United Steelworkers of America v. Weber

The question addressed in Weber, Justice Brennan stated, was a narrow one. For more than a century, a large portion of civil rights cases had involved questions of the Fourteenth Amendment; but since in this case no state was involved, the amendment did not apply. Rather, Weber was one of a growing list of civil rights cases testing an act of Congress rather than a constitutional amendment. With University of California v. Bakke the year before and Fullilove v. Klutznick the year after, Weber was part of a series of cases that tested the problem of "reverse discrimination"--discrimination against the majority group in favor of the minority. With these three cases, the Court's pattern of protecting affirmative action, even at the expense of apparent injustice to equally qualified white workers, students, or contractors, seemed to be established.

Yet in Firefighters Local Union No. 1784 v. Carl W. Stotts, et al. (1984), the Court struck down a lower court's ruling that a fire department laying off workers had to get rid of whites with relatively more seniority, instead of lay off African Americans who had been hired later through an affirmative action program. Title VII, the Court ruled, upheld seniority. In 1986, with Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, the Court reinforced its position in striking down a voluntary affirmative action program that would similarly have laid off more senior whites before less senior African Americans.

On the heels of Wygant, however, the Court upheld affirmative action in two other 1986 cases, Local Number 28 of the Sheet Metal Workers' International v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Local Number 93, International Association of Firefighters, AFL-CIO C.L.C. v. City of Cleveland, et al. It reinforced its position in those cases, which had involved affirmative action for minorities, by its similar ruling in Johnson v. Transportation Agency (1987), a case which tested an affirmative action program for women.

Questions revolving around affirmative action and reverse discrimination, however, have remained controversial. In 1996, California voters passed the California Civil Rights Initiative, which forbade any forms of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin. The heated debates that followed, which resulted in a federal court's injunction postponing implementation of the initiative until opponents had an opportunity to challenge it, promise another Supreme Court battle to come.