Ruling on Affirmative Action Draws Reaction

After a federal court turned down a lawsuit that challenged a Michigan ban on affirmative action, reactions from Harvard professors and students ranged from disappointed to unsurprised.

On Tuesday, a U.S. district judge dismissed the lawsuit that challenges the ban on affirmative action that was approved by voters, known as Proposal 2.

In 2006, Michigan residents voted to end affirmative action in public universities and agencies in the state by a majority of 58 percent.

Harvard Law School professor Mark V. Tushnet said he thought the court’s decision was “not surprising” due to the claims present in the lawsuit.

“One of the lines of argument that the challengers presented was that affirmative action had to be among the policy options of the government,” he said. “However, there is nothing in the law to that effect.”

But Black Men’s Forum President Ralph L. Bouquet ’09 said that he was “disappointed in the court’s decision.”

“This is a really complex issue,” he said. “I feel that the court did not take into account the motives of affirmative action. It’s a limitation on progress.”

Several nationally prominent groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, brought forth the lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge David M. Lawson dismissed the suit, thus temporarily delaying the fight over the constitutionality of the ban.

By Any Means Necessary, another group that opposed the 2006 decision, announced yesterday that they would appeal the Court’s decision.

On the group’s Web site, National co-chair Shanta Driver promised to continue pushing this case into the higher federal courts.

“Just as in Brown v. Board of Education, we will win these cases at the United States Supreme Court by building the civil rights movement,” she said in a press release posted on the Web site.

Due to the flawed nature of the challenge, Tushnet did not foresee this lawsuit going much farther. But he said the debate over affirmative action is not over.

“These kinds of issues are never completely settled,” he said.

Tushnet also said that other state bans on affirmative action, such as California’s Proposition 209, were due to specific “political entrepreneurs” rather than a national trend.

Although Bouquet acknowledged the shortcomings of affirmative action he said the policy still has merit.

“Affirmative action is not a cure-all, and there should be some readjustments. It wasn’t necessarily the best to create a point-based system,” he said, referring to the University of Michigan’s policy of giving points to applicants from underrepresented minorities.

“However, there are still lots of inequities in the system,” he added. “Affirmative action is one of the ways to address them.”