User:Yajzel V/Affirmative action in the United States

Response to lawsuits regarding affirmative action in college admissions, which provoked court rulings that prohibited it's use despite the "success" it prompted.

Racial Quotas in College Admissions

The use of affirmative action in higher education has been debated countless of times during college admissions seasons, especially due to the mismatch effect. Though it creates opportunities for people of color and for people of minority groups to access higher education, many public universities, have been attacked for depending on racial quotas, implemented through affirmative action policies, to reach diversity goals. This has prompted for high profile lawsuits and Supreme Court rulings based on arguments of reverse racism that prevents admissions to "more qualified" white students to take place. Consequently, these cases have constantly reshaped the view on affirmative action policies by referring to it, in its original sense, a race-conscious policy, which ultimately obliges the inclusion of people of minority groups in higher education. Most importantly, it has questioned whether or not affirmative action is effective in numerical goals while avoiding preferential treatment, and have deemed it a form of "reverse discrimination."

Bakke v Regents of the University of California

In 1974, the California Supreme Court ruled that UC Davis violated the Equal Protection Clause and the Civil Rights Act because they were relying on racial quotas heavily. Allen Bakke was a thirty-five year old man who applied to UC Davis medical school in two consecutive years, but was rejected both times. This was because UC Davis had a special admission affirmative action program that reserved 16 spots for minority students, out of 100 admission slots, which Bakke argued was the reason he was rejected twice from the medical program despite having a high GPA and MCAT score. In this special program, mostly run by members from minority groups, applicants who were considered disadvantaged did not have to meet the 2.5 grade point average minimum that the general admissions program implemented, and were only rated against other applicants from minority groups. Since UC Davis wasn’t able to prove that Bakke wouldn’t have been admitted even if the special admission programs didn’t exist, it was concluded that he was being discriminated by the color of his skin and was not being treated equally against the law due to the racial quota. Thus, Bakke was admitted to the school, as 8 out of 9 judges declared that the heavy reliance on the racial quota violated the Equal Protection Clause on the Fourteenth Amendment. This ruling, however, did not prohibit the use of race as a factor in college admissions decisions, it only prohibited its use for non-competitive admissions that favored a small demographic of minority group students.

Court Cases

• 1978 — Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978) — The UC Davis School of Medicine admissions program violated the Equal Protection Clause with the institution of quotas for underrepresented minorities. However, Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr.'s concurring opinion deemed diversity in higher education a "compelling interest" and held that race could be one of the factors in university admissions.

• 2003 — Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003)
• 2003 — Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003)