Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette appealed a federal court’s decision to overturn the state’s 2006 ballot initiative that banned affirmative action.
Schuette requested Friday that the full 6th Circuit panel rehear the case, after an Appellate panel ruled 2-1 earlier this month that Proposal 2 violated the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment. “The majority may not manipulate the channels of change in a manner that places unique burdens on issues of importance to racial minorities,” Judges R. Guy Cole and Martha Craig Daughtrey wrote in the majority opinion.
On Thursday, Schuette called the court’s decision “nutty” and said it “simply defies common sense and turns the 14th Amendment on its head, upside down, and inside out.”
“We will stand up and protect the rights of all citizens of Michigan to be treated fairly,” he said.
Voters passed Prop 2 in November 2006 by a vote of 58%-42% — though in the breakdown the vote was “overwhelmingly approved by white voters and overwhelmingly rejected by blacks,” according to the Detroit Free Press.
Jennifer Gratz, head of the American Civil Rights Institute which opposes Affirmative Action, initially pushed the measure after her own lawsuit against the University of Michigan, which denied her admission in 1994. She believed she wasn’t admitted because of the school’s affirmative action policy, which the Supreme Court ultimately upheld.
