Court to consider Mich. affirmative action ban
LANSING, Mich. - LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan's ban against racial preferences in public university admissions and government hiring will be put to the test in a federal appeals court three years after voters had their say.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati is scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday on the legality of the constitutional amendment that passed with 58 percent of the vote in 2006.
Civil rights groups along with University of Michigan students, faculty and applicants sued in late 2006, saying the anti-affirmative action measure discriminates against minorities by permitting many other non-academic factors besides race.
In order to once again allow race to be a factor in admissions, there would have to be a statewide voter initiative to change the constitution. But other admissions policy changes — those from a particular geographic location or legacy groups, for example — can be pursued through university governing boards or officials.
"That's a racial gerrymandering of the political process," Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said Monday.
U.S. District Judge David Lawson dismissed the lawsuit in 2008. He said while the measure passed in 2006 may harm minorities, its only purpose is not to discriminate against minorities.
State Attorney General Mike Cox, whose office is defending the law, said voters spoke "loud and clear."
"I am confident the court will again reject this attempt by activists to overturn the will of the people," he said in a statement.
The law may have most greatly affected the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The university previously considered race as a factor in admissions, a policy challenged in the 1990s.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 upheld a general affirmative action admissions policy at the university's law school. The high court also struck down the school's undergraduate formula as too rigid because it awarded admission points based on race.
Rosenbaum said there is a mistaken belief that the ballot initiative only banned affirmative action programs that awarded extra points to minorities. Those programs already were unconstitutional, he said. The constitutional amendment went further and banned programs that had been OK'd by the Supreme Court, Rosenbaum said.
California businessman Ward Connerly successfully led the ballot drive for the ban approved in Michigan, as well as others in California, Washington and Nebraska. Colorado voters rejected a ban on affirmative action a year ago, while proposed bans did not reach the ballot in Arizona, Missouri and Oklahoma.
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