Opinion ID: 777482
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The True Magnitude of the Law School's Racial Preference

Text: 256 Because the majority has not laid out the magnitude of the discrimination revealed by the record, it is important to detail it here. An examination of the admissions data shows that even the most qualified majority 19 students (those with an LSAT over 170 and a GPA over 3.75) do not achieve the perfect admissions percentages for under-represented minority students with a GPA nearly a point less and an LSAT score in the 164-66 range. More roughly speaking, under-represented minorities with a high C to low B undergraduate average are admitted at the same rate as majority applicants with an A average with roughly the same LSAT scores. 20 Along a different axis, minority applicants with an A average and an LSAT score down to 156 (the 70th percentile nationally) are admitted at roughly the same rate as majority applicants with an A average and an LSAT score over a 167 (the 96th percentile nationally). 257 The figures indicate that race is worth over one full grade point of college average or at least an 11-point and 20-percentile boost on the LSAT. In effect, the Law School admits students by giving very substantial additional weight to virtually every candidate designated as an under-represented minority or, equivalently, by substantially discounting the credentials earned by every student who happens to fall outside the Law School's minority designation. 258 For the potential applicant, the Law School's system creates very different dilemmas depending on his race. If confronted a year before they applied to the Law School with the records of two students, whose non-racial credentials were equivalent, we might evaluate their prospects for admission as follows: Student A could work harder and raise her GPA by a full point. Student B could reveal the fact of his skin color or ethnicity, it being in one of the preferred categories. 21 The Law School's admissions officer, who before both changes would have rated the students equally, would now find the students equal, the effort of the one being counterbalanced by the background of the other. 259 More shocking is the comparison of the chances of admission for applicants with the same academic credentials (at least numerically). Taking a middle-range applicant with an LSAT score 164-66 and a GPA of 3.25-3.49, the chances of admission for a white or Asian applicant are around 22 percent. For an under-represented minority applicant, the chances of admission (100%) would be better called a guarantee of admission. 260 At some point, however, comparison of the admissions rates of white, Asian, and other unselected ethnic applicants and the minority groups designated for preference becomes impossible. The Law School simply stops meaningful consideration of non-minority candidates below certain grade point and LSAT figures, 22 a practice demonstrated by admissions rates well below 10 percent, and often the absence of a single admitted student, in these credential categories. Under-represented minorities, on the other hand, not only continue to have respectable chances of admission in these categories, but in most cases enjoy rates of admission in excess of 80 percent. 23 Far from receiving competitive consideration, majority applicants are all but summarily rejected with credentials, but not ethnicity, identical to their under-represented minority competitors who are virtually guaranteed admission. The Law School's admissions practices betray its claim that it gives meaningful individual consideration to every applicant notwithstanding their race. 261 The sharp threshold for admission that the Law School appears to establish for majority applicants reveals the emptiness of another purported justification for its racial preference. The Law School justifies its stark preference, in part, by claiming that all the applicants admitted, even those admitted because of its preference, are qualified. If the Law School actually believed that all applicants, with combinations of credentials sufficient for admission for minorities, were truly qualified, it would likely be willing at least to consider admitting majority applicants who were equally qualified. Instead, the Law School reveals its true views regarding the necessary credentials for its law students through its clear line in its admission of majority candidates: students below the credential threshold either diminish the educational environment of the school or spare it only if kept to a small percentage of the class. 262 In the alternative, the Law School's process designates as qualified virtually all who apply for admission. If the Law School is being honest, it considers every last under-represented minority admitted qualified. Indeed, the admissions data reveal that the Law School admits nearly every minority student who meets threshold credentials, as there appears to be a sharp cliff in rates of admission between extremely small variations in objective credentials. 24 If the Law School considers everyone above this minority threshold qualified, it must also consider the 89 percent of the applicant pool above this threshold qualified. Yet it is clear that the Law School would not be comfortable with the random admission of any of the 89% of its applicant pool. The Law School does not truly consider majority applicants toward the bottom half of this 89% qualified — it admits almost none of them. 263 The Law School's use of the term qualified reveals its slipperiness. The court majority reveals the Law School's shift in usage when it explains the rejection of a more random selection method because the school seeks to assemble both a highly qualified and richly diverse academic class. Majority Op. at 751. The Law School appears to be all too cognizant of the difference between highly qualified and merely qualified applicants. Its two steep cliffs in the admissions rate, one for under-represented minority applicants and one for majority applicants, demonstrate that the Law School maintains a two-track, indeed separated, system for admissions. Using its under-represented minority threshold, the Law School fills its seats reserved for qualified candidates. Using its majority threshold, the Law School completes the balance of its class with highly qualified applicants. That the Law School merely seeks to insure that all its students are qualified is an empty claim. 