Gabriel Guerra

Dr. Steven Collins

American Government 1113

3 March 25, 2017

First Case Study

As a minority, I feel like I should disagree with the Supreme Court decision in the case of

University of California v. Bakke, but I believe the court got it mostly right. The question at hand was if

the university violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause and the Civil Rights Act of

1964, by practicing an affirmative action policy that had Mr. Allan Bakke rejected twice of their medical

school program. The school had 100 spots open but 16 of those were set aside only for minority

students. While I could understand Allan Bakke's frustration because he was more qualified than the

other minority applicants, I believe that 84 available spots out of 100 for white students are more than

fair because of past actions of prejudice. Nevertheless, the case started on June 20, 1974, when Bakke

filed suit against the university in the Superior Court of California, Yolo County. The judge F. Leslie

Manker decided that the program was unconstitutional, stating that "no race or ethnic group should ever

be granted privileges or immunities not given to every other race"; Both parties Allan Bakke and Regents

of the University of California appealed in March of 1975, Allan because he was not ordered admitted

and the University because its program was shut down. The Supreme court of California ordered the

appeal to bypass the intermediate appeals court and a year after the appeal, the case was argued to the

states Supreme Court. And on September 16, 1976, the California Supreme Court held the lower court

decision that the universities special admissions program violated the 14 th amendment and ordered Mr.

Bakke to be admitted.
 On October 12, 1977, the oral argument for the case took center stage at the Supreme Court of

the United and on June 28, 1978, the court decided in a plurality opinion 5-4 for Bakke. Chief Justice

Lewis F. Powell ruled that a state may constitutionally consider race as a factor, but only as a factor in

many, and considered in a case by case basis, justices Rehnquist, Stewart, Stevens, and Burger agreed

with him, thus the policy of using racial quotas by the university was deemed in violation of the Equal

protection clause. The remaining four justices (White, Marshall, Brennan, and Blackmun) did not agree

with that portion or minority admissions programs but agreed with the rest of the judges that affirmative

action is constitutional in some cases. I think that by allowing affirmative action the court allowed for a

slippery-slope, we cannot change the past and I understand there are still effects of past discrimination

but allowing race to play a somewhat important and allowing institutions to freely do as the deem

appropriate with race, as the court did not give a clear system on how colleges could consider race.

Therefore I agree with the court finding that the use of strict racial quotas was unconstitutional. We

cannot as a society continue to pass laws benefiting only a part of the people in it just seems

counterproductive and flawed logic to discriminate one race because of past actions. As Judge Powell

stated that there is no evidence that the imbalance of minority's to past discriminatory practices;

therefore, the desire to readdress racial imbalance said to come from societal discrimination. So then the

university’s racial classification was discrimination by society at large because of no determined effects.

Ultimately I found the case oddly fascinating that only a decade after the Civil Rights Act was passed

there was a case in the supreme court over reverse discrimination.

 Works Cited

"Regents of the University of California v. Bakke." Oyez, https://www.oyez.org/cases/1979/76-811.

Accessed 26 Mar. 2017.

“U.S. Const. amend. XIV.”