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Affirmative Action Case Study

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Affirmative action has been relevant in the United States since the Civil Rights Movement. President John F. Kennedy created Executive Order 10925, which created the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, to enforce equal opportunities for blacks or other historically oppressed minorities. Affirmative action programs spread from the work force into the admission process for colleges and universities across the United States. The University of Michigan had two Supreme Court cases challenging their undergraduate and law school admission policy. In Gratz v. Bollinger, an applicant to the undergraduate program, who was denied admission, challenged it because she felt she was denied admission because she did not belong to a minority. In Grutter …show more content…

Affirmative action started during the Civil Rights Movement, when President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925 that would create the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, “comprised of representatives from the major federal agencies and the public, and included a new nondiscrimination clause for all government contracts” (Sewell, 2004, p. 357). This committee would be federally funded for their projects, such as affirmative action, to make sure that all hiring and employment policies were free of discrimination. Eventually, these affirmative action practices were adopted by colleges and universities. While in its beginning, many people saw affirmative action as a form of reverse discrimination, but today it is one of the most debated topics because many people view it as unfair. This is because those jobs or positions may not be going to the most qualified candidate for that job or position, and some feel that they are being penalized just because of their …show more content…

Bollinger, Barbara Grutter challenged the University of Michigan Law School’s admission requirements when she was rejected from the law school. She claimed that she was only rejected because, “the law school used race ‘as a predominant factor, giving minority applicants a significantly greater chance of admission than students with similar credentials form disfavored racial groups’” (Epermanis, Franklin, Robinson, 2007, p. 34). The Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan claimed that Grutter would have been admitted if she would have been black or Hispanic. Epermanis, Franklin, and Robinson (2007) found

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