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March 3 (UPI) -- The California Supreme Court on Thursday denied the University of California, Berkeley's, request to block a lower court order that required it to limit its student enrollment. Justices voted 4-2 to uphold the ruling by a Superior Court ordering the university to reduce its student population from 45,057 to its 2020-2021 levels of 42,347 by the time the fall semester begins.
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Community group "Save Berkeley's Neighborhoods" filed a lawsuit against U.C. Berkeley under the California Environmental Quality Act to block a student housing project, arguing that the university should not expand enrollment when there is not enough housing for existing students.
"U.C. Berkeley has known since last August that they were subject to an enrollment cap, yet they took no action no action to notify applicants that they would be required to admit fewer students for Fall 2022," group President Phil Bokovoy said in a statement.
"Instead they waited until late January to notify students. This cynical political move uses our deserving young Californians as pawns in a political effort to avoid the severe impacts that unmitigated enrollment growth has had on low income tenants in the city of Berkeley."
The university has said the enrollment cap will result in a loss of more than 3,000 undergraduate seats and 5,100 fewer admissions offers sent to high school seniors and transfer applicants.
In a dissent, Justice Goodwin Liu noted the negative impact on prospective students and the loss of the "contributions of leadership, innovation and service" that would come about by limiting enrollment.
"In addition to the acute loss to each of these prospective students, the City of Berkeley would also be denied the social and economic benefits of accomodating a full student population, while the university's potential loss of $57 million in tuition would undermine California's interests in expanding access to education." Liu wrote.
U.C. Berkeley plans to begin mailing admissions offers March 23, and said previously it would decrease the number of offers from to 15,900 from 21,000.
The university's public affairs office said Thursday that it was disappointed by the ruling, saying it was "devastating news for the thousands of students who have worked so hard for and have earned a seat in our fall 2022 class."
Further, U.C. Berkeley said it was in conversation with lawmakers "to identify possible legislative solutions" to the issue.
"At the same time, we are preparing to implement enrollment reduction in case there is no timely fix," the university said.
"Our implementation strategies will focus on mitigating the harm to prospective students, largely by increasing online enrollment and/or asking new, incoming students to delay enrollment until January 2023.
"While these strategies will enable U.C. Berkeley to make available as many enrollment seats as we can, the lower court order leaves us with options that are far from ideal."
