Week Eleven: Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978)
Series Four is drawing to a close. This will be the final week of curated videos on the major Civil Rights cases of the US Supreme Court. Later this year, we will return to the Supreme Court and look at some of its most important Civil Liberties cases. For now, however, we’ll take a break from Supreme Court cases to look at some of the major issues facing our Democracy this summer, including Voting Rights, the Filibuster, Statehood for DC and/or Puerto Rico, Redistricting, Immigration, and whether to enlarge the Federal Judiciary.
Thurgood Marshall, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke challenged affirmative action in college admissions, specifically the affirmative action program of the University of California. Allan Bakke, a white male in his mid-30s, sued the University of California after being denied admission to its UC Davis medical school. Because Bakke’s college GPA and test scores were higher than minority applicants admitted in the two years when his applications were rejected, Bakke contented in state, federal, and ultimately the US Supreme Court, that he had been rejected solely on the basis of race. Bakke was a difficult case for the Court with the justices ultimately voting 6 to 3 that affirmative action in college admissions was constitutional, but that racial quotas like those employed by the University of California at the time, were not.
A Local Dimension
Affirmative action remains controversial and has been attacked legally, legislatively, and through the citizen initiative. In fact, Bakke was not the final case regarding affirmative action in college admissions. In Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, both decided in 2003, the Court considered the admissions practices of the University of Michigan's undergraduate and law schools. Taken together, decisions in the two cases affirmed the key elements of Bakke. In the wake of the two Michigan decisions, however, a citizens initiative (Proposal 2 of 2006) amended the Michigan Constitution to ban Michigan institutions from considering race, gender, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public education, public employment, or public contracting; and minority enrollment in Michigan public institutions of higher education fell sharply and has yet to recover.
Follow the link below to 10 short videos about the case from C-SPAN Classroom. Videos 1 and 2 consider affirmative action at the time of the case. Numbers 3 and 4 introduce the parties and the facts and issues presented in the case. Numbers 6 and 7 discuss the arguments and the Court’s decision. Videos 8 and 10 consider public and legislative reaction to the decision and the case’s legacy. Video number 10, about the legacy of Bakke, may be of special interest to our audience because it touches on those University of Michigan cases — Grutter v Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger.
Our latest series focuses on the US Supreme Court and the role it has played in the struggle for civil rights. This new series has three parts. First, we look at two cases that established the principle of judicial review of actions by federal (1803) and state (1817) government. Second, we look at a series of Supreme Court cases decided between 1857 and 1944. These cases made it easier for governments to deny individuals their rights and so each made the moral arc of the universe a little longer. Finally, we look at a series of cases decided between 1886 and 1983 that moved America forward toward justice. For this new series, we draw on some very short (thirty seconds to four-minute videos) from C-SPAN Classroom.