By
The Associated Press
DETROIT - The University of Michigan law school's admissions standards are unconstitutional because they use race as a factor in judging applicants, a federal judge ruled yesterday.
U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman, in a written ruling released yesterday, granted the plaintiff's request for an injunction and ordered the law school to stop using race.
"There is no question about the long and tragic history of race discrimination in this country," Friedman wrote in his ruling. However, he said, the law school's justification for using race to assemble a racially diverse student population is not a compelling state interest.
Even if it was in the state interest, the law school has not narrowly tailored its use of race to achieve that interest.
Friedman heard more than 64 hours of testimony. His job was to determine whether affirmative action is needed to offset biases that minority students face, whether the law school uses a double standard to admit minorities, and to what extent Michigan uses race when making admissions decisions.
At the end of last year, another federal judge ruled the university's undergraduate admissions policy, which also takes race into account, is constitutional.
The suit against the law school was brought by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Individual Rights, on behalf of Barbara Grutter, who claimed that she was denied admission in 1997 because less-qualified minorities get preferential treatment.
The center, a conservative legal group, brought down affirmative action at the University of Texas law school in 1996. The Texas school, like Michigan, argued that race-conscious admissions foster diversity. But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that while schools can consider an applicant's economic and social background, race cannot be taken into account.
The Supreme Court chose not to hear the Texas case because the school had already decided to end affirmative action.
Grutter claimed the school's admission policies are unconstitutional. As a white applicant, she said the law school discriminated against her while accepting minority students with lower test scores and grade-point averages.
University attorney John Payton has said the law school has one set of standards and a policy that is compliant with California's Bakke case of 1978, in which the Supreme Court allowed consideration of race in university admissions but outlawed racial quotas.
A university spokeswoman said she was waiting to read Friedman's ruling before commenting.
