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发帖数: 5 | 1 WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a Michigan voter
initiative that banned racial preferences in admissions to the state’s
public universities.
“This case is not about how the debate about racial preferences should be
resolved,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in a controlling opinion joined
by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. “It
is about who may resolve it. There is no authority in the Constitution of
the United States or in this court’s precedents for the judiciary to set
aside Michigan laws that commit this policy determination to the voters.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor read an impassioned dissent from the bench. She said
the initiative put minorities to a burden not faced by other applicants to
college.
“The Constitution does not protect racial minorities from political defeat,
” she wrote. “But neither does it give the majority free rein to erect
selective barriers against racial minorities.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
joined the dissent.
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Interactive Graphic
How Minorities Have Fared in States With Affirmative Action Bans
In states that have banned affirmative action in college admissions,
prominent public universities have tended to enroll fewer black and Hispanic
freshmen.
OPEN Interactive Graphic
In earlier cases, including one from June concerning the University of Texas
, the court has said that race-conscious admissions policies can be
constitutionally permissible in states that wish to use them. The new
decision concerned the question of whether and how voters may prohibit
affirmative action programs.
The vote in the case, Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, No
. 12-682, was 6-2. Justice Elena Kagan recused herself, presumably because
she had worked on the case as United States solicitor general.
The Michigan initiative, known as Proposal 2, was a response to Grutter v.
Bollinger, a 2003 Supreme Court decision that upheld the use of race as one
factor among many in law school admissions to ensure educational diversity.
Proposal 2, approved in 2006 by 58 percent of Michigan’s voters, amended
the state Constitution to prohibit discrimination or preferential treatment
in public education, government contracting and public employment. Groups
favoring affirmative action sued to block the part of the law concerning
higher education.
In 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in
Cincinnati, ruled by a vote of 8 to 7 that the initiative violated the
federal Constitution’s equal protection clause. The appeals court majority
said the problem with the law was that it restructured the state’s
political process by making it harder for disfavored minorities to press for
change.
In both 1969 and 1982 the Supreme Court struck down measures disfavoring
minorities on the grounds that they unfairly restructured the political
process. Those precedents figured prominently in the majority opinion from
the appeals court.
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Recent Comments
mikenh
36 minutes ago
This ruling is a good start for leveling the playing field at our nation's
colleges.Now if we can find a way to overturn the practice of...
Vizitei Yuri
36 minutes ago
What I read in the comments on the article is a lot of grandstanding and
rhetoric. The judgment was in the issue of a state having a right...
Chantel
37 minutes ago
States who want the feds out of the way on this or any other issue need to
remove themselves entirely from the federal dole.
See All Comments
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“A student seeking to have her family’s alumni connections considered in
her application to one of Michigan’s esteemed public universities could do
one of four things to have the school adopt a legacy-conscious admissions
policy: she could lobby the admissions committee, she could petition the
leadership of the university, she could seek to influence the school’s
governing board, or, as a measure of last resort, she could initiate a
statewide campaign to alter the state’s Constitution,” Judge R. Guy Cole
Jr. wrote for the majority.
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“The same cannot be said,” Judge Cole added, “for a black student seeking
the adoption of a constitutionally permissible race-conscious admissions
policy. That student could do only one thing to effect change: she could
attempt to amend the Michigan Constitution — a lengthy, expensive and
arduous process — to repeal the consequences of Proposal 2.”
A dissenting member of the appeals court, Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton, wrote
that the majority had it backward. “A state does not deny equal treatment
by mandating it,” he said. The majority opinion, he added, “transforms a
potential virtue of affirmative action into a vice.”
“If there is one feature of affirmative action programs that favors their
constitutionality,” he said, “it is that they grow out of the democratic
process.”
The appeals court’s decision divided along partisan lines. The eight judges
in the majority were all nominated by Democratic presidents, and the seven
judges in dissent were all nominated by Republican presidents. (Judge Helene
N. White, who was in the majority, was initially nominated by President
Bill Clinton and was later renominated by President George W. Bush as part
of a compromise involving several nominations.)
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco,
upheld California’s ban on racial preferences in 1997, saying it “would be
paradoxical” to rule otherwise. The court reaffirmed that ruling in 2010. |
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