University of California v. Bakke - Further Readings

Petitioner
The Medical School of the University of California
Respondent
Allan Bakke
Petitioner's Claim
That the California Supreme Court erred in ruling that the school's special-admissions program for minorities violated Bakke's civil rights as a white male when he was denied admission.
Chief Lawyers for Petitioner
Archibald Cox, Paul J. Mishkin, Jack B. Owens, Donald L. Reidhaar
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Reynold H. Colvin
Justices for the Court
Harry A. Blackmun, William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (writing for the Court), Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
Warren E. Burger, William H. Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens, Potter Stewart
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
28 June 1978
Decision
That the school's special-admissions program was unconstitutional.
Significance
For the first time, the Supreme Court said there could be such a thing as reverse discrimination.
The University of California operates several campuses throughout the state,and it is one of the largest state-sponsored higher education systems. At theuniversity's campus in Davis, California, a medical school was established in 1968 with an entering class of 50 students. Three years later, the enteringclass size was doubled to 100 students. Originally, there was no preferential admissions policy for minorities. From 1968 to 1970, the school implementeda special-admissions program to increase minority representation in each entering class.
The special admissions program worked separately from the regular admissionsprogram. Sixteen percent of the entering class was reserved for minorities, and minority applicants were processed and interviewed separately from regularapplicants. The grade point averages and standardized test score averages for special-admissions entrants were significantly lower than for regular-admissions entrants.
In 1973, a Caucasian male named Allan Bakke applied to the Davis Medical School. Although Bakke got a combined score of 468 out of a possible 500 from hisinterviewers, his application was rejected. There were 2,464 applications for the 100 positions in the 1973 entering class, and by the time Bakke's application came up for consideration the school was only taking applicants with scores of 470 or better. Four special-admissions seats were left unfilled, however, and Bakke wrote a bitter letter to Dr. George H. Lowrey, associate deanand chairman of the admissions committee, complaining about the injustice ofthe special-admissions process.
Bakke applied again in 1974. That year there was even more competition for the 100 entering class positions: the school received 3,737 applications. Lowrey was one of Bakke's interviewers and gave him a low score, which contributedto Bakke's being rejected once again. Furious, Bakke sued the University ofCalifornia in the Superior Court of California.
Bakke alleged that the medical school's special admissions program acted to exclude him on the basis of his race and violated his rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the California Constitution, and civil rights legislation. The trial court agreed but refused to order the school to admit Bakke as a student. Bakke appealed tothe California Supreme Court, which confirmed the trial court's decision that the school's admissions programs were unconstitutional and ordered the school to admit Bakke.
Reverse Discrimination Claimed
The school appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and argued their case on 12 October 1977. Bakke's attorney, Colvin, was making his first Supreme Court appearance, and he faced several experienced attorneys. For example, Cox was a former Harvard Law School professor and had served as Watergate Special Prosecutor. Colvin found himself immersed in an argument with Justice Thurgood Marshall, the only African American on the court, over whether minorities should beaccorded any preference in the school's admissions process:

Marshall: You are arguing about keeping somebody out and the other side is arguing about getting somebody in.

Colvin: That's right.

Marshall: So it depends on which way you look at it doesn't it? .. .

Colvin: If I may finish . . .

Marshall: You are talking about your client's rights. Don't theseunderprivileged people have some rights?

Colvin: They certainly have the right to . . .

Marshall: To eat cake.

On 28 June 1978 Justice Powell announced the decision of the majority in the5-4 decision. It held that the school's special-admissions policy constitutedreverse discrimination and was thus illegal. The court upheld the decision of the California Supreme Court, and affirmed the California court's order that Bakke be admitted to the school. Further, the Court upheld the California court's determination that the school's special-admissions program had to be scrapped. However, the Court held that schools could continue to give preference to minorities, so long as they did not exclude whites from a specific portion of the entering class, like the school had. The Court cited Harvard University's program as a model for an acceptable admissions policy that gave consideration to racial status without violating the civil rights of whites suchas Bakke:

The experience of other university admissions programs,which take race into account in achieving the educational diversity valued by the First Amendment, demonstrates that the assignment of a fixed number ofplaces to a minority group is not a necessary means toward that end. An illuminating example is found in the Harvard College program . . . When the [Harvard] Committee on Admissions reviews the large middle group of applicants whoare admissible and deemed capable of doing good work in their courses, the race of an applicant may tip the balance in his favor just as geographic originor a life spent on a farm may tip the balance in other candidates' cases. Afarm boy from Idaho can bring something to Harvard College that a Bostonian cannot offer. Similarly, a black student can usually bring something that a white person cannot offer.

In Harvard college admissions the committee has not set target quotas for thenumber of blacks, or of musicians, football players, physicists or Californians to be admitted in a given year.
In a nutshell, the Court had ruled that while schools could give minority applicants some extra preference and consideration, they could not set aside a quota of positions for minority students that excluded whites. Such a program,like that at the Davis Medical School, constituted reverse discrimination. Bakke had won his case and would be admitted as a student. It was the first time that the Supreme Court applied civil rights protection to white students seeking admission to a university.
Related Cases

• United Steelworkers of America v. Weber, 443 U.S. 193 (1979).
  
• Hopwood v. Texas, 78 F.3d 932 (5th Cir. 1996).