Id., at 5 (claiming that the Law School has enrolled “critical mass,” or “enough minority students to provide meaningful integration of its classrooms and residence halls”). The Court will not even deign to make the Law School try other methods, however, preferring instead to grant a 25-year license to violate the Constitution. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265 (1978).
%PDF-1.6 %���� 277 0 obj << /Linearized 1.0 /L 340819 /H [ 52603 631 ] /O 280 /E 53234 /N 15 /T 335234 /P 0 >> endobj xref 277 29 0000000015 00000 n 14, §2. Additionally, circumstantial evidence as to whether a state activity is of pressing public necessity can be obtained by asking whether all States feel compelled to engage in that activity. The majority today refuses to be faithful to the settled principle of strict review designed to reflect these concerns. To be constitutional, a university’s compelling interest in a diverse student body must be achieved by a system where individual assessment is safeguarded through the entire process. L. 573, 577–578 (2000); Rubenfeld, Affirmative Action, 107 Yale L. J. % of applicants who were African-American, Number of applicants admitted by the law school, Number of African-American applicants admitted, % of admitted applicants who were African- American, Number of Hispanic applicants admitted, % of admitted applicants who were Hispanic, Number of Native American applicants admitted, % of admitted applicants who were Native American. Law School Admission Council, National Statistical Report (1994) (hereinafter LSAC Statistical Report). (a) In the landmark Bakke case, this Court reviewed a medical school’s racial set-aside program that reserved 16 out of 100 seats for members of certain minority groups. In sum, the Law School trains few Michigan residents and overwhelmingly serves students, who, as lawyers, leave the State of Michigan. The District Court heard extensive testimony from Professor Richard Lempert, who chaired the faculty committee that drafted the 1992 policy. 9–32. Respondents, on the other hand, remain more ambiguous, explaining that “the Law School of course recognizes that race-conscious programs must have reasonable durational limits, and the Sixth Circuit properly found such a limit in the Law School’s resolve to cease considering race when genuine race-neutral alternatives become available.” Brief for Respondents Bollinger et al. More broadly, the Law School seeks “a mix of students with varying backgrounds and experiences who will respect and learn from each other.” Ibid. Despite these inequalities, some minority students are able to meet the high threshold requirements set for admission to the country’s finest undergraduate and graduate educational institutions.
(“10 or 20 black students could not begin to bring to their classmates and to each other the variety of points of view, backgrounds and experiences of blacks in the United States”). Other lawsuits may focus on whether, in the particular setting at issue, any educational benefits flow from racial diversity. Justice Powell, announcing the Court’s judgment, provided a fifth vote not only for invalidating the program, but also for reversing the state court’s injunction against any use of race whatsoever. While I agree that in 25 years the practices of the Law School will be illegal, they are, for the reasons I have given, illegal now. Instead, it may consider race or ethnicity only as a “ ‘plus’ in a particular applicant’s file”; i.e., it must be “flexible enough to consider all pertinent elements of diversity in light of the particular qualifications of each applicant, and to place them on the same footing for consideration, although not necessarily according them the same weight,” id., at 317. As to the interpretation that the opinion contains its own self-destruct mechanism, the majority’s abandonment of strict scrutiny undermines this objective. In Justice Powell’s view, when governmental decisions “touch upon an individual’s race or ethnic background, he is entitled to a judicial determination that the burden he is asked to bear on that basis is precisely tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest.” Id., at 299. Wessmann v. Gittens, 160 F. 3d 790 (CA1 1998); Tuttle v. Arlington Cty. Justice Ginsburg, with whom Justice Breyer joins, concurring. See post, at 6 (dissenting opinion). App. and, by many accounts, decloseted homosexual sod omy. of Cal. In particular, the Law School sought to ensure that its efforts to achieve student body diversity complied with this Court’s most recent ruling on the use of race in university admissions. Kennedy, J., filed a dissenting opinion. 0000006199 00000 n Because the Equal Protection Clause renders the color of one’s skin constitutionally irrelevant to the Law School’s mission, I refer to the Law School’s interest as an “aesthetic.” That is, the Law School wants to have a certain appearance, from the shape of the desks and tables in its classrooms to the color of the students sitting at them.
282, 293 (May–June 1977) (“It would be a sad day indeed, were America to become a quota-ridden society, with each identifiable minority assigned proportional representation in every desirable walk of life.
