The US Supreme Court narrowly ruled on Monday to back a university’s right to use race as one of the factors it uses in its student admission policy.
Several white students who missed out on placements had sued the
University of Michigan’s law school for using an admissions formula
that gave some extra credit to ethnic minority students.
In the politically charged case, the highest US court ruled 5-4 that race may be considered as a factor in admissions, as long as the university does not use a quota system, which is illegal.
The victory for the university was only partial because the nine- court bench, in a second case, opposed the specific points system factoring in race that it used for undergraduate admissions.
President George Bush’s administration had sided with the plaintiffs in the case, which civil rights activists considered one of the most important court cases in decades. – Sapa-DPA