culmination of years of litigation by a public interest group here, the Center for Individual Rights, which opposes affirmative action and helped recruit the unsuccessful white applicants who are the plaintiffs in the two cases.
One of the plaintiffs, Barbara Grutter, was denied admission to the University of Michigan Law School, one of the most selective in the country, in 1996 at the age of 43.
The other plaintiffs, Jennifer Gratz and Patrick Hamacher, are two white students who failed to win admission to the university's College of Literature, Science and the Arts. Both were "B" students who argued that the admission of black and Hispanic applicants with similar or lesser academic records was a violation of the constitutional guarantee of equal protection.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, upheld the Michigan law school's admissions program in a bitterly divided 5-to-4 decision earlier this year. The Federal District Court in Detroit upheld the undergraduate admissions program. The appeals court heard that case a year ago but has yet to rule on it, and the Supreme Court today granted the plaintiffs' request to accept a direct appeal from the district court without waiting any longer.
The cases present the same two legal questions. The first is whether diversity is a "compelling state interest," the test the court applies to any governmental policy that takes race into account. The second is whether, if that test is met as a general matter, the specific program under review is "narrowly tailored" to accomplish the goal with as little harm as possible to competing interests.
The first question is an almost abstract matter of constitutional doctrine, while the answer to the second is highly dependent on specific details. Michigan has vowed to defend its admissions programs vigorously, and from the briefs and arguments the public can expect to learn a fair amount about admissions practices as they have evolved under a legal microscope at selective universities today.
"We are looking forward to present our cases before the Supreme Court," the university's president, Mary Sue Coleman, said today. "Our admissions policies have been carefully and thoughtfully designed, and are based upon a great deal of research."
While the constitutional guarantee of equal protection applies directly only to government institutions, and therefore to public colleges and universities, private universities also have a big stake in the outcome of the cases, Grutter v. Bollinger, No. 02-241, and Gratz v. Bollinger, No. 02-516. Lee C. Bollinger, who was president of the University of Michigan when the suits were filed and is now president of Columbia University.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars race discrimination by any institution that receives federal money, essentially all universities except for some religious colleges. Michigan is likely to receive widespread support from the higher education community as well as from civil rights organizations. |
