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DETROIT — The University of Michigan law school’s admissions standards are unconstitutional because they use race as a factor in judging applicants, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. 

In a case that could wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman granted the plaintiff’s request for an injunction and ordered the law school to stop using race. 

“There is no question about the long and tragic history of race discrimination in this country,” Friedman wrote in his ruling. However, he said, that the law school’s justification for using race – to assemble a racially diverse student population – is not a compelling state interest. 

Even if it was in the state interest, the law school has not narrowly tailored its use of race to achieve that interest, the judge wrote. 

Miranda Massie, an attorney for a group of students who intervened in the case on the university’s side, vowed to appeal, saying Friedman’s opinion intensifies existing racial inequalities. 

“This decision threatens to resegregate higher education and to increase the unfair racist stigma that is faced by minority students in higher education,” Massie said.  

“We don’t need any institutions in this society to be reserved for white people alone. If this decision is sustained, that would be its impact.” 

A university spokeswoman said she was waiting to read Friedman’s ruling before commenting on Tuesday’s ruling. 

Friedman heard more than 64 hours of testimony.  

His job was to determine whether affirmative action is needed to offset biases that minority students face, whether the law school uses a double standard to admit minorities, and to what extent Michigan uses race when making admissions decisions. 

In a separate lawsuit, another federal judge ruled late last year that the university’s undergraduate admissions policy, which also takes race into account, is constitutional. Both suits are being closely watched by educators and could wind up in the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The suits were brought by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Individual Rights, a conservative group. 

“The University of Michigan spent millions and millions of dollars assembling the best possible legal defense,” said Terence Pell, the group’s chief executive. “For Judge Friedman to strike down the law school admissions system after all that money and time to the defense, that represents a huge shot across the bow for the entire higher education community.” 

The center brought down affirmative action at the University of Texas law school in 1996.  

The Texas school, like Michigan, argued that race-conscious admissions foster diversity. But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that while schools can consider an applicant’s economic and social background, race cannot be taken into account. 

The Supreme Court chose not to hear the Texas case because the school had already decided to end affirmative action. 

The law school case was brought on behalf of Barbara Grutter, who claimed that she was denied admission in 1997 because less-qualified minorities got unconstitutional preferential treatment.  

As a white applicant, she said the law school discriminated against her while accepting minority students with lower test scores and grade-point averages. 

University attorney John Payton has said the law school has one set of standards and a policy that is compliant with California’s Bakke case of 1978, in which the Supreme Court allowed consideration of race in university admissions but outlawed racial quotas. 

In December, U.S. District Judge Patrick Duggan affirmed Michigan’s undergraduate admissions standards in place since 1999 on the grounds that they are a constitutional way to achieve diversity.  

He found an undergraduate admissions system in place from 1995 to 1998 was more like a quota and was unconstitutional. 

That case had been brought in a 1997 lawsuit filed on behalf of two white students denied admission to the school.