Regents of the University of California v. Bakke

The medical school at the University of California, Davis, opened in 1968 with an entering class that included no Black, Mexican American, or Native students. To change that it created a special admissions program that set aside sixteen of its hundred places for disadvantaged members of minority groups, who were evaluated separately. Allan Bakke, a white engineer and Vietnam veteran in his thirties, was rejected in 1973 and 1974 while minority applicants with lower scores were admitted through the special program.

Bakke sued, arguing that the program violated the Equal Protection Clause and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The case drew more friend-of-the-court briefs than any before it. On June 28, 1978, a deeply divided Court produced six separate opinions. Four justices would have struck down the program under the Civil Rights Act. Four would have upheld it as a legitimate remedy for past discrimination.

Justice Lewis Powell cast the deciding vote both ways. He joined the first four to hold that the rigid quota was unlawful and that Bakke must be admitted. He joined the other four to hold that race could still be considered as one factor among many. Universities had a compelling interest in a diverse student body, Powell wrote, pointing to Harvard's admissions plan, which treated race as a plus without setting aside seats.

Powell's diversity rationale governed college admissions for a generation and was reaffirmed in Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003. Supporters saw it as a workable compromise that opened elite institutions, while critics argued that any use of race was discrimination by another name. In 2023, in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Court effectively ended race-conscious admissions, holding that the programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated equal protection.