Nikson Restituyo 2/9/2011 Wed 12:00 Allan Bakke

In 1974, after being denied twice, a white man named Allan Bakke opened Pandoras Box when he sued Davis Medical School demanding to be accepted into their program. He claimed he was denied admission because he was white. Allan Bakke was born in Minnesota and grew up in Florida where he attended segregated public schools, went to college on an ROTC scholarship and completed his mandatory four-year military service. When Bakke decided he wanted to be a doctor, he was working as an engineer at NASA in Northern California, and as a result, by the time he first applied to medical school in 1973, he was thirty-two years old. Although Bakke's college grades and performance on the MCAT were quite good, they were far from exceptional, and his application to medical schools was not well received. Following his original application in 1973, Bakke, for two years, applied to twelve medical schools and was accepted into none. Two schools told Bakke his age was a factor working against him with other schools suggesting the same. Bakke, intent on attending medical school, concentrated his efforts on the medical school at the University of California at Davis when reapplying in 1974. Davis was the least prestigious of the twelve schools to which he had originally applied so it made sense why he focused on it: it represented the school at which his chances for admission were likely the highest. And very significant to his decision, Bakke was befriended by an admissions officer at Davis who seemed to listen to his complaint that he was being denied admission by the special admissions procedure that gave priority to underprivileged applicants.

Davis recruited disadvantaged students through an admissions process that allocated a certain number of seats in each class to qualified members of the disadvantaged group, like many other medical schools in the early 70s. At the time of Bakke's application, Davis reserved 16 of its 100 available places in each class to self-proclaimed minority/disadvantaged groups through a process administered by what was called The Special Task Force. These students included members of minority groups and white individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds. These groups were only matched against one another and never against the normal admission applicants. When Davis had opened its medical school in 1968, five years before Bakke 1st application, there were no black or Hispanic students in the entering class; it was only then that the school made specific efforts to admit qualified minority applicants. Also, at the time of Bakke's application, approximately 2% of doctors nationwide came from minority groups, even though 23% of California's population consisted of members of minority groups. Just like his 1973 application, Davis denied Bakke's 1974 application for admission as well as his request to be placed on the wait list. Soon after, Bakke filed suit in California state court challenging the constitutionality of the University's admissions policy on the grounds that the school's consideration of race in the admissions process denied him his right to equal protection of the law (14th Amendment) and directly caused his rejection by the medical school. Although Bakke could show that his grades and test scores were generally higher than those who were admitted through the special admissions program, nearly fifty other white candidates who had been denied admission had better numerical scores. On top of that, a few white students with scores lower than Bakke's had been admitted to the class, and some of the students admitted through the special admissions program had scores similar to Bakke's. Finally, his committee interview, essential to the selection process, had not gone well. As a result, it was difficult for

Bakke to claim that he would have been admitted if the especial admissions program had not been in place. The trial court found that the special program operated as a racial quota, because minority applicants in that program were rated only against one another, and 16 places in the class of 100 were reserved for them. Declaring that UC Davis Medical School could not take race into account in making admissions decisions, the court declared the program violated the Federal and State Constitutions and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The court did not order Bakke's admission, however, because there was no proof at trial that he would have been admitted if it werent for the special program. The case went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Courts questions were twofold: 1. Whether Bakke's exclusion from consideration in UC Davis Medical School special admissions program for minorities because he was white was unconstitutional and a violation of section VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; and 2. if it was unconstitutional, should UC Davis Medical School be required to admit him. Justice Powell concluded that excluding a candidate from consideration solely on the basis of race was unconstitutional, no matter what the purpose, and since UC Davis Medical School could not prove that, even without the special admissions program, Bakke would never have been admitted anyway, UC Davis was forced to admit Bakke. Though the Stevens' plurality opinion did not concur with Powell's assertion that race could be one factor among many in admissions' considerations, it did agree with Powell that the UC Davis special admissions program excluding Bakke because he was white was unconstitutional. Stevens' plurality also concurred with that part of Powell's opinion that UC Davis should be required to admit Bakke.

