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1 Gerald A. Reynolds, Letter: Commission to U.S. Department of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings regarding Supreme Court Cases Gratz and Grutter: Letter One 1 (2005)

handle is hein.civil/uscdgx0001 and id is 1 raw text is: UNI TED STATES COMMI SSI ON ON CIVI L RI GHTS WASHINGTON, D.C. 20425 OFFI CE OF STAFF DI RECTOR July 5, 2005 SENT VIA FACSIMILE AND U.S. MAIL The Honorable Margaret Spellings Secretary of Education U.S. Department of Education 400 Maryland Avenue, S.W. Washington, D.C. 20202 Dear Secretary Spellings: We write to you, as members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, to commend you for your Department's commitment to protecting the civil rights of all students as we pass the second anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger. The Department's excellent work in civil rights has recently received criticism from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund's report, Closing the Gap: Moving from Rhetoric to Reality in Opening Doors to Higher Education for African-American Students. We strongly disagree with the Legal Defense Fund's report and would like to set the record straight. The Michigan cases confirm, as the Department has previously maintained, that student body diversity is a compelling interest that will, under appropriate circumstances, justify the narrowly tailored consideration of race or national origin by colleges and universities in admissions decisions. They also clarify the limitations on the use of race in four important respects. The Legal Defense Fund report largely ignores these limitations, which are as important to the Court's holdings as its discussion of the compelling interest in diversity. Given widespread reports that many institutions continue to defy these constitutional limitations, we believe that it is important that they be clearly articulated and effectively enforced. The limitations stated in the Court's opinions make clear that: * Each applicant must be evaluated as an individual, not as a fungible member of a racial or ethnic group. * A school's compelling interest in diversity must be rooted in the institution's broad educational mission. Diversity does not legitimately demand proportionate racial and ethnic representation. The goal allows colleges to strive for a mix of students from a variety of geographical regions, social class backgrounds, and religious faiths, as well as from different ethnic and racial backgrounds. Race and ethnicity, however',:can only be considered a plus factor in an applicant's file.

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