Abigail Fisher Case

The Equal Protection Clause derives from the Fourteenth Amendment, which specifies “no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws…” As a part of the Reconstruction Amendments, the aforementioned clause was meant to ensure racial equality in the Reconstruction Period and has been applied successfully against the affirmative action. Introduced in United States v. Carolene Products Co., the strict scrutiny has been applied to the cases, in which a fundamental constitutional rights have been infringed or a government action applies to a suspect classification (i.e. race, religion, national background). Specifically, in regards to Bakke v. Regents of University of California, the Supreme Court (“the Court”) concluded that, considering that the University of California, Davis received several Caucasian applicants for its special admission program in 1973 and 1974 and that none of the applicants received the admission to the program since the start, the program unfairly administered in favor of minority races and, therefore, violated the rights of the white applicants under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Furthermore, from Hopwood v. State of Texas, the Fifth Circuit Court ruled under strict scrutiny that, the affirmative action imposed by the University of Texas School of Law (“the law school”) violates the Fourteenth Amendment since neither the law school nor the University of Texas system has proved a proof of

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

Thomas Madison and Mary Hamilton are two high school seniors that applied to The University of Southern Iowa State, but were denied admission. Madison thinks that the University should consider that fact that he is gay and Hamilton believes that the school is discriminating based on race. Both applicants sue the school because they believe that some factors of the admissions process are unconstitutional.

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 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

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 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

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

She claimed that the reason for this was because of the affirmative action policy that the university had in place. The case gained traction and was taken to the Supreme Court. This also sparked up a national conversation about affirmative action throughout the nation. An article in the New York Times had quotes from some of the Justices stating that it is necessary to have affirmative action that way the classroom can stay diversified (Liptak

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

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,

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

FACTS: A Michigan resident was denied admission to the University of Michigan Law school, even though she had a 3.8 GPA and a score of 161 on the LSAT. Barbara Grutter sued the school alleging that they had discriminated against her based on her race, which would be in violation of her constitutional rights. The University of Michigan Law School argued that there is a state interest to not have a “critical mass” of students of a given race; so that minorities do not feel isolated.

& 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).

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