Opinion ID: 777482
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Potential Race-Neutral Means

Text: 294 In order for its racial classifications to survive strict scrutiny, the state must first look to race-neutral means to achieve even compelling state interests. The Supreme Court has made clear that courts must determine whether a state's racial classification is necessary with reference to the efficacy of race-neutral alternatives. See, e.g., Croson, 488 U.S. at 507, 109 S.Ct. 706; United States v. Paradise, 480 U.S. 149, 171, 107 S.Ct. 1053, 94 L.Ed.2d 203 (1987); Associated Gen. Contractors of Ohio, Inc. v. Drabik, 214 F.3d 730, 736 (6th Cir.2000). 295 What is not crystal clear, however, is the nature of the consideration that reviewing courts must undertake. Yet only one tack makes analytical sense. In order to prevail under strict scrutiny, the state must demonstrate not only that its racial classification achieves compelling state benefits, but also that these benefits may only be obtained by the shift from a well-designed, race-neutral alternative. Put differently, the state must demonstrate that the marginal benefits gained from employing the racial classification over the next most efficacious race-neutral alternative are themselves compelling. Any other standard would make success under strict scrutiny a mere exercise in question framing. The interest vindicated by a racial classification would look very large, perhaps even compelling, when compared to the benefits delivered by some dismal alternative. Instead, we should require that before we find marginal benefits reflective of a compelling state interest, they must be those gained over the best race-neutral alternatives. 296 Consider some of the race-neutral alternatives available in this case. The gradient of benefits, along which the race-conscious and race-neutral means are judged, is academic diversity, or achieving a pluralism of experiences and ideas. See Part III.A.1. Earlier in this opinion, I discussed the possibility of considering experiential diversity in a race-neutral manner. Swamped with the children of wealthy suburbanites, the Law School could seek out applicants who were raised amidst relative poverty, who attended under-funded or failing schools, who walked to school past warehouses instead of coffeehouses, who experienced but conquered extreme emotional trauma, like the loss of a parent, who prevailed over a profound childhood illness, who have dedicated years to helping the poor in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, or, even less stirringly, who have a strong accounting background among a raft of history majors. If it really is a diversity of experiences and viewpoints that the Law School seeks, why cannot the Law School just seek those experiences and viewpoints? 297 Instead, the Law School searches for particular races and ethnicities as a means of securing a diversity of experience, and, so they say, for no other purpose. A well-functioning search for experiential diversity would certainly yield the greatest measure of it. After all, even the Law School would admit that race is an imperfect proxy for experiential diversity. Next-door neighbors in Grosse Pointe, separated only by 30 yards and the color of their skin, would not necessarily be significantly different from each other. In principle at least, the race-neutral means of seeking the experiences themselves would seem superior to the Law School's race-conscious means, if its aim is as it professes. This is quite the opposite of the woeful inadequacy of race-neutral means that we generally require to consider a racial classification narrowly tailored. 298 In practice, the Law School could make all sorts of arguments about the inadequacy of merely seeking experience. For example, admissions officers would have to read (and seriously consider) more text in an application if it were seeking experience rather than race. The medium for communicating this quality, of course, lacks the efficient simplicity of the racial check-box. Yet, over and over again, the Law School has reassured us that its exquisitely meticulous admissions officers already consider each application individually and thoroughly. Such is the luxury, the Law School tells us, of so few applications and spots to fill. I am willing to take the Law School at its word, and believe that it is fully capable of undertaking this searching review of individual experience. 299 Also, a system seeking experiential diversity might increase the risk of applicant fraud. It might be somewhat easier to verify that some individuals were truly of the right group than the details of their life stories. This comparative ease should not be overstated, however, as the distinctions between the Law School's under-represented minorities, from various types of Hispanics to the marginally African-American, and the rest of society can be very subtle indeed. See Part III.B.2. Moreover, there are all sorts of readily identifiable indicia of experiential diversity. One's home mailing address gives quite a bit away. Law schools already ask for detailed financial information to make financial aid judgments, permitting a review of the relative poverty to which the applicant was subjected. If the Law School were interested in the student's secondary education, and the experiences that it imparted, it would not be outrageous to ask for a high school transcript. Indeed, as a good portion of the Law School's student body hails from Michigan, see JA at 1947, the Law School's seasoned admissions officers could probably develop a pretty intimate understanding of the state's high schools. 300 In short, the ready availability of seeking unique experiences themselves, rather than an imperfect proxy for them, demonstrates that the marginal benefits of the Law School using its suspect racial preference instead of the available race-neutral means are far from compelling. In fact, because it seems to me that selecting on the basis of race is actually a more poorly calibrated means of achieving the experiential diversity that it allegedly seeks, I doubt that the Law School is really interested in academic diversity. And this academic diversity is the only diversity that will satisfy the Powell opinion that the majority considers outcome-determinative. Instead, it is more likely that the Law School's preference for certain races is an interest in race itself. 301 Another race-neutral alternative mentioned is conducting a lottery for all students above certain threshold figures for their GPA and LSAT. This would insure a student body as diverse as the qualified applicant pool itself. As demonstrated above, the Law School's unwillingness to conduct a lottery among all those students that it considers qualified reveals that it really maintains a two-track admissions system, one for the highly-qualified students of all races that it generally seeks, and another for under-represented minorities who are only qualified. 38 302 The availability of such race-neutral means, especially in dealing with the manageably small applicant pool of the Law School, reveals that the Law School's talk of desiring only academic diversity is only window dressing for sheer racial discrimination.