<p>Michigan's voter-approved law was today declared unconstitutional:</p>
<p>Mich</a>. ban on race in college admissions illegal - USATODAY.com</p>
<p>Excerpt:</p>
<p>"It's a tremendous victory," Detroit lawyer George Washington said shortly after a U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled in a 2-1 decision that Proposal 2 was unconstitutional.</p>
<p>"Affirmative action is now legal in college admissions in Michigan and that means thousands of black, Latin and native American students who would have been excluded from our best undergraduate and graduate programs will now be admitted," Washington said.</p>
<p>“Affirmative action is now legal in college admissions in Michigan and that means thousands of black, Latin and native American students who would have been “excluded” from our best undergraduate and graduate programs will now be admitted,” </p>
<p>insulting, ironic, and full of logical fallacies</p>
<p>i want to see this happen in sports too (not really)</p>
<p>Interesting. I certainly hope it has a positive effect.</p>
<p>I think the issue here is that the measure had been voter-approved, while this is merely a court decision. However, I don’t know anything about Michigan’s state constitution, so I can’t speak on whether or not the ruling was correct.</p>
<p>Cue self-righteous 18 y/os thinking that they can marginalize and insult a group of people with differing reasons for objecting to a controversial court decision.</p>
<p>The half-life of the decision is two years.</p>
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<p>You don’t need to know anything about Michigan’s state constitution. The decision was by a federal court of appeals and was based on the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.</p>
<p>It’s a clever argument, based on a couple of U.S. Supreme Court precedents striking down local laws aimed at making it uniquely difficult to enact fair housing laws in Akron, OH, and desegregation by busing in Seattle. In those cases the Supreme Court said the challenged laws, while facially neutral, had a “racial focus” (insofar as they erected unique barriers to policies with some racial aspect, but not to other kinds of policies), and they “restructured the political process” in a way that operated to disadvantage racial minorities. And that combination, the Supreme Court said, violated 14th Amendment Equal Protection. </p>
<p>Same here, the 6th Circuit panel said. Admissions committees can restructure their admissions policies in any way they want, within constitutional limts; but the one thing they’re forbidden from doing in Michigan is considering race in any way, shape or form, even if it’s in ways the U.S. Supreme Court has said are constitutionally permissible. But the 6th Circuit said the law—actually the state constitutional amendment—that put that restriction in place has a “racial focus” insofar as it concerns race but not other kinds of factors; and it “restructures the political process” in a way that systematically disadvantages minorities by stripping the state’s public universities of power to adopt race-conscious admissions policies, thereby erecting unique barriers to racial minorities’ ability to seek changes in admissions policies that would be beneficial to them. So, for example, gays & lesbians could argue for affirmative action and there would presumably be nothing to stop the state universities from adopting those policies, within (federal) constitutional limits. Or rural residents could argue for affirmative action for themselves, and the universities could adopt such policies within federal constitutional limits. And so on. But it’s only racially identifiable groups who operate under the special handicap of needing to enact a change in the state constitution in order to secure changes in university admission policies that benefit their group. And that, the 6th Circuit says, violates Equal Protection.</p>
<p>Interesting argument. Not sure it would stand up if it ever gets to the U.S. Supreme Court; that sounds like a probable 5-4 loser on the current court. But I’m not sure the Supreme Court is going to want to reach out and take this case.</p>
<p>bclintock: Thanks for the analysis of the ruling. It is informative posts like yours that keep me reading CC!</p>