Race played a larger part in the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision Monday to uphold the University of Michigan’s law school affirmative action program than most people realize.

Even while rejecting the undergraduate admissions process that automatically awards 20 points to people of color by a vote of 6-3, a majority of the judges ruled that race could still be a factor in admissions as long as it is not given too much weight.

In addition to awarding extra points to underrepresented groups, the undergraduate admissions counselors also automatically awarded 20 points to all scholarship athletes, it provided 20 points to economically disadvantaged White applicants and awarded extra points to applicants from geographically underrepresented areas of Michigan.

The cases were being heard by an institution that has upheld White supremacy throughout most of its existence. Of the nine justices, seven were appointed by Republican presidents.

In 1857, the pre-Civil War court ruled in the Dred Scott decision that slaves were “beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the White man was bound to respect.”

The “Plessy v. Ferguson” decision in 1896 upheld “separate but equal” facilities for the races. And, it wasn’t until 1954, that the Supreme Court repudiated segregation and ordered the desegregation of public schools in “Brown v. Board of Education.” In the “Bakke” case 25 years ago, it ruled that race could be used as a “plus factor” when evaluating college applicants.

Congress, on the other hand, had a much better record, enacting the first Civil Rights Act in 1866. Two years later, it passed the 14th Amendment to the constitution, which was ratified to protect former slaves from the wrath of Southern lawmakers. The amendment prevents states from denying or abridging the rights of any citizens and forbids any state from denying any person “life, liberty or property, without due process of law.”

In its pleadings, the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), the Right-wing law group that brought the two suits against the University of Michigan on behalf of rejected White applicants, has turned the 14th Amendment on its head. Instead of protecting African-Americans, as originally designed, CIR has used the amendment to argue, in this case, that White applicants to Michigan were not being afforded equal protection under the law.

They’ve adopted that tactic even though some Whites with lower grades and test scores than the plaintiffs were admitted to the University of Michigan.

Moreover, as the University of Michigan acknowledges on its Web site, “Every year some White students are admitted with lower test scores and lower GPAs than some minority students who are rejected.”

That notwithstanding, the CIR only chose to attack the affirmative action programs that primarily benefit people of color. Because the only issue before the court pertained to race, the justices did not rule on other aspects of the University of Michigan admissions policies that also award extra points.

Of course, if African-Americans were getting as much “preferential treatment” as CIR professes, they would represent more than 8.1 percent of the undergraduate student body and 6.7 percent of the law students.

CIR has attempted to put a soft edge on its crude actions by hijacking the language and tactics of the Civil Rights Movement, even to the point of claiming they are acting in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The fact that nothing could be further from the truth has not prevented them to trying to perpetrate that hoax on the American public.

The Center for Individual Rights has a Right-wing political agenda and they attacked the Michigan programs for political reasons. Lee Colorinos, author of “The Assault on Diversity: An Organized Challenge to Racial and Gender Justice,” describes CIR as, “perhaps the most politically extreme of the groups challenging affirmative action, civil rights, and racial equality in the United States today.”

CIR is the same group that represented Cheryl Hopwood to get affirmative action outlawed in Texas and brought a similar, though unsuccessful, suit against the University of Washington. Monday’s ruling supercedes previous efforts to outlaw affirmative action in Texas and California.

George W. Bush is expected to appoint one and possibly two Supreme Court justices before leaving office. While campaigning for president, he declared that any appointment he makes to the court will be in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the two most conservative members of the conservative court.

Bush is also pushing through a group of ultra conservative judges at the lower levels. When they rise through the ranks, Monday’s victory may eventually be a fleeting one.