Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action extends ban to private colleges in Michigan

The latest U.S. Supreme Court ruling sharply curtailing the use of race as a factor in college student admissions is likely to impact Michigan's private institutions more dramatically than public ones, according to university administrators and legal experts.

The Supreme Court on Thursday invalidated race-conscious admissions policies used by Harvard College and the University of North Carolina to diversify their campuses, a decision with enormous consequences not only for higher education but also the American workplace.

In a 6-3 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts and decided along ideological lines, the court held that the policies violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The vote was 6-2 in the Harvard case because Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, as expected, recused herself because of her relationship with the college.

Supporters of the decisions pointed out that under the rulings, race can still be "considered" in limited ways in the future by a college or university in its goal to achieve a diverse student body. All such admission programs going forward must have a specific, quantifiable goal and endpoint and that any prospective student's race can never constitute a negative factor toward admission.

But detractors viewed the pair of rulings as amounting to the end of affirmative action in college admissions, bound to reduce the number of students of color on campuses, especially at some of the nation's most academically selective.

The ruling is seen as not having much of a direct impact on public institutions in Michigan. The University of Michigan, for example, already scrapped its affirmative action program because of an earlier state ban in Michigan on public universities upheld by the courts.

In the earlier court fight, the University of Michigan in June 2003 won a lawsuit over its law school’s race-conscious admissions policies. But Michigan voters three years later adopted Proposal 2, banning the state's public institutions from giving preferential treatment based on race. The high court eventually let that state ban stand. As a result, Ann Arbor-based university eliminated its affirmative action program for admissions and saw a subsequent drop in Black undergraduate enrollment.

Now, private colleges in Michigan will have to abide by the same restriction. Kristine Bowman, both a professor of law and education policy at Michigan State University, said that the ruling will "extend the ban on race-conscious admissions to Michigan’s 41 private institutions of higher education."

Advocates for diversity of campuses worried about the impact.

About 26% of Black Michiganders have attained a postsecondary degree, compared with 43.5% of white Michiganders, according to state data. Danielle North, founder of Degree Forward, an organization that connects working adults with degree programs, said those numbers signify a “serious equity issue” in the state.

“Affirmative action was really put in place to hold higher education institutions accountable,” she said. “To ensure that they have systems in place that support minorities and their ability to, you know, have a fair chance at a college degree.”

Students for Fair Admissions, an anti-affirmative action group founded by conservative legal strategist Edward Blum, filed the suits, claiming the universities' policies discriminated against white and Asian applicants.

“The opinion issued today by the United States Supreme Court marks the beginning of the restoration of the colorblind legal covenant that binds together our multiracial, multiethnic nation," Blum said in Washington on Thursday.

Hillsdale College calls the practice of considering race in admissions "degrading" and "dehumanizing."

"Hillsdale College found a simple solution to affirmative action 178 years ago: not discriminating against its students and instead valuing the merit of each individual. Hillsdale has never submitted to the degrading practice of counting students by race and, since its founding in 1844, it has admitted students of any color, sex, race, or creed," said spokesperson Emily Stack Davis, in a statement.

Davis pointed to the college's founding documents and its 1993 "Aims statement," which says. "The College values the merit of each unique individual, rather than succumbing to the dehumanizing, discriminatory trend of so-called “social justice” and “multicultural diversity,” which judges individuals not as individuals, but as members of a group and which pits one group against other competing groups in divisive power struggles."

A spokesperson for the University of Detroit Mercy said in a statement that school officials are reviewing the ruling but that it "does not use race as a factor in admissions."

The statement went on to say, "UDM remains committed to inclusivity and diversity as part of fulfilling our Catholic, Jesuit and Mercy mission by bringing together talented students with different perspectives and rich life experiences through our holistic admissions process."

Nothing new for public universities

Leaders at U-M said that while they did not foresee a direct impact of the decision, they were nevertheless "deeply disheartened."

"We remain firmly convinced that racial diversity is one of the many important components of a broadly diverse student body and an intellectually and culturally rich campus community," U-M President Santa Ono and Provost Laurie McCauley said in a joint letter emailed to the university community on Thursday

More: Supreme Court decision narrows affirmative action at colleges: What it means in Michigan

In the nearly 20 years since the Michigan state ban took effective, U-M leaders said they tried to compensate by "significant commitments to practices, policies and procedures focused on race-neutral factors" to help keep their campus' population diverse.

But the university leaders also acknowledged that the state ban known as "Proposal 2 had disproportionate, negative impacts on the most underrepresented communities; race-neutral policies have been much less successful in significantly increasing enrollments of Black and Native American students."

"In the face of these challenges, we persist," Ono and McCauley wrote.

Officials at MSU in East Lansing said after the ruling that they did not expect a change to the way the university tries to attract students from different backgrounds.

"We are carefully reviewing the ruling, but believe the decision by the court will not change our approach to recruiting and retaining a broad and diverse student body and creating opportunities for all students. MSU values diversity and inclusion," MSU vice president and spokesperson Emily Gerkin Guerrant said in a statement.

Guerrant added that "this academic year, we had our largest and one of our most diverse classes of first-year students, and we are building on that progress alongside our campus partners.”

