Law School’s Standards Found Unfair to Anglos : Education: Berkeley admissions program shields minorities from competing with other applicants, U.S. says.

The federal government says the UC Berkeley law school’s minority admissions program is unfair to Anglos and violates civil rights laws.

In findings made public Monday, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights said Berkeley’s prestigious Boalt Hall School of Law--the first law school ever investigated by the department--improperly shielded minorities from competition with other applicants.

The university disputed the findings of violations but agreed to change its program, starting with next year’s entering class.

Boalt Hall described its 14-year-old program as an effort to diversify the student body by setting goals of 23% to 27% minorities in each incoming class, with specific goals for blacks, Latinos, Asians and American Indians.

But the department said the program was administered “in a manner designed to ensure that the affirmative action percentage goals would be met.”

“The manner in which race and ethnicity were considered had the effect of circumscribing competition and effectively excluding applicants from consideration for available positions based on their race or ethnicity,” said Gary D. Jackson, the regional Office for Civil Rights director, in a letter to the university.

He said the school’s admissions director divided applicants into ethnic groups, comparing them only to others within the group, and directed admissions from each group to help ensure that goals were met. Selections from waiting lists were made along racial lines, Jackson said.

“The goal, in effect, ended up being a quota,” Michael L. Williams, the department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, said in an interview.

The findings covered the years 1988 through 1990.

Boalt Hall denied establishing minority quotas, which were largely outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bakke decision in 1978. The school said it started recruiting minorities in 1968 and adopted its current program shortly after the Bakke ruling.

“There are no places set aside,” said Herma Hill Kay, the school’s dean since April. She said minority status was a “plus factor” among more than 5,500 applicants for each opening in a class of about 270.

This year’s entering class of 267 is 39% minority, including some admitted under the general enrollment program, Kay said. She said minorities in the special program are offered academic assistance but are fully qualified for admission and have completed their courses as successfully as other students.

The agreement signed by university officials and the department says future applicants will not be separately considered or admitted based on their race.

The settlement does not prohibit all preferential treatment of minorities but says factors considered in diversifying the student population must not be limited to race and national origin. New standards for next year’s admissions are to be in place by Dec. 18.

“We think that we will not have to compromise our goals” to satisfy the government, Kay said.

The government’s action was hailed by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, an Orange County Republican who has argued that many university affirmative-action programs discriminate against Asian-Americans and who has called for a wide-ranging federal investigation.

“I’m very gratified that once they finally got themselves to look at it, they have confirmed that racial discrimination was taking place in the admissions policies,” Rohrabacher said. “Everybody is afraid to look at this issue honestly because they’re afraid to be called a racist.”

Jackson’s letter, containing the department’s findings, did not mention discrimination against Asian-Americans. But he said Boalt Hall, by considering only race and national origin and not other diversity factors, “failed to ensure that applicants would be free from discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin.”

Williams, the assistant department secretary, said a valid diversity program must consider factors such as age, geography, work experience, income, perhaps even political viewpoint--not necessarily giving each the same weight as race, but taking each into account at some level.

Kay said the school believes “we do pay attention to other diversity factors; it’s just that we haven’t had to target them.”

One endorsement of the program came from Eva Jefferson Paterson, a 1975 Boalt Hall graduate who was admitted under affirmative action and has become a leading civil rights lawyer and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Urban Affairs in San Francisco.

“You want a legal profession that reflects the diversity of society,” she said. “You want somebody with a law degree who has experienced racism and discrimination and can use those experiences to inform their work and shape the kind of work they do.”