WHITE HOUSE ASKS SUPREME COURT TO REVIEW AFFIRMATIVE ACTION RULING.

Byline: Linda Greenhouse The New York Times

The Clinton administration, asserting that racial diversity in higher education is an important goal and that some form of affirmative action is necessary to accomplish it, asked the Supreme Court on Friday to overturn a federal appeals court's ruling that barred any consideration of race in admissions to the University of Texas Law School.

``The practical effect of the court of appeals's holding will be to return the most prestigious institutions within state university systems to their former `white' status,'' Solicitor General Drew S. Days III told the court in a brief submitted in support of an appeal filed by the state of Texas.

The appellate court's decision has already caused ``substantial confusion and upheaval among colleges and universities nationwide,'' the administration's brief said, adding that if it is not overturned by the Supreme Court the ruling ``will effectively eliminate all affirmative action admissions programs in higher education'' in Mississippi and Louisiana, as well as Texas.

Those are the three states within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which issued its decision March 18.

The Supreme Court has not yet announced whether it will hear the appeal, Texas vs. Hopwood, No. 95-1773, which the state filed last month. If the court accepts the case before it recesses for the summer, the argument would probably be scheduled for October or November, with the presidential election campaign providing a backdrop for the politically sensitive issues posed by the case.

The administration's friend-of-the-court brief was filed as the White House continues a long review of federal affirmative action policies in the aftermath of a Supreme Court decision last summer.

Ruling in the context of a federal contracting program that favored minority-owned businesses, the court held in Adarand vs. Pena that government programs that make distinctions on the basis of race, whether in favor of whites or of members of racial minorities, are subject to the same strict judicial scrutiny.

Earlier this week, the administration issued tentative guidelines requiring a greater degree of justification for programs that confer benefits on minority-owned businesses.

In the brief filed Friday, Days said affirmative action in higher education serves interests different from and, he suggested, stronger than those served by contracting programs.

Diversity on campus was one such interest, he said, adding that the University of Texas Law School could well conclude that ``absent of racial diversity in its classrooms, its students will not effectively be prepared to be lawyers in Texas' (or the nation's) racially diverse society.''