Regents V. Bakke

Dawn Slavinski 1/3/05

Constitutional Law Supreme Court Case Write-Up

Case: Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1976)

Source: Internet

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=438&invol=265

http://texascivilrightsreview.org/phpnuke/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=129

http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/324/

Issue:

Did the University of California violate the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, by practicing an affirmative action policy that resulted in the repeated rejection of Bakke's application for admission to its medical school?

Facts:

Allan Bakke, a thirty-eight year old white engineer, was twice denied admission to the medical school at the University of California at Davis. To ensure minority representation in the student body, the university has set aside sixteen seats for minority applicants (out of one hundred students), as part of the university's affirmative action program, in an effort to redress longstanding, unfair minority exclusions from the medical profession. Challenging the set-aside as a violation of his constitutional right to equal protection of the laws, Bakke contended that he would have been admitted has it not been for this rigid preference system. In each year his application was rejected, the school has accepted some minority applicants with qualifications (GPA and test scores) inferior to Bakke's.

Court's Opinion:

Handed down on June 28 1978, the decision of the Court was announced by Justice Lewis Powell. The court ruled in a 5-4 decision that race could be one, but only one, of numerous factors used by discriminatory boards, like those of college admissions. Powell found that quotas insulated minority applicants from competition with the regular applicants and were thus unconstitutional because they discriminated against regular applicants. Powell however stated that universities could use race as a plus factor. He cited the Harvard College Admissions Program which had been filed as an amicus curiae as an example of a constitutionally valid affirmative action program which took into account of all of an applicants qualities including race in a "holistic review."

Powell argued that the use of racial quotas as employed at the school violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The remaining four justices held that the use of race as a criterion in admissions decisions in higher education was constitutionally permissible. Powell joined that opinion as well, contending that the use of race was permissible as one of several admission criteria. So, the Court managed to minimize white opposition to the goal of equality (by finding for Bakke) while extending gains for racial minorities through affirmative action. The nature of this split opinion created controversy over whether Powell's opinion was binding. However, in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger the Supreme Court affirmed Powell's opinion.

Dissenting