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Court Grants Stay in U-M Race-Conscious Admissions Policy

The University of Michigan (U-M) Law School will still be able to consider race in its application criteria, at least for the time being.

On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the Sixth U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati granted the university its requested stay of a court ruling from two weeks ago that called Michigan's affirmative action clause unconstitutional.

The March 27 injunction halted the law school's consideration of race in the admissions process.

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"The injunction now in place irreparably harms the University of Michigan and disrupts the selection of the 2001-2002 first-year law school class," Thursday's federal order said.

Issued by District Court Judge Bernard A. Friedman, the March injunction came in the wake of a two and half-year lawsuit filed against the university by a Caucasian female applicant, who alleged that she was not admitted to the U-M Law School because of racial discrimination.

She accused the university of using race as a predominant factor in admissions, "giving minority applicants a significantly greater chance of admissions than students with similar credentials from disfavored racial groups. "

U-M President and one-time Harvard presidential candidate Lee C. Bollinger has been the prominent defendant in the case, known as Grutter vs. Bollinger {ITALICS].

Bollinger previously told The Crimson that if the U-M affirmative action policy were not upheld, society would run the risk of sliding "back into a world in which we don't attend to [civil rights] issues." He compared the implications of the current lawsuit to the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education {ITALICS].

In addition to U-M's appeal, Friedman's March decision against the affirmative action policy set off a nationwide chain reaction.

On March 29, Reverend Jesse Jackson rallied a crowd of hundreds of U-M students to protest of the injunction.

"This is another great movement now. Affirmative action is not a minority issue-it is a majority issue," Jackson told listeners.

Thursday's decision-though still to be followed by further legal process-is a promising victory for Jackson and university officials.

In the federal order, the court also told the university that it would expedite its pending appeal of the March decision against U-M.

"We are delighted that the Sixth Circuit has acted promptly to ensure that our admissions process may continue without disruption," said U-M Law Dean Jeffrey Lehman in a U-M press release on Thursday.

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