What is the status of affirmative action in colleges and universities?
In recent years, United States courts have handed down a series of contradictory judgments about affirmative action policies, which consider race as one of several factors during the admissions process. Some of these decisions have curtailed affirmative action in California, Washington, Texas and other states; others have affirmed that diverse classrooms are crucial to the education system and have upheld school policies. In May, 2002, a federal appeals court ruled in Grutter vs. Bollinger that the University of Michigan’s law school did not employ racial quotas; rather, it had a “compelling interest” when it sought to enroll a diverse student body. The law school argued that it did not set quotas to recruit a specific number of minority students; nevertheless, it claimed, any restrictions on the admissions policy would reduce minority populations to “token” levels. Many legal experts believe that the Supreme Court will reexamine affirmative action in the near future in order to resolv
