Examples Of Reverse Discrimination

“Civil rights are rights that constitute free and equal citizenship and include personal, political, and economic rights” (Altman). Discrimination is defined as denying someone these rights based off of race, sex, ethnicity, etc. Affirmative action was put into place to ensure equal representation and fair treatment of minorities in college admission policies. Since it began, it has increased the number of minorities admitted into colleges and has made it harder for average white Americans to be admitted. Many have begun to argue reverse discrimination, particularly after the Bakke case. There have been four landmark cases and decisions in the Supreme Court that have gone on to form the way colleges select students for admission. This process

Bakke was a landmark Supreme Court decision and was the case that began the discuss of reverse discrimination. This case was heard and decided by the Burger Court. Allan Bakke (35-years-old) applied to the University of California Medical School at Davis. He applied for admission twice and was rejected twice. The school had an affirmative action program that tried to fix unfair minority exclusion from higher education and the medical area. “The medical school reserved 16 out of 100 seats in its entering class for minorities, including ‘Blacks,’ ‘Chicanos,’ ‘Asians,’ and ‘American Indians’. The rigid admissions quota was administered by a special school committee” (McBride). Bakke believed his rejections were racist because his qualifications were greater than any of the minority students that were admitted over him. He believed he was rejected from admission directly because of race. The question that was directed at the court was “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 schools?” (Regents of the University of California v. Bakke). Ultimately, the Court votes deemed that Bakke should be admitted to the medical program. The Court ruled that while race could be used in admissions decisions, “any racial quota

She was denied admission. In the Supreme Court case Grutter v Bollinger (2003), the University admitted it used race as a factor for admission. Grutter asked the Court to decide, “Does the Law School’s use of racial preference in admissions violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or the Civil Rights Act of 1964?” (Grutter v. Bollinger). The Court clearly stated that diversity was a compelling interest in higher education at the time because of the limited number of minorities in higher education at the time. Alex McBride further explains the ruling, stating “the school's interest in promoting ‘student diversity’ was sufficiently ‘compelling,’ and its case-by-case admissions process was ‘narrowly tailored’ enough, to withstand strict scrutiny. ‘Student diversity’ was important enough to pass constitutional muster because it both counters racial stereotypes and ensures the presence of racial minorities in the nation's elite” (McBride). Unlike in Gratz v Bollinger, where the University had a distribution of points, making it a quota system, in Grutter v Bollinger, the Court held that the Law School’s goal of attaining diversity did not make its system into a quota and therefore was constitutional. In the dissent, the Court made it clear that the Law School’s policy was constitutional because minorities