Federal Judge Asked To Drop Reverse Discrimination Suit

A federal judge was asked Friday to dismiss a lawsuit in which a woman contends she was denied admission to the University of Washington law school because she is white.

In addition, a brief filed by the state attorney general’s office asked that U.S. District Judge Thomas S. Zilly order Katuria E. Smith to pay the school’s legal fees and other costs.

In a lawsuit filed March 5, Smith said the law school’s admission criteria varied according to race and that “students from favored racial groups had a significantly greater chance of admission than students with similar academic credentials from disfavored racial groups.”

Smith, 31, a law student at Seattle University, sought unspecified damages for enrolling in what she said was a less prestigious and more expensive law school after being rejected at Washington in March 1994.

In their reply, assistant attorneys general Michael Madden and Rebecca Todd said the school’s policy was designed to avoid the possibility of bias against minorities from over-reliance on tests and grade-point averages.

Part of that process was to consider whether “an applicant had experienced any social or economic disadvantage that may have affected past academic performance,” they wrote.

“There is good reason to believe that exclusion of racial diversity or disadvantage from the range of considerations … would unlawfully discriminate against persons of color.”

At one point, the state’s brief added, Smith told the school “that she was part Native American.”