“We can ensure that a system is arrived at that is both constitutional and promotes a diverse educational environment,” she adds.
Affirmative action foes responded angrily to the news that Michigan’s top three universities can continue to peg admissions and financial aid decisions to affirmative action for another half year.
“The universities really have no excuse for not implementing Proposal 2 on Dec. 23,” Alan Foutz, a lawyer with the Sacramento, Calif.-based Pacific Legal Foundation, told The Associated Press. “They should have recognized . . . there could be some changes coming down the pike.”
Since the early 1990s, California businessman Ward Connerly has characterized affirmative action as “state-sponsored discrimination.”
An African-American who’d already successfully backed anti-affirmative action propositions in California and Washington State, Connerly went after Michigan in earnest in 2003. Working in tandem with Jennifer Gratz, the co-leader of his Michigan campaign, Connerly added the state to his anti-affirmative action victory column in November.
The next anti-affirmative action campaigns will target Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah.
— Associated Press reports contributed to this story.
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