US: The US Supreme Court said yesterday it would decide whether public universities could consider a student's race in admission decisions, an important national issue affecting higher education and affirmative action policies for minorities.
The court agreed to review cases involving the University of Michigan's law school and its undergraduate admissions, taking up a politically charged issue it last addressed 24 years ago in a landmark ruling.
Blacks and other minority groups have strongly defended affirmative action as a way to remedy past discrimination and to achieve student diversity while critics have called the programmes an unconstitutional form of "reverse discrimination".
In its historic 1978 "Bakke v. Board of Regents" decision, a sharply divided Supreme Court struck down racial quotas in school admissions, but allowed race to be considered in deciding which students to accept.
The justices will decide whether racial preferences still may be used or whether they violate the equal protection guarantee in the US Constitution or the federal civil rights laws.
In rulings in recent years, the court's conservative majority has generally restricted the use of government affirmative action programmes designed to help minorities.
The university has argued that diversity enhances the education of all its students, that race is one of many factors in the admission process and that the number of minority students would plunge if race was not considered a factor in admission.