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| FILE - This Sept. 19, 2013 file photo shows Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor speaking at the University of Delaware in Newark, Del. The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld Michigan's ban on using race as a factor in college admissions. The justices said in a 6-2 ruling that Michigan voters had the right to change their state constitution to prohibit public colleges and universities from taking account of race in admissions decisions. The justices said that a lower federal court was wrong to set aside the change as discriminatory. In dissent, Sotomayor said the decision tramples on the rights of minorities, even though the amendment was adopted democratically. “But without checks, democratically approved legislation can oppress minority groups,” said Sotomayor, who read her dissent aloud in the courtroom Tuesday. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- A state's voters are free to outlaw the use of race as a factor
in college admissions, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in a blow to
affirmative action that also laid bare tensions among the justices about
a continuing need for programs that address racial inequality in
America.
The 6-2 decision upheld a
voter-approved change to the Michigan Constitution that forbids the
state's public colleges to take race into account. That change was
indeed up to the voters, the ruling said, over one justice's impassioned
dissent that accused the court of simply wanting to wish away
inequality.
The ruling bolsters similar
voter-approved initiatives banning affirmative action in education in
California and Washington state. A few other states have adopted laws or
issued executive orders to bar race-conscious admissions policies.
Justice
Anthony Kennedy said voters in Michigan chose to eliminate racial
preferences, presumably because such a system could give rise to
race-based resentment. Kennedy said nothing in the Constitution or the
court's prior cases gives judges the authority to undermine the election
results.
"This case is not about how the
debate about racial preferences should be resolved. It is about who may
resolve it," Kennedy said.
He stressed that
the court was not disturbing the holding of a 2003 case from Michigan
-which gave rise to the 2006 Constitution change - permitting the
consideration of race in admissions. A Texas affirmative action case
decided in June also did nothing to undermine that principle, Kennedy
said.
In a separate opinion siding with
Kennedy, Justice Antonin Scalia said Michigan residents favored a
colorblind constitution and "it would be shameful for us to stand in
their way."
Strongly dissenting from the
majority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the decision trampled on the
rights of minorities, even though the Michigan amendment was adopted
democratically.
"But without checks,
democratically approved legislation can oppress minority groups," said
Sotomayor, who read her dissent aloud in the courtroom Tuesday. Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg sided with Sotomayor.
Michigan
voters "changed the basic rules of the political process in that state
in a manner that uniquely disadvantaged racial minorities," Sotomayor
said.
Judges "ought not sit back and wish
away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our
society," she said. She is one of two justices, along with Clarence
Thomas, who have acknowledged that affirmative action was a factor in
their college and law school admissions. Sotomayor attended Princeton
University and Thomas is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross.
They both attended law school at Yale University.
Thomas is a staunch
opponent of racial preferences.
At 58 pages, Sotomayor's dissent was longer than the combined length of the four opinions in support of the outcome.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, Scalia and Thomas agreed with Kennedy.
Responding
to Sotomayor, Roberts said it "does more harm than good to question the
openness and candor of those on either side of the debate."
Justice
Elena Kagan did not take part in the case, presumably because she
worked on it at an earlier stage while serving in the Justice
Department.
University of Notre Dame law
professor Jennifer Mason McAward said the opinions by five justices
point "to a much more nuanced and heated debate among the justices
regarding the permissibility and wisdom of racial preferences in
general."
In 2003, the Supreme Court upheld the consideration of race among many factors in college admissions in a case from Michigan.
Three
years later, affirmative action opponents persuaded Michigan voters to
change the state constitution to outlaw any consideration of race.
The
6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the issue was not affirmative
action, but the way in which its opponents went about trying to bar it.
In
its 8-7 decision, the appeals court said the provision ran afoul of the
Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment
because it presented an extraordinary burden to affirmative action
supporters who would have to mount their own campaign to repeal the
constitutional provision. The Supreme Court said the appeals court
judges were wrong to set aside the change as discriminatory.
But
Sotomayor took up their line of reasoning in her dissent. She said
University of Michigan alumni are free to lobby the state Board of
Regents to admit more alumni children, but that the regents now are
powerless to do anything about race-sensitive admissions.
Breyer
parted company with other liberal justices Sotomayor and Ginsburg,
voting to uphold the Michigan ban because it effectively took power from
faculty members at the state colleges and gave it to the voters,
"from
an unelected administrative body to a politically responsive one."
Unlike the conservative justices whom he joined Tuesday, Breyer said he
continues to favor "race-conscious programs" in education.
Black
and Latino enrollment at the University of Michigan has dropped since
the ban took effect. At California's top public universities,
African-Americans are a smaller share of incoming freshmen, while Latino
enrollment is up slightly, but far below the state's growth in the
percentage of Latino high school graduates.
The
case was the court's second involving affirmative action in as many
years. Last June, the justices ordered lower courts to take another look
at the University of Texas admissions plan in a ruling that could make
it harder for public colleges to justify any use of race in admissions.
Tuesday's case is Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, 12-682.