Therefore, though there was no clear-cut majority view on using race as a factor in general, there was a 5-4 split in which the majority (the Stevens plurality and Powell) agreed that the UC Davis Special admissions program was unconstitutional because it excluded applicants on the basis of race. They also agreed that UC Davis be required to admit Bakke. Some refer to using race as a basis to exclude applicants as a racial quota system. An institution's special admissions program that is designed to admit people of a certain ethnic group and excludes consideration of candidates from other ethnic groups is in effect an assurance that the institution will admit a certain number of the members from a specified ethnic group. Powell found that quotas insulated minority applicants from competition with the regular applicants and so were unconstitutional because they discriminated against non-minority applicants. Powell however stated that universities could use race as a plus factor. Bakke began his studies at the University of California Medical School at Davis in fall of 1978, graduated in 1982, and later served as a resident at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The courts decision in the end never provided a definitive answer to the legality of affirmative action programs. Racial quotas were not permitted, but using race as a plus in the admissions process was fine. The question as to whether affirmative action is constitutional still remains in the air today. In 1996, Piscataway v. Taxman, the school board of Piscataway, New Jersey needed to eliminate a teaching position from a high school. Under New Jersey state law, tenured teachers have to be laid off in reverse order of seniority. The newest teachers, Sharon Taxman and Debra Williams, white and African-American respectively, had started working at the school on the same day. In the interest of maintaining racial diversity (Williams was the only black teacher in the department, and 50% of the students were minorities), the school board voted to

lay off Taxman. Taxman complained to the EEOC, saying that the board had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled in favor of Taxman. The school board appealed to the United States Supreme Court and a hearing was scheduled for January 1998, but civil rights groups provided money for the board to settle the case out of court, fearing that the case could lead to the prohibition of affirmative action. The case was never heard. That same year Hopwood v. Texas was settled. Cheryl Hopwood was denied admission to the University of Texas Law School despite being better qualified than many admitted minority candidates. Her lawsuit culminated in a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in her favor four years later. The court established that the 14th Amendment forbids state universities from using race as a factor in admissions. The Supreme Court declined to review the case, for a time banning affirmative action in admissions in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Then, in 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger negated the ruling of Hopwood v. Texas. Barbara Grutter, a white Michigan resident with a 3.8 GPA and 161 LSAT score, filed this suit alleging that the University of Michigan Law School had discriminated against her on the basis of race in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment when it denied her application. The Supreme Court held that the 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 benefits that flow from a diverse student body. The Court reasoned that, because the Law School conducts highly individualized review of each applicant, no acceptance or rejection is based automatically on a variable such as race and that this process ensures that all factors that may contribute to

diversity are meaningfully considered alongside race. The court did agree, however, that affirmative should be a temporary thing and that in 25 years it should become obsolete. In the end, Bakkes questioning of affirmative action opened a box of Pandora and brought forth the issue of how far should a nation go in order to help those who have been trampled under oppression for centuries into the spotlight. The answers are conflicting and many, but for now Bakkes ruling laid the foundation for all future affirmative action cases. Whether Bakkes fight hurt or helped minorities integration is uncertain, but affirmative action and its debate is still alive today and will continue to be for at least another decade.

Works Cited
y y y y Grutter v. Bollinger Wikipedia, Web. "Hopwood v. Texas." Wikipedia, Web. "Hopwood: the first victory in a long war." Individual Rights. N.p., 04/12/2007. Web. 1 Feb 2011. <http://www.cir-usa.org/cases/hopwood.html>. The Oyez Project, Grutter v. Bollinger , 539 U.S. 306 (2003) available at: (http://oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2002/2002_02_241) (last visited Wednesday, February 3, 2011). "Piscataway Township Board of Education v. Taxman - Significance, Taxman Fights Dismissal On Racial Grounds, Court Of Appeals Ruling, Dissent And Aftermath ." n. pag. Web. 9 Feb 2011. <http://law.jrank.org/pages/13109/Piscataway-Township-BoardEducation-v-Taxman.html>. "REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA v. BAKKE ." N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Feb 2011. <http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/bakke.html>. Selmi, Michale. "life of Bakke: An affirmative action retrospective, The." (1999): n. pag. Web. 4 Feb 2011. <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3805/is_199904/ai_n8845129/pg_19/?tag=conte nt;col1>

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