SUPREME COURT BACKS COLLEGE BIAS RULING.

Byline: Daily News Staff and Wire Services

Leaving legal clouds over the future of affirmative action in higher education, the Supreme Court on Monday allowed public colleges and universities in three Southern states to be barred from considering race or national origin in student admissions.

The justices, refusing to hear objections from the Clinton administration and 10 states, left intact a federal appeals panel's ruling in March that the University of Texas Law School's affirmative action program amounted to unconstitutional discrimination against whites.

But because the court didn't issue a ruling of its own, it left no nationwide guidance on the current validity of its 1978 conclusion in the landmark Bakke case that colleges could consider race as one of many factors in an effort to obtain a diverse student body.

California Gov. Pete Wilson, who has been behind efforts to eliminate race as an issue in college and university admissions as well as in state hiring, praised the court decision.

``This ruling says clearly that race cannot be a factor in admissions,'' Wilson said at a Los Angeles news conference. ``That's what we've tried to do with the policies and programs here in the University of California.

``The question is whether or not this ruling will go beyond the Fifth Circuit and apply here in the Ninth Circuit. I think it should.''

Wilson said the ruling also is significant in the potential impact on the California Civil Rights Initiative on the Nov. 8 ballot.

``I predict that once the CCRI passes, there will be a legal challenge to it and that is not necessarily a bad thing,'' Wilson said. ``It will allow us to get this on a fast track to the U.S. Supreme Court.''

The Texas law school program, aimed at increasing the enrollment of blacks and Hispanics, was invalidated in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi by a New Orleans-based panel of appellate judges that said Bakke was no longer valid law. That decision was unique among federal appeals courts.

Consideration of race to promote student diversity ``is no more rational . . . than would be choices based upon the physical size or blood type of applicants,'' declared the appeals panel, which consisted of two appointees of President Bush and one of President Reagan.

For almost two decades, hundreds of educational institutions throughout the United States, relying on the 5-4 Bakke decision, have used affirmative action to select students and grant financial aid.

That practice will continue in 47 states because ``the Bakke decision will continue to be in effect,'' said David Merkowitz, spokesman for the American Council on Education, which represents 1,600 public and private colleges and universities.

Affirmative action, among other factors, has helped young blacks reach the highest rate of participation in higher education in history, Merkowitz said. Council statistics for 1994 showed that 59 percent of African-Americans up to age 25 spent at least one year in college or were enrolled. Ten years earlier, the participation rate was 45 percent.

As a result of the Supreme Court's refusal to intervene, the appeals court ruling is certain to be cited in support of efforts to scrap similar affirmative action programs beyond the three states directly affected.

Justice Department lawyers said the lower court decision could also jeopardize affirmative action programs in private institutions in the three states if they receive federal assistance.