264 The Law School argues, however, that these overwhelming data are illusions produced through the smoke of litigation. These data, standing alone, the Law School seems to claim, could be produced by very small differences in actual qualifications. Taking certain hypothetical statistics, the Law School's contention could certainly hold. For example, if for some reason every applicant had the same LSAT score, but every white had a GPA of 3.50 and every black had a GPA of 3.49, a racial preference would be required to obtain any admission of black students, but the degree of that preference would obviously be very small. The difference in chances of admission for the black and white applicants would still be very large, but the practical amount of preference would be very small. 265 However, such are not the admissions statistics in this case. As the statistics show, the degree of preference can be characterized, in the benign words of Justice Powell and Harvard, as a tip only with some considerable violence to terminological exactitude. 25 The term tip would convey to the average reasonable person something that overbalances a fairly closely divided or nearly evenly balanced choice. A seesaw with roughly equivalent children on either end can be tipped from one side to the other with a small weight. However, if a boulder must be placed on one side to shift the balance, the term tip would apply only if it were infinitely elastic. A common-sense view of a tip might be that in a zone where 80 or 90% of majority applicants are admitted, 100% of minorities would be favored. Or, in a zone where only 10 or 20% of majority applicants are admitted, 30 or 40% of minorities might be. If Justice Powell's words are to be used as anything more than a subterfuge, that would be the kind of preference that a fair reading of his opinion might endorse. 266 The majority responds that there is no evidence in Bakke about how large the racial preference was in the Harvard plan of which Justice Powell spoke approvingly. Majority Op. at 756-757. As a result, it is impossible to know whether the Law School's alleged plus was larger than Harvard's. Majority Op. at 749. Immediately thereafter, the majority concludes that the Law School's admission scheme is virtually identical to the Harvard plan, and that therefore the Law School's system must be constitutional. Ibid. How does the majority know that the Law School's system is virtually identical to Harvard's? I am deeply puzzled regarding how the majority could place both its confession of ignorance regarding the details of the Harvard plan and its claim that the two plans are identical in the same paragraph. The majority's argument, yet again, simply elides empirical premises necessary to sustain what it claims to be the controlling analogy between the Law School and Harvard plans. 267 And indeed the majority's recognition that there is no factual record regarding the Harvard plan in Bakke echoes the reason why federal courts do not issue advisory opinions on cases not before them and why we find binding only the holdings, but not the dicta, of prior cases. Without an actual case or controversy before it, a court is not able to develop a factual record and to determine which facts would be legally relevant. The absence of a factual record on the Harvard plan reinforces the reasons that Justice Powell's thoughts regarding its potential constitutionality are not binding. 268 Even if we know nothing of the absolute magnitude of the Harvard plan other than its description as merely a tip or a plus, we have some evidence regarding its relative magnitude. As described in the amicus brief before the Court in Bakke, the Harvard plan provided that the race of an applicant may tip the balance in his favor just as geographic origin or life spent on a farm may tip the balance in other candidates' cases. Landmark Briefs and Arguments, supra n. 1, at 736 (emphasis added). From the description, it would seem that Harvard's racial preference would be similar in magnitude to the preference given other soft factors. We know, however, from the indisputable statistical evidence in this case and the Law School's own admission that no other soft factor is even remotely as significant as race in its admission decisions. Additionally, there is nothing in the Harvard description that even hints that its preferences for race or others factors of diversity are of the magnitude here, taking the chance of admission from near zero to near 100%, in many cases. 269 It is clear from the Law School's statistics that under-represented minority students are nearly automatically admitted in zones where white or Asian students with the same credentials are nearly automatically rejected. Indeed, the Law School concedes that its racial preference is sufficiently heavy that 3 out of 4 under-represented minority students would not be admitted if all students were truly considered without regard to race. JA at 6047. The characterization of the Law School's preference as only a tip or plus would eviscerate those words, and transform Powell's thoughtful discussion into a carte blanche for adopting the UC Davis system with only a few cosmetic changes. 270 One might wonder why I focus so heavily on the LSAT and GPA admissions data provided by the Law School. Of course, the constitutional deficiencies of the Michigan policy have nothing to do with the question of how and whether universities should consider academic measures such as GPA and LSAT in their admissions policies. Michigan is perfectly free to abandon or to restructure those measures. However, those are the standards it has chosen to distinguish among majority candidates, and to distinguish among minority candidates. Equal protection of the laws demands that the objective standards that the Law School chooses are applied with some modicum of equality, and they are not here. 26 271 Michigan argues, with some justification, that it also considers a wide variety of soft factors. And nothing in this opinion denigrates the use of such factors, or even changing or increasing them, so long as they are applied equally. However, it is of the greatest importance to note that Michigan does not contend, in any way, that the consideration of those factors explains any advantage, systematic or otherwise, for minority candidates. It does not make that claim in its filings or briefs, and I specifically put the question in oral argument: Do you assert that under-represented minorities systematically have stronger [soft factors] than non-minority students? Counsel responded with a firm no. Tr. at 41. Thus, the issue is not the merits behind one combination of qualifications or another. The constitutional dilemma presented is the use, or at least the degree of use, of race to overcome qualifications, however defined. 272