Even though the Court mandated more than a principle, Michigan officials said they were sure they would find a solution to the practical problem of policy posed by Gratz.

“It is now up to us to rededicate ourselves to this diversity by refining our undergraduate admissions system to comply with the Court’s ruling,” said Terrence McDonald, dean of Michigan’s LSA, in a statement to the press Monday. “We will put to work some of the brightest minds and most motivated people in the country, and the result, I am sure, will continue to be a model for all of higher education.”

Orfield said he and his colleagues at the Civil Rights Project at Harvard would be among those minds seeking a new solution for admissions departments like LSA’s in the months to come.

And he said he thought Gratz will be only a temporary stumbling block to affirmative action at large state schools like Michigan, and that the school will find an alternative in time for next fall’s applicant pool—though the task will be “costly and difficult.”

“My guess is that people are going to figure out a way to do this differently,” Orfield said.

Looking Ahead

Still, the question of affirmative action won’t be over this fall when Michigan debuts its new undergraduate admissions policy in line with Gratz. With an eye toward the future, O’Connor’s majority in Grutter articulated a tentative sunset clause for affirmative action.

“Race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time,” O’Connor wrote. “We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.”

But the ramifications of this non-binding provision are murky. Greenhouse said the Court’s intent in including the provision is “not clear.”

“It may mean that the Court has no appetite for revisiting this subject at all for the next 25 years,” she said. “Or it’s simply aspirational. Or it’s an invitation to litigation as the date approaches and affirmative action still exists.”

Critics, while welcoming the time limit and its suggestion of a gradual phase-out of all affirmative action programs in admissions—not just those ruled out in Gratz—were similarly unsure about where the ruling and its sunset clause would lead.

“If schools really do move in that direction, that will be a real sea change for this country,” Levey said. “On the other hand, if schools try to use her ruling as a fig leaf, then ultimately we have many years of litigation ahead to try to enforce the standard that the Court set down.”

And many proponents of affirmative action expressed skepticism about the view that such policies would be unnecessary in 25 years.

“Who can tell?” Glazer asked. “Almost everything depends on whether the very broad achievement gap in standard educational measures between blacks and others can be overcome…There’s a permanent tension to it.”

Orfield, too, was reluctant to put an expiration date on affirmative action.