By Hemesh Patel
Daily Bruin Staff
On March 29, a federal judge halted the use of affirmative
action at the University of Michigan’s law school.
The university plans to take the case to the Supreme Court, and
if it succeeds, the decision could determine the fate of
affirmative action in admissions nationwide.
“I think it’s unfortunate that the University of
Michigan will have to deal with the constraints that we’re
all too familiar with here in California,” said Leo
Trujillo-Cox, executive director of the Outreach Resource Center at
the UCLA School of Law.
“If the Supreme Court makes a decision, its binding law
nationally ““ it would change the face of public
education,” he added.
What makes the case unique is that the University of
Michigan’s undergraduate affirmative action program was
recently determined to be constitutional by another federal court
judge.
The conflicting cases may likely force the U.S. Supreme Court to
decide the matter once and for all.
“It’s quite likely that the Supreme Court will take
a look at this case especially with the conflicting opinions
whether or not this type of affirmative action is
permissible,” Trujillo-Cox said.
The University of Michigan expects to win the case if it goes to
the Supreme Court.
“We will appeal this decision and are confident that we
will prevail in a higher court,” said University of Michigan
president Lee Bollinger in a statement.
The Supreme Court affirmed the use of affirmative action in the
case Bakke v. Regents of the University of California, which barred
the use of quotas in the admissions process but said that race
could be used as a factor.
Last week’s decision concerning the University of Michigan
was made after a non-profit organization, the Center for Individual
Rights, helped launch the court case. The organization could not be
reached for comment.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman found the
use of affirmative action unconstitutional.
“This haphazard selection of certain races is a far cry
from the “˜close fit’ between the means and the ends
that the Constitution demands in order for a racial classification
to pass,” Friedman said during the court case.
The judgment was made in the midst of the law school’s
admissions process.
The university has asked the court to hold the ruling until the
law school admissions process is over, but for now, the process is
temporarily frozen.
According to officials, the law school accepts 1,000 students.
To date, 826 individuals have been accepted.
Students at the university protested last Thursday against the
decision.
According to university officials, the CIR has a nationwide
campaign against affirmative action.
“They clearly have a national strategy to go state by
state and dismantle affirmative action,” said University of
Michigan spokeswoman Julie Peterson.
Besides California and Washington, which decided to stop the use
of affirmative action by voter initiative, court decisions in
Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia have come down against the
use of racial preferences.
“I think it’s likely they will continue to target
schools until their goals are settled nationally,”
Trujillo-Cox said.
The American Civil Rights Institute, a non-profit educational
foundation similar to the CIR, was founded by UC Regent Ward
Connerly, who spearheaded the regents’ policies SP-1 and 2,
ending affirmative action throughout the UC system. The ACRI also
sponsored Proposition 209, the state voter initiative that ended
the use of affirmative action in California.
“Even if a school is able to demonstrate that diversity is
valuable, it hasn’t been able to make the case that diversity
should trump someone’s constitutional right to equal
protection,” said Kevin Nguyen, executive director of
ACRI.
He said he is not supportive of affirmative action because it
implies people of a certain skin color think a certain way.
“The definition of diversity itself needs to be
challenged,” Nguyen said. “In an educational setting,
it should be a diversity of viewpoints ““ this is different
from racial (diversity).”
Friedman alluded to such ideas in his ruling.
“The connection between race and viewpoint is tenuous at
best,” Friedman said during the court hearing.
“The defendants (University of Michigan) walk a fine line
in simultaneously arguing that one’s viewpoints are not
determined by one’s race but that certain viewpoints might
not be voiced if students of particular races are not admitted in
significant numbers,” he added
But officials at the university said they put together a court
case like no other.
“We put together a book of expert witness testimony and in
a landmark study we documented that students who learn in a
racially diverse environment learn better,” Peterson
said.