April 2013
It has been a
decade since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the University of Michigan’s
discriminatory admissions policies. By a 5-4 vote, the justices ruled in Grutter
v. Bollinger that the Constitution permitted public universities to employ
racial preferences in order to realize "the educational benefits that flow from
a diverse student body." In an unusual footnote, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor
suggested that the decision had an expiration date: "We expect that 25 years
from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary."
Michigan voters
didn’t want to wait. In November 2006, by a 58% majority, they approved Proposal
2, a ballot measure prohibiting state and local government agencies from
discriminating on the basis of race (or sex, color, ethnicity or national
origin).
A plaintiff
group with an unwieldy and Orwellian name—the Coalition to Defend Affirmative
Action, Integration and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality by Any Means
Necessary—sued. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the coalition,
holding in July 2011 that Proposal 2, as applied to higher education, violated
the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. On Monday the Supreme Court
announced that it will hear the state’s appeal.
If the appellate-court decision sounds strange to you, you’re not alone. How could
an antidiscrimination law violate equal protection? How could it be
unconstitutional to repeal a regime of racial preferences that barely passed
constitutional muster in 2003? The answer lies in a deft, though probably
futile, display of judicial gymnastics by Democratic appointees on the Sixth
Circuit.
Judge R. Guy
Cole, who wrote the circuit court’s decision, didn’t claim that the Constitution
required Michigan’s public universities to discriminate in favor of minorities.
Instead, he held that the procedure by which preferences had been abolished—a
ballot initiative amending the state constitution—had stacked the deck against
minority voters. His argument relied on a pair of decades-old Supreme Court
precedents.
The first,
Hunter v. Erickson (1969), struck down an Akron, Ohio, ballot measure that
repealed a municipal fair-housing ordinance and required a voter referendum on
any future laws of a similar nature. Justice Byron White wrote for an 8-1
majority that the measure created an invidious distinction "between those groups
who sought the law’s protection against racial, religious, or ancestral
discriminations in the sale and rental of real estate and those who sought to
regulate real property transactions in the pursuit of other ends."
The analogy
with the Michigan case was certainly imprecise. Whereas the Akron initiative
repealed an antidiscrimination law, Proposal 2 was an antidiscrimination law.
But Judge Cole’s second precedent, Washington v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1
(1982), was more similar to the Michigan case.
Seattle had
voluntarily established a forced-busing program to encourage integration in its
public schools. In response, voters passed Initiative 350, outlawing busing
statewide. Even though the initiative had done away with a system of racial
distinction, a 5-4 Supreme Court majority held that it impermissibly burdened
minorities, the putative beneficiaries of busing. (Seattle continued using
racial preferences in public-school assignments until 2007, when the Supreme
Court ordered it to stop.)
To fit Proposal
2 into the legal framework of Hunter and Seattle, the Sixth Circuit judges had
to establish, as Judge Cole wrote, that it "has a ‘racial focus,’ because
the Michigan
universities’ affirmative-action programs ‘inure primarily to the benefit of the
minority, and [are] designed for that purpose.’ "
But that
contradicts the key factual underpinning of Grutter. Justice O’Connor asserted
that in order to "assemble a class … that is broadly diverse" and obtain
"the educational benefits that diversity is designed to produce," the university
had sought to "enroll a ‘critical mass’ of minority students." Had the goal been
to increase minority representation for its own sake, she averred, that would be
"outright racial balancing, which is patently unconstitutional."
The Supreme
Court won’t hear the current Michigan case (now known as Schuette v. Coalition
to Defend) until the fall, by which time Grutter may no longer be good law. That
is because the justices have heard oral arguments in another racial-preference
case, Fisher v. University of Texas, and a decision is expected by June.
As is typical,
the result will likely hinge on Justice Anthony Kennedy. He strongly dissented
in Grutter, arguing that the majority had "abandoned or manipulated" its
standard of "strict scrutiny" in order to uphold racial preferences. But he also
agreed in principle that a university "may take account of race as one,
nonpredominant factor" if its "considered judgment that racial diversity among
students can further its educational task" is "supported by empirical evidence."
If Justice
Kennedy adheres to that position in Fisher, the door will remain at least ajar
for racial preferences. But in that event, Schuette will soon after provide an
opportunity to revisit Grutter, with the Sixth Circuit having clearly
established that Justice Kennedy’s dissent was fully justified. The University
of Michigan’s racial preferences would then come to an end, some 15 years ahead
of schedule by Justice O’Connor’s watch.
Mr. Taranto, a member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, writes the Best of the Web Today column for WSJ.com.
Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2013.
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