ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, July 2, 1996 TAG: 9607020075
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
NOTE: below
The Supreme Court rejected a bid by the University of Texas to use race as a factor in judging law-school applicants Monday, leaving a cloud of doubt over similar affirmative action programs at state-run colleges nationwide.
``It does prolong the national confusion about the current status of the law,'' said Harvard law Professor Laurence Tribe, who had filed Texas' high court appeal.
The Supreme Court, Tribe said, found it ``a lot easier just to duck.''
The justices, closing out their 1995-96 term, left in force a federal appeals court ruling that directly threatens all affirmative action programs at public universities in three Southern states.
The lower court ruled that the University of Texas Law School's former affirmative-action admissions plan to boost enrollment of blacks and Mexican-Americans amounted to unlawful bias against whites.
The appeals court ruling remains binding for Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, and could influence other courts confronted with similar disputes.
In a possible explanation of Monday's denial of review, two justices said the Texas case was not a proper vehicle for ``an issue of great national importance'' because it focused on a program no longer in use.
``We must await a final judgment on a program genuinely in controversy,'' Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for herself and Justice David H. Souter.
The Clinton administration had backed Texas' appeal, and White House spokesman Mike McCurry said the court left open the door to future consideration of affirmative action's role in higher education.
Theodore Shaw of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund said Ginsburg's opinion ``makes clear that the court is not endorsing the appeals court's radical view and that affirmative action, while still under siege, is alive.''
Shaw said he did not expect another such case to reach the high court soon but added, ``What we do know is that the opponents of affirmative action are not going away.''
Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson blasted the high court as ``extreme'' for not striking down the appeals court ruling. ``This is another example of how the black robes are rolling back the gains made by African-Americans and other minorities this century,'' Jackson said.
University of Texas President Robert Berdahl said some definitive word from the Supreme Court ``would have certainly given much more clarity to where we are, ... given us a better sense of what we do next.'' O{ILLUSTRATION} PHOTO: AP. David Rogers is one of four white would-be law students who successfully challenged the University of Texas law school's 1992 admission's policy as discriminatory against whites.
LENGTH: Medium: 58 linesby CNB