Abigail Fisher Case

In the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) case, Allan Bakke, a white applicant, tried applying to medical school twice and was denied, even though his GPA, and test scores were better than others who were recently admitted. According to the court, they believed that “no applicant may be rejected because of his race, in favor of another who is less qualified, as measured by standards applied without regard to race”. Because of this, the shut down the system that discriminated against other races. In the Grutter case, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said that “Equal Protection Clause does not prohibit the Law School's narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational

The University of Texas at Austin is a world renown school with an acceptance rate of 40.2% as of 2013. Abigail Fisher, a white woman from Texas, sued the University of Texas for racial discrimination in the university’s admission program. Ms. Fisher lost her district court case and the Fifth Circuit Case three to zero; but the Supreme Court accepted her appeal for another trial. Due to Ms. Fisher not being able to attend The University of Texas, she was accepted into Louisiana State University shortly after. At LSU, she filed the lawsuit against the University of Texas to prohibit the university to use race as a factor in the future admission process.

The petitioner Abigail N. Fisher, who is a woman of Caucasian decent, applied to the University of Texas in late 2008 (“Fisher v. University of Texas.”). Since Fisher was not ranked at the top of her class her application was denied (“Fisher v. University of Texas.”). The former University of Texas applicant Abigail N. Fisher believes that the Institutions discriminatory admission policies was the reason she did not get admitted into the school for the incoming freshman class of 2009, even though her application was much better than many of the admitted minority students. Fisher then filed a suit case against the University arguing that the University of Texas admission policy was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states it forbids

This was a landmark United States Supreme Court case, in 1846 a slave named Dred Scott and his wife, Harriet, sued for their freedom in a St. Louis city court. They had lived with their owner, an army surgeon, at Fort Snelling, then in the free Territory of Wisconsin. The Scotts' freedom could be established on the grounds that they had been held in relationship for long time in a free territory and were then returned to a slave state. Courts had ruled this way in the past. However, what appeared to be a straightforward lawsuit between two private teams became an 11-year legal struggle that reach the highest point of an activity in one of the most well known decisions ever issued by the United States Supreme

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

There have been many cases before the United States Supreme Court similar to Mary Hamilton’s, including one that is currently pending. In an ongoing case, Fisher v. University of Texas (2012), Abigail Fisher, a Caucasian female, filed a lawsuit against the University because she was denied admission. Fisher argued that the University was discriminating in its selections based on race. The University argued that the factor of race in the admissions process was solely in the interest of promoting educational diversity. If the admissions of a school call for measures to be taken to ensure diversity, then the policies in place must be reviewed under a standard of strict scrutiny to determine if they are precisely tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest (oyez.org). In Fisher v. University of Texas, the examination of strict scrutiny was not sufficiently conducted and is going to be argued once more on December 9, 2015. In this situation, using the factor of race in an admissions process is

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education (2007) are cases regarding the use of affirmative action programs in schools. In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Supreme Court ruled that the use of affirmative action in universities is constitutional in certain circumstances, but racial quotas are unconstitutional. In Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court ruled that the use of affirmative action in school admission is constitutional if race is treated as one factor among many, the purpose is to achieve a “diverse” classroom, and it is not an individualized review of the applicant. In Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education,

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

Since 1954, Brown v. Board of Education ended segregated schools allowing all students to attend the school they want to. The issue of racism and equality are still things that are discussed in the present day and affirmative action is one of the issues that people talk about. Most people are not necessarily comfortable talking about which is part of the reason the issue is still prevalent in today’s society. One of the most notable cases regarding affirmative action is Fisher v. Texas. When comparing this case to Brown v. Board of Education, which could be pinned as the case that began affirmative action, there are many points that can be related to each case. Within the cases, the points that cause issues in society today are race and equality.

One of the most recent Supreme Court cases before Fisher was Grutter v. Bollinger. In this particular case, a white student sued the university law school for violating his equal protection rights, by way of the law school’s race-conscious affirmative action plan within admissions. After the justices reviewed the law school’s plan, the plan was found to not create an unnecessary burden upon someone not of an underrepresented race. The law school’s affirmative action plan, first

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

In 1994, a new case, Hopwood v. The University of Texas, was ruled on by the circuit court and interpreted in such a manner as to effectively end affirmative action in higher education for the states of Texas and Louisiana. The plaintiffs for the case were four applicants to the law school of The University of Texas, each of whom were denied admission while minority applicants with lower

Two more cases that aroused much debate on the issue were the 2003 cases of Gratz vs. Bollinger and Grutter vs. Bollinger, in which two more-than-qualified students applied to the University of Michigan and were denied due to acceptance policies. The two women, Jennifer Gratz and Barbara Grutter, took their cases to the Supreme Court with the plea that the University of Michigan is “treating people differently based on skin color, and that is unconstitutional” (Mears). The university openly stated that they have a point system in their acceptance process in which students receive extra point if they are of minority status. Mary Sue Coleman, the president of the University of Michigan stated, “[W]e

In Hopwood v. Texas, Cheryl Hopwood along with three other caucasian law school applicants challenged the affirmative action program at the University of Texas Law School. She claimed that she was denied admission to the law school despite being better qualified than many admitted minority candidates. Hopwood along with Douglas Carvell, Kenneth Elliott, and David Rogers, all had better combined LSAT and grade scores than 36 of the 43 Latinos admitted, and 16 of the 18 blacks admitted (Hentoff 1). Judge Sparks ruled that the University could continue to use the racial preferences which had been the issue in the case. In the ruling, he wrote that it was "regrettable that affirmative action programs are still needed in our society", and that they were still "a necessity" until society overcomes its tradition of institutional racism (Hopwood V. Texas 1). After the four plaintiffs appealed the case, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote, "the University of Texas School of Law may not use race as a factor in deciding which applicants to admit in order to achieve a diverse student body, to combat the perceived effects of a hostile environment at the law school, to alleviate the law school's poor reputation in the minority community, or to eliminate any present effects of past discrimination by actors other than the law school"( Hopwood V. Texas 1). The University appealed the decision, but the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review, making the case the law of the land in Louisiana, Mississippi, and

& 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).