BOSTON--In 1974, U.S. District Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. sparked a national controversy when he ordered busing to desegregate the Boston public schools.

Last year, the 76-year-old Garrity made national headlines once again when he admitted white student Julia McLaughlin into the prestigious Boston Latin School. In doing so, he defied the court-ordered 1976 minority quota that sets aside 35 percent of each exam school's entering class for black and Hispanic students.

The McLaughlin case has spawned renewed debate over affirmative action and its place in American society.

The Boston public schools appear to have joined the national backlash against affirmative action in education and employment.

The impact of the McLaughlin case has rippled through the city's school system.

In December, Boston School Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant allowed entrance to the city's three exam schools to 300 students who had previously applied and been denied admittance because of the diversity guidelines. The exam schools all require standardized tests and certain grade-point cutoffs.

And earlier this year, the Boston School Committee unveiled a new admissions process for the three exam schools--Boston Latin School, Boston Latin Academy and the John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science--that would admit 50 percent of each entering class on "merit" alone.

According to a recent School Department analysis, the new policy would reduce the number of black students in the Boston Latin School from 24 to 16 percent and the number of Hispanics from 11 to 8 percent. African-American Protest

Members of the black community denounced the new plan as an attempt to turn back the clock and bring back the vestiges of segregation.

Hattie B. Mckinnis, executive director of the Citywide Parents' Council, says: "Boston is a city which has not welcomed its diversity. They think they're fine just the way they are."

McKinnis says that the "new plan doesn't consider race [given] the makeup of the school system."

Minorities comprise 37 percent of Boston's population and roughly 80 percent of its public schools.

Leonard C. Alkins, the president of the Boston chapter of the NAACP, says that the policy is "obviously detrimental."

"They were supposed to devise one which was fair and equitable," he says, but the current plan "will have a detrimental impact toward the number of minorities and African-Americans in the system."

Both say that Boston has a long way to go before the public school system becomes fair and equitable to students of all races.