ASHINGTON, June 23 — The Supreme Court preserved affirmative action in university admissions today by a one-vote margin but with a forceful endorsement of the role of racial diversity on campus in achieving a more equal society.

"In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in her 5-to-4 majority opinion upholding the University of Michigan's consideration of race for admission to its law school.

	Advertisement

At the same time, by a vote of 6 to 3, and with Justice O'Connor in the majority as well, the court invalidated the same university's affirmative action program for admission to its undergraduate college. The difference was in the details: the undergraduate school uses a point system based in part on race.

As a result, the pair of decisions — the court's first in a generation to address race in university admissions — provided a blueprint for taking race into account without running afoul of the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection.

The law school engages in a "highly individualized, holistic review of each applicant's file" in which race counts as a factor but is not used in a "mechanical way," Justice O'Connor said. For that reason, she said, it was consistent with Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr.'s controlling opinion in the Bakke case in 1978, which permitted the use of race as one "plus factor."

The result of today's rulings was that Justice Powell's solitary view that there was a "compelling state interest" in racial diversity, a position that had appeared undermined by the court's subsequent equal protection rulings in other contexts and that some lower federal courts had boldly repudiated, has now been endorsed by five justices and placed on a stronger footing than ever before.

President Bush had asked the court to declare the universities' policies unconstitutional.

Although the four dissenters in the law school case did not directly confront the continued validity of the Bakke precedent, it was clear that both Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia would have overturned it if they could. "Every time the government places citizens on racial registers and makes race relevant to the provision of burdens or benefits, it demeans us all," Justice Thomas said in a dissenting opinion that Justice Scalia also signed.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote the principal dissenting opinion that spoke for all four, including Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. He took a more oblique approach that attacked the law school program not so much for its premise as for how it works in practice, dismissing it as "a carefully managed program designed to ensure proportionate representation of applicants from selected minority groups."

Justice Kennedy, writing separately, said that Justice Powell's opinion in the Bakke case "states the correct rule for resolving this case," but that the court had not applied the "meaningful strict scrutiny" under which the program should have been found unconstitutional.

Joining Justice O'Connor's majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, No. 02-241, were Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote a brief concurring opinion, and Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer.

By contrast with the law school, the admissions program for Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts awards 20 points on a scale of 150 for membership in an underrepresented minority group — blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians — with 100 points guaranteeing admission to the university's main undergraduate school. Fixed numbers of points are also awarded for other factors, including alumni connections, geography and athletics.

The inclusion of race on the scale, with the result that nearly all qualified minority applicants are admitted to the competitive program while many qualified white students are turned away, demonstrates the absence of the "individualized consideration" that the Bakke decision required, Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote. Justice O'Connor echoed that conclusion, describing the undergraduate program as a "nonindividualized, mechanical one."