A federal appeals court panel yesterday struck down a University of Georgia admissions policy that it said unconstitutionally enhanced the chances of some blacks and other racial minorities of gaining admission to the school.

The three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled unanimously that the policy -- adopted in 1999 but suspended after it came under legal challenge -- violated the Constitution's equal protection clause.

The decision was the latest in a series of conflicting federal court rulings on the use of affirmative action programs in admissions practices. Experts say the conflict eventually will have to be settled by the Supreme Court.

Calling the Georgia policy "rigid and incomplete . . . and concededly arbitrary," the court said: "A policy that mechanically awards an arbitrary 'diversity' bonus to each and every nonwhite applicant at a decisive stage in the admissions process, and severely limits the range of other factors relevant to diversity that may be considered at that stage, fails strict scrutiny."

A spokesman for the Georgia attorney general's office said a decision had not yet been made on whether to appeal the ruling to the full appeals court or to the Supreme Court. In a statement, University of Georgia President Michael F. Adams said: "We are clearly disappointed. . . . We certainly respect the court, but may have a differing opinion about whether the university's admissions program is 'narrowly tailored.' "

A. Lee Parks Jr., the lawyer who represented three white women who challenged the policy, said the court's key finding was that race alone does not equal diversity. "This decision has huge national consequences," he said.

The university had argued in its appeal of a lower court ruling that ensuring diversity in its student body was a compelling state interest and that the policy would help remedy a history of racial discrimination. About 6 percent of the university's student body is black, while the state's population is more than 25 percent black.

Under the school's admissions policy, the vast majority of University of Georgia undergraduate students were admitted on the basis of high school grades and standardized test scores. But a group of students who were not automatically admitted was assigned additional "points" based on other factors, the most heavily weighted of which was race. The highest-scoring of these students were also admitted to the university, he said.

Recently, one federal court struck down race as a factor in the admissions policy at the University of Michigan Law School, but another court upheld race as a factor in the admissions policy for undergraduates at the same school.

An appellate court upheld the use of race in admissions for the University of Washington law school last year, although voters invalidated it in a 1998 ballot initiative. In May, the Supreme Court declined to review that case.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company