When a group of Republican state lawmakers last summer mounted a public campaign to find potential plaintiffs for a class-action lawsuit against the University of Michigan's affirmative action admissions policies, Jennifer Gratz responded immediately. Gratz, a policeman's daughter and former high school homecoming queen, had been rejected by Michigan in 1995 despite strong grades and high standardized-test scores.

"When I was turned down, I was disappointed and embarrassed," she said in a recent interview. After receiving Michigan's rejection letter, Gratz, who is White, discussed with her parents the idea of suing the school. "But it really wasn't serious then. I knew we didn't have the resources."

The resources and legal expertise that ultimately made the Michigan lawsuit possible were provided by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Individual Rights (CIR), a conservative public-interest law firm that over the past two years has mounted an all-out assault on university affirmative action admissions policies.

Last year, CIR jolted the academic establishment with its stunning legal victory in Hopwood v. State of Texas. It convinced the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to, in effect, reverse long-standing Supreme Court precedent that permits race to be considered as a "plus" in admissions decisions. The Hopwood opinion is only binding law in the Fifth judicial circuit which includes Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. But it has been causing universities around the country to reexamine their admissions policies.

Sensing that the academic establishment was on the ropes, CIR in March sued the University of Washington Law School over its admissions policies. The lawsuit against the University of Michigan undergraduate program followed in October. And just this month, the Center filed a separate lawsuit against the admissions policies at Michigan's law school. CIR's rapid flurry of litigation has set in motion a legal controversy that almost certainly will have to be resolved one day by the U.S. Supreme Court.