Hopwood v. University of Texas Law School

March 18, 1996 

Cheryl Hopwood, along with three other Caucasian law-school applicants at the University of Texas, challenged the school's affirmative action program, claiming they were rejected from the university because of unjust inclinations toward less capable minority applicants. 

The 5th U.S. Court of Appeals suspended the university's affirmative action admissions program. It also ruled that the 1978 Bakke decision was invalid; while Bakke rejected racial quotas, it declared that race could serve as an aspect in admittance. In addition to repairing past discrimination, the Bakke case stated that the addition of minority students would make the student body more diverse and was beneficial to the entire educational atmosphere.

Hopwood, however, didn’t accept the claim of diversity as a goal, stating that "educational diversity is not recognized as a compelling state interest." The Supreme Court allowed the ruling to stand. In 1997, the Texas Attorney General announced that all "Texas public universities [should] employ race-neutral criteria."

However, the June 23, 2003, Supreme Court ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger invalidates Hopwood.