Earlier this year, we noted that the Supreme Court was poised to look at a Michigan measure banning racial preferences in college admissions after implementation of the voter-approved rules were rejected by an appeals court.

Now, it looks like the conservative majority appeared to look favorably on the legislation.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared to look favorably on Michigan’s voter-approved law that bans use of racial criteria in college admissions.

An hour of oral arguments Tuesday afternoon raised anew thorny, unresolved questions over race and remedies.

The justices are being asked to decide the constitutionality of a 2006 referendum that prohibits race- and sex-based discrimination or preferential treatment in public university admission decisions. That ban was written into the state’s constitution.

The high court appeared to divide along ideological lines over whether the law has the effect of restructuring the political process to make it harder for minority groups to enact policies benefiting them, in possible violation of the 14th Amendment.

“It seems the goal posts keep changing every few years for minorities,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, over efforts to blunt or eliminate affirmative action.

“You could say that the whole point of something like the Equal Protection Clause is to take race off the table,” said Chief Justice John Roberts. “Is it unreasonable for the state to say, race is a lightning rod?”

The high court just 16 weeks ago affirmed the use of race at the University of Texas, but made it harder for institutions to justify such policies to achieve diversity.

In that dispute, a white student said the college’s existing affirmative action policy violated her “equal protection” rights, while civil rights supporters of such programs claim Michigan’s ban also has the same effect.

A federal appeals court last year concluded the affirmative action ban, which Michigan voters passed in a 2006 referendum, violated the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection guarantees.

It was the latest step in a legal and political battle over whether state colleges can use race and gender as a factor in choosing which students to admit.

The law was passed seven years ago with support of 58% of voters. It was added to the state’s constitution, and bars publicly funded colleges from granting “preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin.