The principle in which people have the power over the government. The students involved in the aforementioned cases all felt their rights were being infringed upon and took it upon themselves to take them to court.
The President of the United States changed the specifics of the affirmative action policy quite a few times, which changed the laws that the courts had to judge by.
High court systems could overturn a lower court's ruling on any of the cases.
In a lawsuit brought against the city of New Haven, 18 plaintiffs—17 white and 1 Hispanic—argued that lieutenant and captain exam results from 2003 were tossed out when it was found out that very few minority firefighters were capable for improvement. The city claimed they threw out the results because they feared liability under a disparate-impact statute for issuing tests that discriminated against minority firefighters. The plaintiffs claimed that they were victims of reverse discrimination under the Civil Rights Act. The Supreme Court decided in favor of the firefighters, saying New Haven's "action in discarding the tests was a violation of" the Civil Rights Act.
The University of Michigan used a 150-point scale to rank applicant, with 100 points needed to ensure admission, however the University gave ethnic groups an automatic 20-points on this scale. Jennifer Gratz and Patrick Hamacher, both Caucasian residents of Michigan, applied for admission to the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (one in fall '95 and the other in fall '97) and both were denied admission to the university. Their class-action lawsuit alleged "violations and threatened violations of the rights of the plaintiffs and the class they represent to equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment... and for racial discrimination."
"In Gratz v. Bollinger, a federal judge ruled that the use of race as a factor in admissions at the University of Michigan was constitutional. The gist of the university's argument was as follows: just as preference is granted to children of alumni, scholarship athletes, and others groups for reasons deemed beneficial to the university, so too does the affirmative action program serve 'a compelling interest' by providing educational benefits derived from a diverse student body" (Brunner).
Grutter v. Bollinger, a case like the University of Michigan undergraduate lawsuit, involved a different judge drawing an conflicting conclusion, ruling the law school's policy invalid that that "intellectual diversity bears no obvious or necessary relationship to racial diversity." But on May 14, 2002, the decision was upturned on appeal, ruling that the admissions procedure was actually constitutional.June 23, 2003
In the most significant affirmative action decision since the Bakke case, the Supreme Court maintains the University of Michigan Law School's policy, ruling that race can be one of many factors considered by colleges when choosing their students because it entends "a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body." The Supreme Court ruled that the more mechanical approach of the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions program, which uses a point system that rates students and awards additional points to minorities, had to be fixed. The undergraduate program did not provide the "individualized consideration" of applicants that was considered necessary on the Supreme Court’s past ruling on affirmative action.
A state ban in California, "Proposition 209," passed that banned all forms of affirmative action. "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting." This declaration, proposed in '96, stayed in the courts for almost a year before it was passed.
Washington became the second state to ban affirmative action policies when it passed the "Initiative 200," which was similar to P 209.
Florida baned race as factor in college admissions, following Gov. Jeb Bush's "One Florida" initiative which aimed at eventually abolishing all affirmative action in the state.
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.
President Clinton specified in a speech that while the Adarand case set more severe guidelines to reform affirmative action, if actually reaffirmed the need for the regulation and confirmed the continuing existence of the existence of discrimination in the United States. He later called for the banning of any program that created a quota or preferences for unqualified individuals, created reverse discrimination, or continued even after it's "equal opportunity purposes have been achieved."
