Politics

Updated: Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Affirmative Action at Michigan Universities

April 22, 2014, 10:20 AM

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Supreme Court Building

Updated: Tuesday, 4:10 p.m.  -- Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette applauded the decision.

“The U.S. Supreme Court made the right call today,” he said, according to a report in the Detroit Free Press.  “Our state constitution requires equal treatment in college admissions, because it is fundamentally wrong to treat people differently based on the color of their skin. A majority of Michigan voters embraced the ideal of equal treatment in 2006, and today their decision was affirmed.”

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The U.S. Supreme Court today tackled the touchy subject of race, and the reaction is bound to be mixed.

Greg Stohr of Bloomberg News reports that the court voted 6-2 today to uphold a voter-approved ban on racial preferences at Michigan's state universities.

Bloomberg reported that a  federal appeals court had said Michigan unconstitutionally stripped racial minorities of their rights.  

“Democracy does not presume that some subjects are either too divisive or too profound for public debate,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the court’s lead opinion.

Bloomberg wrote:

The ruling has both symbolic and substantive significance. A decade ago, the University of Michigan won a Supreme Court decision that let institutions across the country continue to use race as an admissions factor. The survival of the voter-approved initiative means that ruling is nullified for the very university that secured it.

Black enrollment is down about 30 percent at the undergraduate and law schools since the measure took effect, according to the university’s figures.

 

 

-- A.L.

More to come.


 


Read more:  Bloomberg News


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