Monday, January 11, 1999

Federal Judge Rules a Defunct Admissions Policy at U. of Georgia Unconstitutional

By LISA GUERNSEY

The ruling, by U.S. District Court Judge B. Avant Edenfield, has no practical impact on the university's current admissions policy, which was changed in 1996. However, Judge Edenfield wrote that he wanted to rule on the defunct policy anyway, to insure that it was not reinstated in the future.

In the ruling, Judge Edenfield dismissed the argument -- proposed by lawyers for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund -- that the former admissions policy was legal because it helped to insure diversity on campus. The judge wrote that although diversity may be a "noble goal," the negative effects of preferential policies "far outweigh" the benefits.

The lawsuit, filed by a group of black and white students and parents in Georgia who are opposed to affirmative action, charged that the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia had failed to desegregate the state's higher-education system. It attacked several of the system's policies regarding admissions to the flagship university and the operation of its historically black colleges.

Judge Edenfield dealt only with the admissions policies in the ruling he handed down on Wednesday, and said he would rule on the other questions later.

The ruling focused on the case of Kirby Tracy, a white student who was denied admission to the university in 1995. Mr. Tracy had argued that the university discriminated against him because his academic record was better than that of black students who were admitted. At the time Mr. Tracy applied, the university used a dual-track admissions policy that divided applications into two piles -- those from black applicants and those from "non-black" applicants.

Under that policy, black applicants were admitted if they had achieved, at minimum, an 800 on the SAT combined math and verbal, a 2.0 grade-point average, and a 2.0 on an "academic index" -- a number calculated from the SAT score and G.P.A. that was used to hypothesize the students' G.P.A.'s in their first year of college. "Non-black" applicants were admitted if, at a minimum, they scored 980 on the SAT, achieved a 2.5 G.P.A., and were determined to have an academic index of 2.4.

Mr. Tracy did not meet the minimum SAT requirements for "non-black" applicants, but his scores would have made him eligible for admission if he had been black. When he was not accepted into the University of Georgia in 1995, he enrolled instead at Georgia College for two years, and last year he successfully transferred to the university.

The judge ruled that the university had acted illegally when it denied Mr. Tracy admission -- and wrote that Mr. Tracy may be eligible for monetary damages, which will be determined later.

"Abstractions aimed at marginally increasing diversity simply cannot carry the day because such benefit is far outweighed by the stigmatizing, polarizing costs imposed by racial classifications," Judge Edenfield wrote. "Beyond group-level harms are the real injuries suffered by innocent individuals, such as Tracy, who was prevented -- solely on the basis of his skin color -- from competing on equal footing for a spot in UGA's 1995 freshman class."

The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, however, had argued that the admissions policy was necessary to achieve diversity. The Board of Regents had opted not to get into that argument, and instead contended that the charges brought by Mr. Tracy should be dropped because the policy was now defunct.

The Board also passed on arguing that the admissions policy was necessary to remedy the present effects of past discrimination -- a common argument by proponents of affirmative action. The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund argued that point alone as well.

Relying on judgments in the often-cited Bakke case, however, Judge Evenfield wrote that "Racial classification to remedy general, 'societal discrimination' is simply not a compelling state interest." Furthermore, he wrote, the defendants did not present enough evidence to show that present effects of previous discriminatory practices exist.

"The Court recognizes that UGA, decades ago, engaged in segregative admissions. But such temporally remote past practices, without any connection to present discriminatory effects, are insufficient to warrant current racial discrimination in admissions," he wrote.

The president of the University of Georgia, Michael F. Adams, released a statement about the ruling Friday, noting that it applied to policies the university had "abandoned" five years ago. "We have respect for the law and the courts," Mr. Adams said, "and believe that our current policies are legal and reflect a desire to continue to aggressively recruit African-American students."

The current admissions policy was also discussed in Judge Edenfield's ruling, but the judge did not render an opinion on its legality. Another plaintiff in the lawsuit, Ashley Davis, had charged that she was a victim of reverse discrimination when she was denied admission to the university in 1996. But the judge ruled that Ms. Davis, who is white, was rejected because her grades and scores did not measure up to the university's admissions standards.

"Race simply was not a factor in the actual denial of Davis's application," the judge wrote.

Today, according to the ruling, the university does not measure black and non-black applicants by different academic standards. It does, however, use race as one of 15 factors for determining admission after applicants meet the university's academic standards.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which joined the lawsuit a few months after it was filed, could not be reached for comment.

Copyright © 1999 by The Chronicle of Higher Education