At Wayne State University in Detroit, spokesman Matt Lockwood wrote that "our institution has worked hard within the law to ensure access and opportunity to deserving students from underserved backgrounds since 2006 when the state of Michigan banned the use of race in admissions. This has made Wayne State a leader in social mobility, which benefits our students, our graduates, and our state."

'Holistic admissions'

Experts warned that the struggles felt by Michigan colleges to promote diversity while complying with the race-conscious ban could soon be seen across the country.

"The lack of student body diversity will undermine both the quality of education and career preparedness for all students, given that research overwhelmingly shows that student diversity, including racial diversity, significantly improves the learning environment and helps all students prepare for a culturally diverse workforce and society," said Evan Caminker, who teaches constitutional law at U-M.

Others said the ruling from the conservative-majority court had long been expected by campuses.

"Admissions offices have been planning for a Supreme Court decision, and they will have to adapt their practices to be consistent with the law," said Michael Bastedo, U-M associate dean of research and graduate studies who is an expert on public higher education and college admissions. "They have several options, but none of them will be as good as race-conscious admissions in terms of maintaining a diverse enrollment of students of color."

He added though that "there are some options that schools can pursue. One of them is to embrace the contextualized nature of the holistic review. That means not just reading the whole application, not just treating the applicant as a whole person. It means ensuring that you contextualize every applicant in the opportunities available in their high school, neighborhood and family."

Patricia Marin, an MSU associate professor who researches race-conscious admissions policies, said it’s important for students to know that this does not bar them from sharing their story, or how their identity has shaped them, in college essays and applications.

“Holistic admissions has been a critical part of the work of so many admissions offices and officers,” she said. “A student's essay will continue to be a critical part of a student's application and the impact that their identity or identities have had on their life.”

Marin added that it will be “critical” for admissions programs to work with legal experts to understand how Thursday’s decision might impact practices and before offices shut down certain initiatives.

“Institutions need to not wholesale abandon any consideration of race, because it's not what the opinion says,” she said. “It's in a particular way the court is asking race not to be considered. But it's not saying it can be not taken into account at all. Because if that were the case, then we'd be talking about having to redact essays, having to tell students not to write essays about certain topics, having to not say that you were a part of running the Asian student union or the Black Student league.”

'I already have enough battles'

Supporters of race-conscious policies in Michigan nevertheless blasted the ruling as a setback.

"For hundreds of years our nation explicitly made race the excuse for harms levied upon people of color,” John Johnson Jr., executive director of the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, said in a statement. “The Supreme Court decision trivializes the reality that much of the progress made over the last 60 years was due to programs that directly addressed our racial legacy. This ruling will damage the intellectual growth of future generations by robbing universities of the ability to guarantee an environment of robust diversity.”

Onjila Odeneal, senior director of policy and advocacy for The Institute of College Access & Success, has long worked in higher education access and affordability in Michigan. She also was once a high school student herself in Detroit at the now-closed Crockett Vocational and Technical Center in 2001, when the political tide began to turn against race-conscious admissions in the courts.

“It was kind of like, I already know that I'm going to have challenges being a Black student,” she said. “I already have enough battles, and I don't need another layer of battles to have to worry about in navigating going to school.”

It’s crucial that institutions still work toward making higher education accessible and equitable to students in marginalized communities, she said, making sure students have the resources to be successful in higher education. The decision Thursday, she said, could discourage prospective students, so it’s also important that institutions create a sense of belonging on college campuses, especially in the wake of this decision.

“We already have our own battles as students and being Black students in respective spaces. … To then add the stigma on top of it, it just feels like a lot to bear,” she said.

Rising Voices, an Asian American activist group in Detroit, condemned the Supreme Court’s ruling, saying that Asian Americans were used “as pawns” by a conservative group to overturn affirmative action.

“The two cases brought before the Supreme Court were cherry-picked by a right-wing conservative group peddling white supremacist ideology wanting to use Asian Americans as pawns and drive a wedge by pitting Asian Americans against other communities of color,”  Jasmine Rivera, co-executive director of Rising Voices, said in a statement Thursday. “We wholeheartedly reject the harmful narrative that Asian Americans at large oppose affirmative action.”

There are about 405,000 residents of Asian descent in Michigan, making up 4% of the state's population, with high concentrations in Novi, Troy, Hamtramck, Farmington Hills, Okemos and Canton, according to 2020 census data. Some Asian Americans have opposed race-conscious admissions policies, saying it harms their chances at getting admitted into colleges. But others in the Asian American community support affirmative action, saying they are hurt more by other university admissions policies that tend to favor whites such as legacy admissions and special preferences for athletes.

“We firmly believe affirmative action is an important tool necessary to combat systemic racism in education,” Rivera said. “It is needed to ensure diversity and equitable access in higher education for Black, Latinx, Indigenous, AAPI, and other historically marginalized student groups. The potential impact will undoubtedly be less diverse student bodies at colleges and universities in the years to come and cascade into a less diverse workforce, business leaders, and elected officials.”

Rivera added that her group calls upon “all colleges and universities to actively support efforts to ensure racial justice in all aspects of student and campus life.”

Free Press staff writers Todd Spangler, Niraj Warikoo, Madeline Beck and USA Today contributed to this article.

Contact Matthew Dolan: 313-223-4743 or msdolan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @matthewsdolan

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan universities react to Supreme Court affirmative action ruling