The Constitutionality of Affirmative Action

In 2003 the United States Supreme Court weighed in on the use of affirmative action programs that grant preferential treatment based on race in college admissions. In one case, Gratz v. Bollinger, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the use of preference programs at the University of Michigan's undergraduate college, ending the wholesale use of mechanical race in admissions. But in Grutter v. Bollinger which challenged the University of Michigan’s Law School, the Court inexplicably allowed, the continued use of race in admissions.

The debate over affirmative action and race and gender preferences did not end there. The court may have allowed the use of race preferences to achieve “diversity,” but it did not mandate the use of race.  In fact, the Court itself concluded with an aspiration that race preferences would no longer be necessary in 25 years.  

Since that 2003 decision, Michigan voters, by a landslide vote in 2006, elected to make it “unconstitutional for the state to discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to any individual on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public contracting, or public education.” Michigan was not the first to enshrine the principle of color-blind government into its constitution.  Indeed, three other states have also eliminated race and gender preferences through constitutional amendments or executive order. And two more states, Colorado and Nebraska, are poised to do the same this November. The public has become increasingly intolerant of the government picking winners and losers based on race and gender in order to engineer what elite officials determine is the politically correct racial and gender mix.