Last month, the Obama administration issued important guidance to colleges and universities on how to increase racial diversity on campuses, explaining ways to navigate the narrow legal channel charted by the Supreme Court. The benefits of diversity, the Department of Education said, contribute to “the educational, economic and civic life of this nation.” The administration’s support for such efforts stands in stark contrast to the policy of the George W. Bush administration to discourage them. That difference has played out between the political parties for decades, as it will in this presidential election.

Race-conscious programs in education — affirmative action in college admissions and voluntary integration of public schools — have been embattled for more than 40 years. Since the 1970s, the Supreme Court has restricted the approaches available to remedy racial disparities, but has left room for institutions to consider race in achieving certain broader aims.

The war has not ended, however, and three notable lawsuits around the country show the continuing controversy. In March, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit will reconsider Michigan’s ban on affirmative action in public university admissions, which a three-judge panel of the court struck down last summer. By prohibiting race-conscious admissions under the Michigan Constitution, the court said, the ban “reorders the political process in Michigan to place special burdens on minority interests.”

In the Fifth Circuit, a three-judge panel a year ago upheld the use of race as a factor in admissions at the University of Texas at Austin. Four-fifths of students there are admitted as graduates in the top 10 percent of their high school classes. But one-fifth are admitted based on individual assessments, including race as a factor, and this program is being challenged. The university is waiting to hear whether the Supreme Court will review that decision.