President To Oppose Race-Based Admissions
White House Weighs Politics and Policy In U-Michigan Case
By Mike Allen and Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, January 15, 2003; Page A01
President Bush plans to declare his opposition to University of Michigan admissions policies that give preference to black and Hispanic students, injecting the White House into the Supreme Court's most far-reaching affirmative action case in a generation, administration officials said yesterday.
The officials said Bush, who faces a deadline Thursday for registering opposition with the high court, plans to pay tribute to the value of racial diversity in higher education. But he plans to argue that Michigan's approach is flawed.
The issue is politically sensitive and legally complex, and top administration aides last night were unable to provide crucial details about the brief's legal arguments, which are still the subject of discussion by top presidential advisers. For example, it was unclear whether the brief's praise of diversity would go so far as to assert that achieving racial diversity is so important that it justifies college admissions officials to consider race, in some fashion.
