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View Full Version : Fed. Court Overturns MI Ban On Considering Race or Gender In College and Uni. Admissions




Zatch
07-01-2011, 11:57 AM
Unbelievable :eek:




Court strikes down Michigan ban on race in college admissions

Jennifer Chambers and Oralandar Brand-Williams/ The Detroit News

Detroit— Michigan's ban on using race and gender as a factor in admission to public colleges and universities was overturned today by a federal appeals court, which said the voter-approved measure harms minorities and is unconstitutional.
The 2-1 decision struck down Proposal 2, the 2006 law that had forced the University of Michigan and other state schools to revise their admission policies. The judges ruled that the law violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
The court in particular objected to the inclusion of the voter-approved ban in the Michigan Constitution in its 59-page ruling.
"Proposal 2 reorders the political process in Michigan to place special burdens on minority interests," judges R. Guy Cole Jr. and Martha Craig Daughtrey said.
The ban, passed with 58 percent of the vote nearly five years ago, affected government hiring as well as college admissions.
In 2008, a federal judge in Detroit upheld the law, saying it was race-neutral.
George Washington, the chief attorney for the law's opponents, applauded the decision today.
"It's a great victory. It means affirmative action is legal again in college admissions. It means that thousands of talented black, Latino and Native Americans can go to our public universities," Washington said...


[Article Continues - Read Here] (http://www.detnews.com/article/20110701/SCHOOLS/107010416/1409/METRO/Court-strikes-down-Michigan-ban-on-race-in-college-admissions)

TCE
07-01-2011, 12:45 PM
I'm glad. Now all of the unqualified minorities get in ahead of their overqualified white/asian counterparts. And as an added bonus, the people of Michigan are forced to have their tax dollars funding the whole thing. Fantastic.

Superfly
07-01-2011, 12:48 PM
I'm glad. Now all of the unqualified minorities get in ahead of their overqualified white/asian counterparts. And as an added bonus, the people of Michigan are forced to have their tax dollars funding the whole thing. Fantastic.

Sounds like a win-win for all parties involved!

TCE
07-01-2011, 12:59 PM
More seriously, though. Even if we put aside the forced taxation issue where citizens of Michigan are forced to pay for a school their kids may not even go to, it is still a dangerous precedent on many levels.

1. States rights. I suspect this law was a response to the U.S. Supreme Court case Grutter v. Bollinger (http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2002/2002_02_241/) where an overqualified white student was denied admission to the law school because there was a system setup to reward minorities. The state responded by implementing this law which banned the practice of rewarding people based on skin color. This Federal court is essentially stating that it doesn't matter if the people of Michigan pay for the school or what the state wants, the federal government says the school has to be racist. Don't like it? Sucks for you.

2. Reverse racism. Supposedly, we are a post-racial society that has moved beyond race. If they truly wanted to be fair, don't even include the race criteria on the application and judge everyone by their GPA, ACT, class rank, letters of recommendation, etc. Now white/Asian students are punished just because they are born white or Asian. I am failing to see the fairness.

3. It's a Public University. If this were a private school, property rights matter. The head of the school then has every right to deny admission to anyone they want, but The University of Michigan is a public school. Why are Michigan's own residents being discriminated against (as in Grutte v. Bollinger)?

It's a mess, but of course all of those on the Left and the big government folks will decry this as a victory for minorities.

Acala
07-01-2011, 01:10 PM
Interesting. I am not up on all the law in this area, but this seems to take matters a big step towards more institutionalized racism. Afirmative Action was not, previously, a court ordered program. It was a voluntary program cooked up by legislatures and schools. It was challengerd on equal protection grounds and found to be not a violation of equal protection where there was a history of racism in the particular area. In other words the court said it is sometimes allowed. This court seems to be saying it is sometimes required. Big step. But a great idea if the goal is to continue to factionalize the public.