The Supreme Court announced that it would decide whether race-conscious university admissions procedures intended to promote racial and ethnic diversity illegally discriminate against white applicants–setting the stage for a historic battle at the court over access to U.S. higher education.

At issue are claims by prospective students who say they were rejected by the University of Michigan’s undergraduate program and law school because they are white. The applicants say Michigan uses admissions criteria that systematically shut out whites in favor of African Americans and other minorities with the same or lower grades and test scores.

But Michigan says its admissions process considers each applicant as an individual, factoring in race only as part of an effort to ensure all students the benefits of learning in an ethnically diverse environment.

It is a rationale invoked by hundreds of other colleges and universities, many of which say that without affirmative action, they would go back to being nearly all-white.

A high-profile Supreme Court case over race-based university admissions could rekindle the wider political debate over affirmative action, which became a “wedge issue” pushing many white voters from Democratic to Republican ranks in the 1980s and ’90s before receding in recent years.

The case is potentially sensitive for the Bush administration, whose core conservative supporters oppose affirmative action, but whose outreach efforts have targeted Hispanics and other minority voters.