ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, May 25, 1996 TAG: 9605290032
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
The Clinton administration is urging the Supreme Court to let the University of Texas law school consider applicants' race in a key test of the future of affirmative action in higher education.
A lower court ruling that barred such use of race, if allowed to stand, would be a serious blow to efforts to wipe out the effects of past racial segregation, administration lawyers said Friday.
A landmark 1978 Supreme Court ruling let universities consider race among many factors in deciding which students to accept. But a federal appeals court ruled that the Texas law school could not take applicants' race into account in its effort to ensure student diversity.
The justices could decide by early July whether they will review the that ruling.
The Texas law school has a ``compelling educational interest in maintaining a racially diverse student body,'' administration lawyers said in a friend-of-the court brief.
``The practical effect of the court of appeals' holding will be to return the most prestigious institutions within state university systems to their former `white' status,'' and therefore prolong the effects of past segregation, Solicitor General Drew S. Days III wrote.
It is an ``undisputed matter of public record'' that blacks and Mexican-Americans were unlawfully segregated in Texas public schools as recently as the 1980s, Days said.
The Texas case calls into question the Supreme Court's 1978 ruling in the case of Allan Bakke, a white man denied admission to medical school at the University of California, Davis.
The high court's 5-4 decision in that case said the university could not have separate admission systems for whites and minorities, but could use race as one of many factors in deciding which students to accept.
The Texas law school's 1992 admission plan was challenged in court by four white applicants who had been denied admission.
The law school set lower test score standards for black and Mexican-American applicants and provided a separate review panel. It has since abandoned that in favor of a system using race as one of numerous factors in making admission decisions.
In March, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the 1992 plan violated the Bakke ruling. The appeals court also went further - it rejected the Bakke holding that race can be a factor in efforts to create a diverse student body.
Days wrote that if the 5th Circuit court's ruling is allowed to stand, it could eliminate all affirmative action admissions programs in higher education within the circuit. The 5th Circuit includes Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
The Bakke ruling said a diverse student body is a permissible goal, Days wrote, adding that including racial minorities is essential to achieving educational diversity.
``That view does not rest on impermissible racial stereotypes; it does not equate race with particular viewpoints; and it does not presume that all individuals of a particular race act or think alike,'' Days contended.
Instead, he said, it recognizes that minority students are likely to have had different life experiences because of their race.
Days said law schools cannot use rigid goals ``amounting to fixed quotas or set-asides.''
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