Court Allows Continuation of Race-Based Scholarships : Law: Decision dismisses lawsuit by seven white students who said minority scholarships violated Civil Rights Act.

A federal appeals court on Friday affirmed the Education Department’s authority to allow, at least temporarily, the continuation of race-based scholarships at tax-supported colleges.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court’s decision dismissing a lawsuit by seven white students who said minority scholarships violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The students, represented by the conservative Washington Legal Foundation, contended that about 45,000 minority-exclusive scholarships for blacks, Latinos and American Indians make less scholarship money available for white students.

They argued that former Education Secretary Lamar Alexander was unreasonable in delaying a ban on scholarships awarded solely on a racial basis. The department proposed the ban in December, 1991.

Under heavy congressional pressure, Alexander agreed last June to delay implementing the new policy until after a General Accounting Office study of the issue is completed sometime later this year.

“The relatively brief period that has passed hardly qualifies as unreasonable agency delay,” said U.S. Circuit Judge Harry T. Edwards, writing for the three-member court panel.

“While there is no absolute definition of what is a reasonable time, we know that it may encompass months, occasionally a year or two, but not several years or a decade,” said Edwards, who was appointed to the appeals court by former President Jimmy Carter.

Concurring in the ruling were U.S. Circuit Judges James L. Buckley and Douglas H. Ginsburg, both court appointees of former President Ronald Reagan.

Alexander’s successor as education secretary, former South Carolina Gov. Richard W. Riley, has not said specifically whether the Clinton Administration would pursue the proposed policy change.

But Riley said at his confirmation hearing last month before the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee that he strongly supports scholarships aimed at racial diversity on the nation’s campuses. He said minority-oriented scholarships could be “valid, good and legal.”

Richard Samp, an attorney for the white students, called the appeals court’s ruling a setback.

“This was a rather procedural decision,” he said. “I’m disappointed, but it doesn’t have anything to do with our claim. We’ll just have to bring the suits one by one.”

The appeals court said the students could still bring discrimination suits against individual colleges. A suit by a Latino student challenging racially exclusive scholarships for blacks at the University of Maryland is pending in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

In the meantime, the department’s 1980 policy encouraging affirmative-action scholarship awards to overcome past discrimination against minorities remains in effect.