Racial Preferences Case to be Heard
"No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." - Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.
In 1974, President Richard Nixon resigned one-step ahead of impeachment by the House of Representatives; Gerald Ford became president; the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped Patricia Hearst, the Godfather II won best picture; and Pong was a popular video game. In the same year, the DeFunis case reached the US Supreme Court.
In 1971, Marco DeFunis applied to the University of Washington Law School. DeFunis is white and claimed he was denied admission as a consequence of the school's disparate treatment of applicants based on race. Defunis sued the law school asserting he had been denied equal protection of the law under the Fourteenth Amendment. The case was particularly interesting in that the University of Washington never had a history of discrimination against minorities, so there was no question of providing compensatory admissions to minorities.
While the case was being decided, DeFunis was admitted to the law school. By the time the case percolated up to the Supreme Court, DeFunis was within one semester of graduation. The University of Washington agreed that DeFunis would be allowed to complete his studies regardless of the outcome of the case. The majority of the Court ruled the case "moot" and therefore declined to render a decision on the merits of the case. The result was that the practice of preferential treatment based on race was allowed to grow despite uncertain legal limitations.
The classically liberal Justice William O. Douglas dissented on the decision not to review the case. He wrote, "...in endeavoring to dispose of this case as moot, the Court clearly disserves the public interest. The constitutional issues which are avoided today concern vast numbers of people, organizations, and colleges and universities, as evidenced by the filing of twenty-six amicus curiae briefs."
Four years later, the Supreme Court could not so easily avoid its duties. Allan Bakke had twice been denied admission to the University of California-Davis Medical School. Bakke argued that a program that reserved 16 out of 100 seats for minority students violated the Fourteenth Amendment and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the quotas used by the University of California were indeed illegal. However favorable the result was for Mr. Bakke, the decision did not settle matters. Justice Lewis Powell, writing for the majority, left open a small crack through which a deluge of racial preferences in university admissions have flooded through. While passionately condemning systematic racial preferences, he suggested if two candidates where comparable, tilting toward the minority candidate would be permissible given the states interest in a varied enrollment. Of course, this incremental help has, in practice, degenerated into policies that are little different from quotas.
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