Summary of the Grutter Decision

BARBARA GRUTTER v. LEE BOLLINGER, et al.
No. 02-0241
Argued April 1, 2003
Decided June 23, 2003

In 1996, Barbara Grutter, a forty-three year old single mother, applied for admission to the University of Michigan Law School.  She had run her own health care consulting business and had considerably more life experience than the average law school applicant.  Grutter, a Caucasian, had a 3.8 undergraduate grade point average and a score on the law-school aptitude test, which placed her in the 86th percentile nationally.

The philosophy of the University of Michigan contended that a diverse student body was a worthy goal that benefited all students.  They therefore maintained an affirmative-action plan that sought to grant admission to a “critical mass” of qualified minority students.  This meant that a large number of white students were rejected, even though they had higher grades and test scores than many of the minority applicants.  The law school admissions process consisted of using an applicant’s Law School Admissions Test and undergraduate grade-point average, along with consideration for the “enthusiasm of the recommenders, the quality of the undergraduate institution, the quality of the essay, residency, leadership and work experience, unique talents or interests, and the areas of difficulty of undergraduate course selection.”  In addition, low performing students were sometimes admitted if there was a combination of poor standardized test performance and consistently outstanding academic records.  Although students were sometimes admitted to achieve diversity that would make the class stronger, seats were not reserved or set aside for underrepresented minority students.  The stated goal of the admission policy was “to admit a group of students who individually and collectively are among the most capable students applying to American law schools in a given year.”

Statistics in 1995 showed a consistent disparity between acceptance rates for minority applicants (African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans) and Caucasian and Asian American applicants.  Those minority applicants with the highest LSAT scores enjoyed a 96 percent acceptance rate compared with an acceptance rate of 59 percent for whites and 63 percent for Asian Americans with comparable test scores.  For those middle-tier applicants (such as Grutter), minorities had an 81 percent acceptance rate, while only 5 percent of whites and 4.7 percent of Asian Americans were offered admission.  In the bottom tier, 26 percent of minorities won admission, compared with 1.4 percent of whites and 1.6 percent of Asian Americans.

After several months of being on a “wait list,” Grutter was notified of her rejection.  She then filed a class action suit in the Eastern District of Michigan at Detroit, claiming that she was denied admission because minority students received preferential treatment.  The district court found for Grutter, concluding that the university’s “use of race as a factor in its admissions decisions is unconstitutional and a violation of Title VI and of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law school’s admissions policies by a five-to-four margin.  This court found that Michigan’s law school had written its admissions policy in compliance with the Supreme Court opinion in Bakke v. Board of Regents, 1978.  In that case, a sharply divided Court struck down the use of rigid racial quotas in affirmative-action plans, but Justice Powell said in his opinion that race could be used as one of many factors in a selection process aimed at promoting diversity in enrollment at tax-supported university admissions.  Powell drew a distinction between admission policies that relied entirely on race to achieve diversity and programs that treated each applicant as an individual.
For the first time in more than twenty-four years, the United States Supreme Court accepted a case in which it had to decide whether public colleges and universities could consider race in their admissions policies.

Issue: Does the use of race as a factor when public colleges and universities choose their students violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

Decision

In the Supreme Court’s first statement on university affirmative action in a quarter-century, the justices voted five-to-four to uphold the University of Michigan’s preferences for minorities who apply to its law school.  On the same day in a separate case (Gratz v. Bollinger, No. 02-516), by a six-to-three vote, however, they struck down a point system used by Michigan’s undergraduate program. 

Writing for the majority, Justice O’Connor said the value of diverse classrooms extends far beyond the campus, continuing:
We have repeatedly acknowledged the overriding importance of preparing students for work and citizenship, describing education as pivotal to “sustaining our political and cultural heritage” with a fundamental role in maintaining the fabric of society….  This court has long recognized that “education … is the very foundation of good citizenship….”   For this reason, the diffusion of knowledge and opportunity through public institutions of higher education must be accessible to all individuals regardless of race or ethnicity. …  Effective participation by members of all racial and ethnic groups in the civic life of our nation is essential if the dream of one nation, indivisible, is to be realized.

