Law deans thought they could breathe a sigh of relief in 2003 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on two suits challenging affirmative action at the University of Michigan. While some tweaks were needed, it appeared that law school diversity standards were largely above scrutiny. But what followed over the next few years was a series of battles in which the U.S. Department of Education and conservative groups such as the Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO) mounted broad challenges to university and accreditor policies on diversity in admissions.
In Grutter v. Bollinger, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s “narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions.” (In the other Michigan case, the Court struck down the affirmative action program used in the university’s undergraduate admissions.) But opponents of affirmative action, such as CEO, soon seized on the language of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s majority opinion to attack on-campus diversity initiatives. CEO alone sent col-leges and universities more than 200 complaints about policies that were allegedly not “narrowly tailored” enough or that otherwise appeared not to comport with the high court’s language. The group threatened to request Education Department investigations of any school that did not roll back its affirmative action policies, says CEO president and general counsel Roger Clegg.
