|
||||||||
  |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Affirmative action case awaits Supreme Court review
From William Mears
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court Monday agreed to decide whether affirmative action programs in the nation's universities should continue to help minorities, or whether they represent "reverse discrimination." The court will decide by next June if race can be used in college admissions, an issue that the justices have dealt with only once before, in a cloudy 1978 ruling that led to more confusion. At issue is whether race be used as a factor in admissions to state-funded colleges, to increase diversity in the student body. Justices will be asked to decide whether a state has a "compelling interest" to promote a diverse student body, or whether the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment forbids giving one ethnic group or culture special advantages over another. Because the Supreme Court has not offered clear guidelines on the use of affirmative action, the justices this time could make one of the most significant decisions on equal opportunity in education. The cases involve admission policies at the University of Michigan undergraduate program and its prestigious law school. The first case involves Barbara Grutter's 1995 application to the law school. It was rejected, despite what she said was "very strong" expertise in a variety of fields. "I have a lot of experience I could have brought to that class," she told CNN three years ago, when the case was being appealed. Along with two other applicants, she sued, accusing the university of rejecting white applicants because of their race, and using unfair standards to admit lesser-qualified minorities. They want race taken out of the admission process. The laws school says it has the right to use race in recruiting students, as well as the responsibility. "We take race into account as a factor among many in order to pursue the educational benefit of diversity," university lawyer Liz Barry told CNN in 1998. In May, a federal appeals court upheld the university's law school admissions process. In a surprise, justices also agreed to hear a companion case from the University of Michigan dealing with undergraduate admissions, despite the fact that a federal appeals court has yet to rule on the case. Jennifer Gratz was denied admission to the school in 1995. In her lawsuit against the school, she claims Michigan essentially runs two admissions systems to get a pre-determined racial mix of students. A controversial part of Michigan's admission policy was a 150-point scale used to grade an applicant's record. Blacks, Hispanics or native Americans automatically received 20 points for their race, which could have been equivalent to raising their grade a full point on a 4.0 scale. The point scale is no longer used at the school. If the court were to strike down the Michigan admissions policy, universities would be forced to change how they accept minorities. Affirmative action programs in general could also be radically affected. "These represent the most significant civil right cases the Supreme Court will have decided in the last quarter century," said Ted Shaw, associate counsel of the NAACP. "This issue is nothing less than whether the doors of opportunity remain open for students of color." Affirmative action programs were originally created to correct racial and cultural discrimination against non-whites, dating from the days of slavery and public segregation. But advocates on both sides of the issue agree the initiatives have proven controversial, and enforcement often has been applied in a random and confusing way. One reason is the Supreme Court's ambiguous ruling in the 1978 Bakke case, the last time court addressed affirmative action in public universities. The court at the time ruled the University of California at Davis could not hold a quota of places for minorities. But writing in the case, the late Justice Lewis Powell wrote, "The goal of achieving a diverse student body is sufficiently compelling to justify consideration of race ... under some circumstances."
Since then, federal courts around the country have offered conflicting opinions on the legality of affirmative action. In legal briefs filed with the Supreme Court, lawyers from both sides argued now is the time for the justices to give a clear, definitive ruling on the issue. Arguments will be presented by both sides sometime early next year, with a ruling from the bench likely to come by June. The law school case is Grutter v. Bollinger (No. 02-241). The undergraduate case is Gratz v. Bollinger (No. 02-516).
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