Because attorneys are often elected to leadership positions such as state governorships and the United States Congress, in addition to judgeships of all levels, O’Connor expanded, “In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.”

O’Connor clearly felt that minorities should not be stereotyped because minority students do not always express “characteristic minority” viewpoints.  In fact, she explained, [D]iminishing the force of such stereotypes is both a crucial part of the Law School’s mission, and one that it cannot accomplish with only token numbers of minority students.” 
The law school engages in a “highly individualized, holistic review of each applicant’s file” in which race counts as a factor but is not used in a “mechanical way,” Justice O’Connor said.  For that reason, she said, it was consistent with Justice Powell’s controlling opinion in the Bakke case in 1978, which permitted the use of race as one “plus factor.”
Justice Ginsburg wrote a concurring opinion that was joined by Justice Breyer.  In it, she expressed her concerns that:
However strong the public’s desire for improved education systems may be … , it remains the current reality that many minority students encounter markedly inadequate and unequal educational opportunities.  Despite these inequalities, some minority students are able to meet the high threshold requirements set for admission into the country’s finest undergraduate and graduate educational institutions.  As lower school education in minority communities improves, an increase in the number of such students may be anticipated.  From today’s vantage point, one may hope, but not firmly forecast, that over the next generation’s span, progress toward nondiscrimination and genuinely equal opportunity will make it safe to sunset affirmative action.

Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote the principal dissenting opinion that spoke for all four dissenters (himself, Thomas, Scalia and Kennedy).  He said he didn’t believe the law school’s process was “narrowly tailored to the interest it asserts,” that is, achieving a “critical mass” of minorities.  He explained, “Stripped of its ‘critical mass’ veil, the Law School’s program is revealed as a naked effort to achieve racial balancing.”  Rehnquist continued:
I do not believe that the Constitution gives the Law School such free rein in the use of race.  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.  But this is precisely the type of racial balancing that the Court itself calls “patently unconstitutional.”

The Chief Justice concluded by voicing his disapproval of the Court’s decision in this case:
The Court … upholds the Law School’s program despite its obvious flaws.  We have said that when it comes to the use of race, the connection between the ends and the means used to attain them must be precise.  But here the flaw is deeper than that; it is not merely a question of “fit” between ends and means.  Here the means actually used are forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

Justice Kennedy explained in his separate dissent:
… Having approved the use of race as a factor in the admissions process, the majority proceeds to nullify the essential safeguard Justice Powell insisted upon as the precondition of the approval.  The safeguard was rigorous judicial review, with strict scrutiny as the controlling standard. …
Although the four dissenters in the case did not directly confront the continued validity of the Bakke precedent, it was clear that both Justices Thomas and Scalia would have overturned it if they could. “Every time the government places citizens on racial registers and makes race relevant to the provision of burdens or benefits, it demeans us all,” Justice Thomas said in his dissenting opinion that Justice Scalia also signed.

Thomas, the only African American member of the Court and an opponent of affirmative action, said the school’s policy violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.  He quoted from a speech by Frederick Douglass, the famous abolitionist, to deliver what he called “a message lost on today’s majority.”  In the 1865 speech to a group of abolitionists, Douglass said Americans had always been anxious about what to do with black people.  Thomas quoted:
“In regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us.  What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.  The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us ….  I have had but one answer from the beginning.  Do nothing with us!  Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us.  Do nothing with us!  If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and dispose to fall, let them fall! …  And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also.  All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs!  Let him alone!  …  Your interference is doing him positive injury.”

Thomas wrote that he, like Douglass, believes blacks can achieve in “every avenue of American life without the meddling of university administrators.”  “Because I wish to see all students succeed whatever their color, I share, in some respect, the sympathies of those who sponsor the type of discrimination advanced by the University of Michigan Law School,” Thomas said, continuing, “The Constitution does not, however, tolerate institutional devotion to the status quo in admissions policies when such devotion ripens into racial discrimination.”
Scalia, who partly disagreed with elements of the majority’s ruling, said the “Constitution proscribes government discrimination on the basis of race, and state-provided education is no exception.”

This is a summary, you may read the full decision here

University of Michigan Web site with extensive materials about its defense of affirmative action here.