Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978)
Facts of the Case:
Allan Bakke, a thirty-five-year-old white man, had twice applied for admission to the University of California Medical School at Davis. He was rejected both times. The school reserved sixteen places in each entering class of one hundred for "qualified" minorities, as part of the university's affirmative action program, in an effort to redress longstanding, unfair minority exclusions from the medical profession. Bakke's qualifications (college GPA and test scores) exceeded those of any of the minority students admitted in the two years Bakke's applications were rejected. Bakke contended, first in the California courts, then in the Supreme Court, that he was excluded from admission solely on the basis of race.
Question Presented:
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?
Conclusion:
No and yes. There was no single majority opinion. Four of the justices contended that any racial quota system supported by government violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., agreed, casting the deciding vote ordering the medical school to admit Bakke. However, in his opinion, Powell argued that the rigid 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.
Background:
One of the most important affirmative action cases is Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. Allan Bakke was a 37-year-old NASA engineer who applied for application to the University of California at DavisMedicalSchool in the late 1970s. He was twice denied admission, even though his test scores were higher than those of several minority applicants who were admitted. The school's admission procedures reserved sixteen of the 100 spots in each entering class for "disadvantaged" applicants--blacks, Hispanics, American Indians and Asian Americans.
In response to Bakke's challenge of the admission policy, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Allan P. Bakke, holding for the first time that whites as well as blacks and members of other minorities can be the victims of racial discrimination. The court's decision upheld a ruling by a lower court that ordered the U.C.DavisMedicalSchool to accept Bakke as a student and declared invalid a special admissions program that had given preference to blacks.
However, in its ruling, a majority of the Supreme Court agreed that under certain circumstances race may be taken into account in devising state and federal programs to remedy the lingering effects of past discrimination.
Justice Louis Powell wrote the core of the decision. He concluded that the university's goal of achieving a racially diverse student body justified consideration of race in evaluating applicants to the MedicalSchool.
Powell said an intent to discriminate is evident in the Davis program, whereas no such fault exists in a system in which race or ethnic background is simply one element “to be weighed fairly against other elements in the selection process.”
The fatal flaw, Powell's opinion said, is in the program's “disregard of individual rights as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.”
Justices William J. Brennan Jr, Byron R. White, Thurgood Marshall and Harry A. Blackmun stood together in a concurring opinion that also held that race can be an appropriate consideration in university admission programs.
The Court concluded that the school must admit Bakke, but it did not ban the use of quotas if they were aimed at redressing current and past discrimination against minorities. The position taken by the Supreme Court appears to say that affirmative action programs may include race as a factor in encouraging a more diverse society, but that such programs run the risk of court challenge if they are too rigidly structured
In a final note, however, public disfavor with this more aggressive brand of affirmative action in California grew to point that in 1996 voters in that state passed a proposition banning the use of quotas in university admissions in the University of California system.