Affirmative action at the University of Michigan

Affirmative action at the University of Michigan refers to a set of race-conscious admission policies that were implemented at the university from 1963, during the administration of the university's eighth president, Harlan Hatcher, until 2006, when state law effectively prohibited the practice.

The affirmative measures in the university's admissions process have been the subject of several court cases, two of which reached the U.S. Supreme Court: Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger. The admissions practices in Gratz v. Bollinger were ruled unconstitutional on the grounds that they violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, while in Grutter v. Bollinger, they were upheld. In 2023, the Supreme Court overruled Grutter v. Bollinger in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, determining that affirmative action in student admissions again violated the Equal Protection Clause.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist argued in the case of Grutter v. Bollinger that the university's admissions system was, in fact, a thinly veiled and unconstitutional quota system. U.S. President George W. Bush publicly opposed the admission policies, stating, "I strongly support diversity of all kinds, including racial diversity in higher education. But the method used by the University of Michigan to achieve this important goal is fundamentally flawed".