In a decision along the usual divides, today the Supreme Court ruled that Michigan's affirmative action ban on admissions to state-funded universities is upheld. ThinkProgress calls this "the latest ruling to effectively weaken affirmative action without killing it."
Just how dead is affirmative action now?
Below the loop-de-loop is some speculation.
Michigan came to its affirmative action ban through a carefully-nurtured ballot initiative. As a result of today's Supreme Court decision, now states can no longer base college admissions on racial profiling. The ban has already had an impact, says the ThinkProgress piece. "Between 2006 and 2012, black enrollment fell 30 percent at the University of Michigan’s undergraduate and law schools after the ban went into effect, according to Bloomberg report."
Michigan joins seven other states, California, Florida, Washington, Arizona, Nebraska, Oklahoma and New Hampshire, that have similar bans. Now, other states may seek to follow suit.
The Michigan ban has sparked much controversy. A 17-year-old applicant to the University of Michigan who was rejected is going to fight the ban, and the University is fighting back.
Her name is Brooke Kimbrough, 17-year-old University Preparatory Academy senior, who applied to the university with accomplishments including a 3.6 GPA, a score of 23/36 on the ACT standardized test and a national tournament win in late February, as part of her high school’s debate team. Having gone national for the second year in a row, Kimbrough and partner Rayvon Dean were the first African-Americans to win the University of California-Berkley tournament, winning 11 of 13 rounds and pushing their school to rank seventh in the United States.
snip....
The elite status of U-M as an intellectual powerhouse has not gone unnoticed, with many critics of Ms. Kimbrough stating that her academic prowess is below that of the typical freshman admitted to the University last year. The average freshmen on the campus earned a GPA of 3.8-3.9 and an ACT score of 28-32.
Supporters note that Kimbrough was a well-rounded student serving as president of her high school’s National Honor Society chapter and a participant in a youth leadership program at Alternatives for Girls, a Detroit non profit, in addition to her aforementioned accomplishments. U-M insists it possesses a comprehensive and holistic admissions process despite the ban on affirmative action.
Of course, Ms. Kimbrough is black.
The Court was careful in its opinion to limit the ban to a state's ability to govern state-funded university admissions. But I suspect that today's decision opens the gate to a wider application of limiting and then abolishing affirmative action in jobs and housing.