Pros And Cons Of Affirmative Action

In the United States of America, affirmative action was established in the 1960’s in order to redress the disadvantages of minority and historically excluded groups. Specifically focusing on issues in education and the workforce, affirmative action aimed to make these public institutions more representative of the population that they served. However, while affirmative action was meant to level the playing field, some argued that it brought about reverse discrimination against those who were not disadvantaged in this nation. Opponents asserted that affirmative action policies favor one group over another based solely on race rather than qualifications. No matter the argument, the Supreme Court debated this issue and attempted to accommodate

Bakke, asserting that certain numerical targets based on race for employment and admission were unconstitutional. In this case, Allan P. Bakke, applied to the University of California Davis Medical School where he was rejected twice. After discovering that his test scores had been higher than some minorities receiving admission, he sued the university arguing that he had been denied equal protection of the law. In the end, the Supreme Court ruled in this landmark decision that the medical school’s quota policy violated the equal protection clause. However, while this case outlawed quota systems in a university’s admission policy, it upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action, specially in order to achieve higher racial diversity in education. Furthermore, in Hopwood v. Texas, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld that the University of Texas Law School could not use race as a factor in their admission policy in order to have a more racially diverse student population. In this case, Cheryl J. Hopwood filed suit against the University of Texas because she claimed that she had been denied admission even though she was better qualified than other minority students. Even though the Supreme Court refused to review the case at the time, the decision of Hopwood v. Texas was the precedent in the Court of Appeals until 2003, until the Supreme Court repealed the decision.

In Fullilove v. Klutznick, the US Supreme upheld the Second Circuit’s decision that the United States Congress could use its spending powers to rectify past discrimination. The policy in question was whether Congress could mandate that ten percent of federal funds allocated to public works programs could be set aside for companies owned by minorities. While the Court was deeply divided, even among the assenting decisions, the Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decision. In another case, Grutter v. Bollinger, the US Supreme Court upheld the affirmative action policies of the University of Michigan Law school. Barbara Grutter filed suit against the University, arguing that they had discriminated against her on the basis of race, violating the Fourteenth Amendment. With a 5-4 decision, the Court upheld that the University had a compelling interest in promoting class diversity and that since there was no quota system, race could play a factor in a university’s admission policy. Through both decisions, the court upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action in the United States. However, since the decisions contradicted Hopwood v. Texas, they again brought the constitutionality of affirmative action into question. Even so, through these cases, it is clear that the Supreme Court attempted to accommodate both