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U-M attorneys say 6th Circuit Court of Appeals got it rightThe University will ask the Supreme Court not to hear the Law School affirmative action case when the U-M legal team files a brief next month, attorney Maureen Mahoney said during a forum to update the campus on two admissions lawsuits.
Mahoney, a partner with Latham &
Watkins, Washington D.C., and the newest
member of the University’s legal
team, was one of nine panelists speaking
before an audience of approximately 300
people in the Mendelssohn Theatre Sept.
18. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in May ruled in favor of U-M’s affirmative action policy in admissions to the Law School (Grutter v. Bollinger, et. al), reversing a lower court ruling and upholding the University’s position that it has a compelling interest in achieving a diverse student body. The court acknowledged the educational value of diversity. The 6th Circuit opinion said the admissions policy at the Law School complies with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1978 Bakke decision, which permits race to be taken into consideration in admissions as long as quotas are not used. A 6th Circuit Court ruling is yet to be issued on a second case involving undergraduate admissions process in LS&A (Gratz v. Bollinger et. al), but the University won that case in the lower court, which Mahoney said is another reason not to seek a Supreme Court ruling. “From our perspective, the Supreme Court already decided it 24 years ago in Bakke, and it doesn’t need to weigh in again at this point,” Mahoney said. The U-M legal team argues that the Supreme Court need not hear a case that has been settled at the circuit court level. Out of 13 circuit courts, three have heard similar cases and only one, in Texas, struck down a university’s affirmative action policies. The University’s decision to oppose certiorari, or the hearing of the case by the Supreme Court as petitioned by the plaintiffs, is contrary to the desires of the Student Intervenors, a group that joined the University’s lawsuits as representatives of the student body. “This is an issue … of great national importance,” said Miranda Massie, an attorney representing students in the Law School case. “ We think that even though there was a victory at the 6th Circuit, we cannot come out against the Supreme Court hearing this appeal,” she said. In addition to Mahoney and Massie, the forum to update the campus community on the lawsuits included panelists: Paul N. Courant, interim provost and executive vice president for academic affairs; Jeffrey S. Lehman, Law School dean; Monique Luse, president of the student government in LS&A; Geraldine Bledsoe Ford, past president of the U-M Alumni Association and retired justice of the Wayne County Circuit Court; John Payton, attorney with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and a member of the U-M legal team; and Ted Shaw, associate director and counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and attorney for the intervenors in Gratz v. Bollinger. U-M Vice President and General Counsel Marvin Krislov was the moderator for the panel. President Mary Sue Coleman gave opening remarks. She told the audience, “One advantage to being a newcomer is I can tell you firsthand that the whole nation is at stake.” The text of her remarks can be found on the University’s admissions lawsuit Web site: http://www.umich.edu/~urel/admissions/comments/. Panelists addressed the educational value of diversity and updated participants on developments that occurred over the summer break. Interim Provost Paul Courant cited some of the University’s research that proved diversity is good for education. “The variety of points of view,
academic and life experiences that diverse
populations afford, allow all of us to
see problems from different angles, which
is crucial to the educational process,”
Courant said. “The decision would mean that the
welcome mat at the door of higher education—not
only at the University of Michigan but
in the nation—would be pulled out
from under us,” she said. “The
loss would not just be in numbers [of
minority students] but in idealism.” More stories:
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