It is worth recalling that the plaintiffs and the University of Michigan are not the only voices being heard regarding admissions policies at Michigan. Intervening are a group of students who defend affirmative action but who accuse university officials of not defending it vigorously enough, in part because, in the past, the university itself discriminated.
In their view, any admissions criteria other than affirmative action are suspect. The plaintiffs had argued, for example (and the District Court in the law school case agreed), that race is not a valid “proxy” for disadvantage. The student intervenors argued in their brief to the Sixth Circuit:
The real “dangerous prox[ies]” in admissions do not include race. They include test scores, grades, the position in a hierarchy of an applicant
