Jennifer Gratz, who sued the University of Michigan in 1997 alleging racial discrimination, celebrates last week’s Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action in a Detroit Free Press opinion column.
Jennifer Gratz
In issuing their ruling Monday, the Supreme Court justices sent the Texas case back to a lower court for further review. The high court affirmed that universities can use race in the admissions process to attain diversity but said they only can do so after showing that race-neutral measures would not produce the desired educational and social benefits of diversity.
Gratz’s own case was one-half a landmark 2003 Supreme Court ruling. Justices ruled 6-3 in her favor, forcing the University of Michigan to scrap a point-based admissions system that gave an advantage to minorities. But the court also ruled the same day, in the case of Grutter vs. Bollinger, the goal of achieving diversity could justify some use of racial preferences.
In her column, Gratz contends that the University of Michigan has admitted “it can achieve a diverse student body without resorting to race-preference policies and, therefore, cannot meet the strict standards outlined by the court.”