1. The two major Supreme Court decisions need to be identified, which are related to student to

The Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action case changed education. It prohibited state universities from considering a student 's race as a factor in their application. By accepting a student into a university over another student because of their race is completely unconstitutional concerning civil rights. Race-based preferences have major violations concerning the Equal Protection Clause. The court has the obvious authority to prohibit such a thing and they did because it’s the constitutional thing to do. Everyone is equal. Opinions may differ but in this case a majority of people would agree that

The Supreme Court is perhaps most well known for the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954. By declaring that segregation in schools was unconstitutional, Kevern Verney says a ‘direct reversal of the Plessy … ruling’1 58 years earlier was affected. It was Plessy which gave southern

Case: In the late 1950's the New York State Board of Regents wrote and adopted a prayer, which was supposed to be nondenominational. The board recommended that students in public schools say the prayer on a voluntary basis every morning. In New Hyde Park Long Island a parent sued the school claiming that the prayer violated the first amendment of the constitution. The school argued that the prayer was nondenominational and did not attempt to "establish or endorse" a religion and thus that it did not violate the establishment clause.

In the years since, interpretations of these laws by the U.S. Supreme Court has defined how affirmative action policies are to be implemented. The Court has held that affirmative action policies are Constitutional wherever it can be shown that ""¦ there has been a clear history of racial discrimination" (United Press International). In 1978, the Court ruling in Regents of University of California v. Bakke defined the concept of 'reverse discrimination' by holding that slots for medical school admissions could not be set aside for minorities, because it could result in admitting less qualified candidates based on racial quotas. In 2003, in Gratz v. Bollinger, the Court defined the concept of 'individualized consideration' when it declared that an undergraduate affirmative action policy at the University of Michigan was unconstitutional because it focused on the race of applicants rather than their

The landmark Supreme Court cases of Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas have had a tremendous effect on the struggle for equal rights in America. These marker cases have set the precedent for cases dealing with the issue of civil equality for the last 150 years.

Also commonly referred to as The Steel Seizure Case, it was a United States Supreme Court decision that limited the power of the President of the United States to seize private property in the absence of either specifically enumerated authority under Article Two of the US Constitution or statutory authority conferred on him by Congress. The Majority decision was that the President had no power to act except in those cases expressly or implicitly authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress.

The case known as Fisher v. University of Texas, was to chosen to be first heard by the Supreme Court in late 2012. It entails a case on affirmative action. Abigail Fisher felt that she had been discriminated against because of her race. She also claimed to have had higher qualifications than her counterparts, and therefore deserved to be admitted into the University of Texas. According to the Washington Post, the suit brought on by Fisher is the first time that the court has revisited affirmative action since its landmark ruling in the 2003

Legal Question: The legal issue presented in this case ultimately questioned the University of Michigan’s admission policy which sought a more diverse student body. The court addressed whether the University of Michigan’s use of racial preferences in the admission process violated

The case of Bakke v. Regents of California was one in which Bakke, a white applicant to the University, was denied acceptance even though people of minority

The case of Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action was presented before the Supreme Court of the United States; the case questioned that whether a state violated the Equal Protection Clause of 14th Amendment by maintaining a ban on the racial and sex preferences on the admissions in the public universities in the constitution of the state (Bernstein). The arguments on these cases started on 15th October, 2013 on an appeal for the Sixth Circuit from the United States Court of Appeal, which had established the rule in 2012 regarding Michigan ban, which was approved by the voters of the state in the year 2006. The Sixth Circuit emphasized that the Michigan ban was unconstitutional. But, the ban on the state was upheld, the Sixth

Having done so it would still need to be narrowly tailored so as not to unduly injure any associated groups or individuals. Powell determined that attaining a diverse student body in an institution of higher education was a compelling state interest. In order to be narrowly tailored to this interest, the institution should use race as a "plus" factor. The quota system that the University of California applied set aside positions for minority students and focused on having a diverse statistical surface rather than attaining actual diverse backgrounds. Rather, as was done at Harvard, it was expected that all students should be considered together and race used as a bonus for minorities that would help account for the special perspective such students could bring to the campus (Schauer 589-597). While Powell's outline for programs had plenty of dissenters, none of them ever made it to a prominent position in the court system and so, since 1978, the rules of Bakke have been the proverbial law of the land. That is, until recently.

The first landmark ruling of affirmative action occurred on June 28, 1978 in the Supreme Court case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. The case involved the UC Davis medical school that had two admissions pools. One was for standard applications and the other was specifically for minorities and economically disadvantaged students. Alan Bakke was a white applicant that was rejected twice despite having significantly better test scores than several minorities who were accepted into the program. He claimed that judging him by his race was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment. The court ruled that race was a legitimate factor for admissions but inflexible quotas were not. The court split five-four and although it made a very important ruling it still had not addressed many of the issues that had surfaced as a result of the case (Brunner).

RULE: Race-based affirmative action as a plus factor in the admissions process of an applying student to public universities and other public institutions of high education is constitutional. Given that the program is “narrowly tailored.” This allows schools to determine if there is a “critical mass” of a given race, and determine if an applicant if admitted would be beneficial in creating a diverse learning environment.

There was a case called Fisher v. University of Texas that concerned the application process of incoming college freshmen. A young lady named Abigail Fisher believed that the university declined her acceptance to the school because of her race. This brought up a decision made by the Supreme Court. They believed that keeping diversity in the university is more essential than the equality of the applicant's application.

& Martinez, 2003). The Supreme Court ruled that the University of California was wrong in the way they approached a special admissions program that was open only to minority applicants (Aguirre Jr. & Martinez, 2003). The ruling argued that the special admissions program violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (Aguirre Jr. & Martinez, 2003). Justice Lewis Powell, Jr. stated in his opinion on the Bakke case that quotas “would hinder rather than further attainment of genuine diversity” (Aguirre Jr. & Martinez, 2003, p. 141). Justice Powell, Jr. also wrote that race is only one part of many factors that an institution can consider in truly achieving a heterogeneous student population (Aguirre Jr. & Martinez, 2003). By siding with Bakke in this case, the Supreme Court essentially outlawed the use of racial quotas in admissions processes in higher education, yet universities took this as it is okay to use race as a selective factor as long as there are no quotas (Aguirre Jr. & Martinez, 2003).