Supreme Court To Hear Michigan Affirmative Action Case

The state banned affirmative action based on race in 2006

(Reuters)—The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday will delve into a decades-old debate over university admissions policies that favor racial minorities, hearing a Michigan case that picks up where the justices left off last session in a dispute from the University of Texas.

Unlike the Texas case that tested a specific affirmative action practice, this new dilemma revolves around a broad state constitutional amendment.

In a twist, the two groups in the Michigan case that favor affirmative action to help minorities have put forward divergent views. They will split their side's half hour of oral argument, each taking a different tack in hopes of influencing a court dominated by ideologically conservative justices.

They so differentiated their positions in filings to the court last month that the justices took the rare step of granting a request for divided argument at the court's lectern.