Argued April 1, 2003—Decided June 23, 2003. Lawrence . A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469, 493 (1989) (plurality opinion). of Ed., 476 U. S. 267, 280, n. 6. … Shields generated these reports because the Law School’s admissions policy told him the racial make-up of the entering class was “something [he] need[ed] to be concerned about,” and so he had “to find a way of tracking what’s going on.”. of Ed., 476 U. S. 267 (1986), found unconstitutional a collective-bargaining agreement between a school board and a teachers’ union that favored certain minority races. With these observations, I join the last sentence of Part III of the opinion of the Court. Justice Thomas, with whom Justice Scalia joins as to Parts I–VII, concurring in part and dissenting in part. Moreover, as Justice Kennedy concedes, see post, at 4, between 1993 and 2000, the number of African-American, Latino, and Native-American students in each class at the Law School varied from 13.5 to 20.1 percent, a range inconsistent with a quota. The nonminority individuals who are deprived of a legal education, a civil service job, or any job at all by reason of their skin color will surely understand. I find each of them to fall far short of this standard. And at Mississippi Valley State University, a public HBC, only 1.1% of the freshman class in 2001 was white. From 1995 through 2000, the Law School admitted between 1,130 and 1,310 students.
See post, at 8 (dissenting opinion). Justice Powell’s approval of the use of race in university admissions reflected a tradition, grounded in the First Amendment, of acknowledging a university’s conception of its educational mission. All rights reserved.
15–21. Frederick Douglass, speaking to a group of abolitionists almost 140 years ago, delivered a message lost on today’s majority: “[I]n regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. 32.
A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469, 504 (1989). Id., at 5. Cf. We last addressed the use of race in public higher education over 25 years ago. As lower school education in minority communities improves, an increase in the number of such students may be anticipated. A/6014, Art. We granted certiorari, 537 U. S. 1043 (2002), to resolve the disagreement among the Courts of Appeals on a question of national importance: Whether diversity is a compelling interest that can justify the narrowly tailored use of race in selecting applicants for admission to public universities. Id., at 256–267 (opinion concurring in result). See, e.g., id., at 49, n. 79 (“The Law School’s … current policy … provide[s] a special commitment to enrolling a ‘critical mass’ of ‘Hispanics’ ”). Stat. I do, however, find two points on which I agree.
Whether the objective of critical mass “is described as a quota or a goal, it is a line drawn on the basis of race and ethnic status,” and so risks compromising individual assessment. Our conclusion that the Law School has a compelling interest in a diverse student body is informed by our view that attaining a diverse student body is at the heart of the Law School’s proper institutional mission, and that “good faith” on the part of a university is “presumed” absent “a showing to the contrary.” 438 U. S., at 318–319. Public and private universities across the Nation have modeled their own admissions programs on Justice Powell’s views on permissible race-conscious policies. Gratz v. Bollinger, ante, p. ___, distinguished. Const., Art.
Included in. Less than 16% of the Law School’s graduating class elects to stay in Michigan after law school. See, e.g., Richmond v. J. The decision permitted the use of racial preference in student admissions to promote student diversity. And, “[n]owhere is the importance of such openness more acute than in the context of higher education.” Ibid. 1(4) (similarly providing for temporally limited affirmative action); Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Annex to G. A. Res. 0000003652 00000 n In practice, the Law School’s program bears little or no relation to its asserted goal of achieving “critical mass.” Respondents explain that the Law School seeks to accumulate a “critical mass” of each underrepresented minority group. Moreover, because universities, and in particular, law schools, represent the training ground for a large number of the Nation’s leaders, Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U. S. 629, 634, the path to leadership must be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity. Ante, at 3, 5, 7, 17, 20, 21, 23, 28; cf.
With these principles in mind, we turn to the question whether the Law School’s use of race is justified by a compelling state interest. I therefore can understand the imposition of a 25-year time limit only as a holding that the deference the Court pays to the Law School’s educational judgments and refusal to change its admissions policies will itself expire. An effort to achieve racial balance among the minorities the school seeks to attract is, by the Court’s own admission, “patently unconstitutional.” Ante, at 17; see also Bakke, 438 U. 10). 111. And if the lack of proportional racial representation among our leaders is not caused by societal discrimination, then “fixing” it is even less of a pressing public necessity. 4498, 91 Fair Empl. As part of its goal of “assembling a class that is both exceptionally academically qualified and broadly diverse,” the Law School seeks to “enroll a ‘critical mass’ of minority students.” Brief for Respondents Bollinger et al.
Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U. S. 200, 227.
The Law School has offered no explanation for its actual admissions practices and, unexplained, we are bound to conclude that the Law School has managed its admissions program, not to achieve a “critical mass,” but to extend offers of admission to members of selected minority groups in proportion to their statistical representation in the applicant pool.