The Supreme Court delivered another setback to affirmative action Tuesday, easing the way for states to bar public colleges from considering race in admissions and to prohibit officials from taking race into account in hiring and contracting. 
 
 The decision upheld a constitutional amendment in Michigan voters approved in 2006, banning preferential treatment based on race, gender, ethnicity or national origin. 
 
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 The outcome of the case was not a shock, but the lopsided, 6-2 vote signaled the court’s continuing rightward shift on issues of race. 
 
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 Eight states now have bans on affirmative action. California lawmakers briefly considered a measure that would have turned back its ban on using affirmative action in public university admissions, but the proposal was dropped. 
 
 The court’s ruling is likely to embolden opponents of racial preferences, who have already outlined plans to put Michigan-style constitutional amendments on the ballot in states including Ohio, Missouri and Utah. 
 
 “The Supreme Court has made it clear that there’s no constitutional problem with banning preferential treatment… and that federal, state and local governments who want to do that can do so — and I hope that they will,” said Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity. 
 
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 “The most important takeaway from this is that more states should do what Michigan has done,” Clegg added. 
 
 Quite the contrary, said said affirmative action proponent Michael Olivas, director of the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance at University of Houston. It’s a huge concern that states are making decisions about higher education via ballot measures, which can overturn nuanced, longstanding public policy in an instant. 
 
 “Conducting important educational business via ballot measure is a very bad development, and I say it’s bad even if my issue would win,” Olivas said. 
 
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 While the court’s members leaned heavily in favor of allowing the Michigan amendment to take effect, the six justices who voted in the majority did not agree entirely on why. 
 
 Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has come to be the court’s key voice on race-related issues, announced the court’s ruling in the Supreme Court chamber. 
 
 “The respondents in this case insist that a difficult question of public policy must be taken from the reach of the voters, and thus removed from the realm of public discussion, dialogue, and debate in an election campaign,” Kennedy wrote in an opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.” Quite in addition to the serious First Amendment implications of that position with respect to any particular election, it is inconsistent with the underlying premises of a responsible, functioning democracy … It is demeaning to the democratic process to presume that the voters are not capable of deciding an issue of this sensitivity on decent and rational grounds.” 
 
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 Kennedy said the Michigan referendum was not parallel to a pair of earlier cases where the court barred states from restructuring their political system in order to defeat efforts to aid minorities by requiring public school busing or prohibiting discrimination in housing. also He said the courts need to resist trying to decide which policies would benefit minorities and which would harm them. 
 
 “This Court has rejected the assumption that ‘members of the same racial group—regardless of their age, education, economic status, or the community in which they live—think alike, share the same political interests, and will prefer the same candidates at the polls,’” Kennedy wrote in “In a society in which those [racial] lines are becoming more blurred, the attempt to define race-based categories also raises serious questions of its own.” 
 
 Justice Sonia Sotomayor read much of her dissent from the bench, speaking more passionately and at greater length than Kennedy. 
 
 “The stark reality is that race still matters,” Sotomayor said, summarizing a dissenting opinion joined only by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination. As members of the judiciary tasked with intervening to carry out the guarantee of equal protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society.” 
 
 Sotomayor said the court’s majority unwisely assumed that the outcome of a voter-passed referendum was unlikely to be influenced by racism. “My colleagues misunderstand the nature of the injustice worked by” the Michigan amendment, she said. 
 
 Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas wrote separately, saying they would uphold the Michigan affirmative action ban and explicitly strike down the court’s previous decisions barring race-related restructuring of the political system. ||||| University of WisconsinArchive-It Partner Since: Aug, 2007Organization Type: Colleges & UniversitiesOrganization URL: http://archives.library.wisc.edu This collection currently includes two distinct sub-collections: The UW-Madison Collection and The Stem Cell Research Archives Project.The UW-Madison Collection includes University of Wisconsin Web sites that document many aspects of campus life including university administration, colleges, departments, and major campus organizations, student life, research, buildings, and special and ongoing events. We also crawl UW System and Colleges administration and UW Extension Web sites.The Stem Cell Research Archives Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries collects, preserves, and provides access to records of stem cell research at UW-Madison and reactions in Wisconsin to work accomplished or underway at UW-Madison.For more information about these collections or UW campus history, visit http://archives.library.wisc.edu or contact uwarchiv@library.wisc.edu. On Wisconsin!
– The Supreme Court today upheld Michigan's ban on affirmative action in public college admissions and state hiring, in a decisive 6-2 decision. Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor were the only dissenting votes, with Elena Kagan having recused herself, Politico reports. The case revolved around a 2006 ballot measure, approved by 58% of voters—which itself came after a 2003 high court decision upholding the practice at the University of Michigan's law school. The decision was widely expected, according to the Wall Street Journal. "This case is not about the constitutionality, or the merits, of race-conscious admission policies," Anthony Kennedy wrote in an opinion for a plurality that included John Roberts and Samuel Alito (pdf here); the AP notes there were four opinions in support of the outcome. Instead, he said the case was solely about whether voters had the right to decide those merits. "It is demeaning to the democratic process to presume that the voters are not capable of deciding an issue of this sensitivity," he concluded. In her lengthy and passionate dissent, Sotomayor countered that this was a matter of equal protection of the law, and hence the court should intervene. "Democratically approved legislation can oppress minority groups," she wrote. Judges "ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society." Kennedy wrote the majority opinion the last time the court took a bite out of affirmative action.