Dim days for affirmative action: legal wrangles continue in Michigan.

THE STATE THAT WAS HOME TO A HIGH-PROFILE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION triumph in 2003 is now home to a ban against race- and gender-based preferences.

Proposal 2, which passed in Michigan with 58 percent of the vote in November, prohibits the state from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to any individual or group based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin. In 2003 the University of Michigan won a hard-fought battle to continue considering race and gender as part of applicants' overall packages.

Since legal challenges surrounding Proposal 2 are ongoing, Michigan's public colleges and universities will not have clarity on how to proceed for months. They are also faced with having to change their admissions policies in the middle of the academic year. For now, they must abide by the law.

The University of Michigan shut down its admissions for a week in early 2007 before agreeing to comply with Proposal 2. (All admissions decisions and financial aid packages offered on or before December 29, 2006, the date a judge lifted a stay on the implementation of Prop 2, will be honored.) A diversity task force will issue recommendations this month.

"There remains uncertainty about how Proposal 2 will be interpreted and applied by the courts," notes Teresa A. Sullivan, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs. "However, because of the Sixth Circuit decision and in absence of further guidance from the courts, we will proceed cautiously by adjusting our admissions and financial aid policies such that race and gender will have no effect on the decision-making process."

Geographic diversity, whether a student is the first in a family to attend college, and other factors can still weigh in as part of an institution's admissions process. Wayne State University Law School, for example, is opting to consider such indicators as an applicant's capacity to overcome socioeconomic disadvantage. "I think these are going to give us a class that's diverse in the broadest sense possible," says Jonathan Weinberg, a Wayne State professor who helped draft the policy. "We are under some limitations."

Meanwhile, legal wrangles continue. The group By Any Means Necessary, or BAMN, filed a motion with the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the implementation of Proposal 2 for six months. "You can't evaluate a human being for who they are separate from their race and their sex," says Donna Stern, national coordinator for BAMN. The American Civil Rights Coalition, which helped Proposal 2 pass, is looking into launching similar ballot initiatives in Arizona, Nebraska, and several other states.