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 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 policy was narrowly tailored to further a compelling interest in "obtaining educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body." The majority said that Michigan's efforts to maintain a "critical mass" of minority students did not amount to using illegal quotas.

In the undergraduate case, the majority did not reject the use of racial preferences to promote educational diversity. But the justices said that the university's current policy, which is more formulaic, is not narrowly tailored to achieve the goal of a diverse student body.

Today's ruling marks 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 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.)

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.

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 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 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 5-4 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 justices 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. The university's lawyers argued that the law school's admissions policy complies with guidelines set forth by Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. in the Supreme Court's last ruling on affirmative action in college admissions, the 1978 decision Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In his opinion in that case, Justice Powell held that public colleges could not use quotas in admissions, but could give some consideration to race in an effort to attain a diverse student body.

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.