Major U.S. Corporations Applaud Court Ruling on Affirmative Action

WASHINGTON (By Steven Greenhouse and Jonathan D. Glater, International Herald Tribune) June 25, 2004 - The U.S. Supreme Court's latest rulings signal to employers that they can continue to use race as a factor in hiring as they seek to build more diverse work forces, corporate executives and employment law experts say.

In ruling Monday on the admissions policies of the University of Michigan Law School, the court's majority opinion, written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, cited the views put forward by General Motors Corp. and other companies in friend-of-the-court briefs that said achieving diversity was essential at universities and in workplaces to compete in an increasingly global marketplace.

"The particular rationale she argued for was the needs of the globalization of business," said Bill Lann Lee, former director of the Justice Department's civil rights division. "She wrote about the practical benefits of diversity. She wrote that there is a business justification for diversity."

All businesses operating in the United States and seeking to achieve diversity can breathe a sigh of relief, said Lawrence Lorber, a former Labor Department official and a lawyer with the Washington office of Proskauer Rose. In upholding the law school plan, he said, "they effectively upheld employers' affirmative-action plans."

James Hackett, chief executive officer of Steelcase, an office furniture company that helped spearhead a series of friend-of-the-court briefs signed by 65 corporations backing the university position, said the ruling would further a trend already taking place in corporate America.

"This was less about affirmative action or quotas than about the university leadership having the ability to ensure diversity," Hackett said. "For me, that's the strong connection to business. It's something that business has been highly committed to for at least the last decade and has made tremendous strides in improving. The belief in diversity is not something that is argued anymore in business. It's a factor of being in business."

The court's decision reduced any uncertainty about what steps companies could take in hiring more women and minority employees, several analysts said.

Microsoft Corp. was one of the companies that signed a brief supporting the use of race in admissions. It recruits at historically black colleges, finances scholarships for minority students and has donated about $15 million in cash and software to the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund, said Claudette Whiting, senior diversity director at the software company.

The court's decision "really is a reinforcement of the many initiatives that companies like Microsoft and others have," Whiting said. "We are working diligently on the pipeline."

GM, an outspoken corporate supporter of the university's case, applauded the ruling. "General Motors' position has consistently been that diversity of background, thought and experience is essential to the education process," said Rod Gillum, vice president for corporate responsibility and diversity. "Efforts by universities to create a diverse student body from which corporations can recruit should be supported."

Like many companies, executives at GM said they sometimes took race into account in hiring. They said, for instance, it gave the company better insights when designing cars for Asian, Hispanic or African-American markets.