ABSTRACT
In January 2003, President George W. Bush announced that his administration would be joining the legal battle against affirmative action at the University of Michigan. According to the president, Michigan's undergraduate College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, as well as its Law School, had devised unfair schemes of racial preference favoring blacks, Latino/as, and American Indians in admissions, relative to whites and Asians. Conjuring up the specter of "reverse discrimination," Bush insisted that admissions should be color-blind, and that Michigan, by way of its policies that considered, at least in part, an applicant's race when deciding whom to admit, had violated this color-blind ideal. In keeping with his belief that Michigan had violated both fairness and the Constitution, Bush instructed his Solicitor General to file arguments with the Supreme Court, on behalf of the white plaintiffs who had sued the University
of Michigan and the law school, claiming to have been denied admission as a result of racial preferences for students of color.
