In his famous dissent in Plessy v Ferguson, Justice John Harlan wrote that the law was "color blind." This phrase has taken on a meaning of its own and has been debated among critics of affirmative action programs beginning in the 60s. The question whether the government should be able to use racial categories when it is beneficial, and not discriminatory to minorities who have a history of being discriminated against. The Supreme Court first looked into this question, in the case of Bakke v. Regents, University of California. Allan Bakke, a 35 year old white male who applied to UC-Davis Medical School, claimed that he was denied admission although his test scores and grades were considerably better than the minority applicants who were …show more content…
Grutter v. Bollinger challenged the law school and the other, Gratz v. Bollinger challenging the undergraduate college. The result was right down the middle for Michigan. Because of the Law School's individualized consideration of race they scraped by with a 5 to 4 vote, while the undergraduate school lost 6 to 3 because of its more obvious consideration of race. I noticed while reading Justice O'Connor's opinion for Grutter that it was very similar in Justice Powell's reasoning in Bakke. While O'Conner felt that the Law school's interest in having a diverse student body was enough to consider race as a factor along with other categories, she warned that after a point she believed affirmative action programs needed to have a cutoff point. She suggested that programs like these wouldn't be in the decades to …show more content…
University of Texas in 2013. Abigail Fisher a white female challenged the University of Texas efforts to increase racial diversity within their school. The school admitted any graduating senior within the top 10 percent of their high school class in Texas. The Court decided in a 7 to 1 decision that the lower courts had yielded too much to the University and that they had not correctly applied strict scrutiny. It seemed that they were holding Texas to a standard we hadn't seen in Bakke or Grutter. They said, "The reviewing court must ultimately be satisfied that no workable race-neutral alternatives would produce the educational benefits of diversity. If a nonracial approach could promote the substantial interest about as well and at tolerable administrative expense, then the university may not consider race." I looked forward to Justice Ginsburg's dissent knowing that she would have something to say on the matter. She used the Grutter/Bakke standard and found that Texas has sufficiently satisfied that standard. While Ginsburg dissented Justice Thomas concurred saying that he would have stopped any consideration of race within the admission process. He basically said that he would have overruled Grutter. However, although Justice Thomas would have overruled Grutter we see that the court as a whole was not quick to overrule Grutter because they had never been asked to do so. I believe there will be future
The Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) ‘equal but separate’ decision robbed it of its meaning and confirmed this wasn’t the case as the court indicated this ruling did not violate black citizenship and did not imply superior and inferior treatment ,but it indeed did as it openly permitted racial discrimination in a landmark decision of a 8-1 majority ruling, it being said was controversial, as white schools and facilities received near to more than double funding than black facilities negatively contradicted the movement previous efforts on equality and maintaining that oppression on
In the 1954 court ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of schools was unconstitutional and violated the Fourteenth Amendment (Justia, n.d.). During the discussion, the separate but equal ruling in 1896 from Plessy v. Ferguson was found to cause black students to feel inferior because white schools were the superior of the two. Furthermore, the ruling states that black students missed out on opportunities that could be provided under a system of desegregation (Justia, n.d.). So the process of classification and how to balance schools according to race began to take place.
Bakke disagreed with the court on this issue and he brought it before the California Supreme Court.The California Supreme Court held that it was the University's burden to prove that Bakke would not have been admitted if the special program was not in effect. The school could not meet this requirement, and Bakke was admitted by court orde r. However, the University appealed to the Supreme Court for "certiorari", which was granted, and the order to admit Bakke was suspended pending thCourt's decision.3 The Issues and Arguments for Each Side"Bakke was the most significant civil rights case to reach the United States Supreme Court since Brown v. Board the Education of Topeka, Kansas."4 The special admissions program at Davis tried to further integrate the higher education system because merely removing the barriers, as the Brown case did, did not always work. In short, Bakke was questioning how far the Universi...
Evaluation. In this particular case, the justices continued to follow the trend of other cases that questioned the equal protection clause before it. The court admitted Sweatt to the University of Texas law school because of unequal opportunities in the Negro facility. This case drew closer to ridding the nation of " separate but equal,"sated in the 14th amendment.
When Bakke applied again in 1974 he was once again rejected. This time Bakke sued the University of California. His position was that the school had excluded him on the basis of his race and violated his rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the California Constitution, and civil rights legislation. The trial court ruled in Bakke's favor, however they did not order the University of California to admit him. Bakke appealed to the California Supreme Court where they ruled that the school's admissions programs were unconstitutional and ordered the school to admit Bakke as a student.
The Plessy v Ferguson case would be overturned, ruling the “separate but equal” law to be unconstitutional. Melba Beals was in school that day and was sent home early with the warning to hurry and stay in groups. Even so, it had been decades since the passing of the Fourteenth Amendment. No much had changed. Melba’s teacher knew that this ruling would cause rage among the citizens of Little Rock and she was right.
Throughout American history, many minorities have fallen victim to cruel discrimination and inequality, African Americans were one of those minorities that greatly suffered from the white majority’s upper hand. After the end of the Civil War and the Reconstruction period following it, many people, especially the Southern population, were extremely against African Americans obtaining equal rights in the American society. Due to this, these opponents did everything in their power to limit and even fully strip African Americans of their rights. The Supreme Court case of Plessy v Ferguson in 1896 is an excellent example of the obstacles put forth by the white population against their black counterparts in their long and arduous fight for civil liberty and equality. Even though the court upheld the discriminatory Louisiana law with an 8-1 decision, John Marshall Harlan’s dissent in the case played a significant role in the history of the United States.
While Jim Crow was blatantly incongruent with the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of the full benefits of citizenry, it was justified by the Plessy vs. Ferguson Case of 1896 in which the Supreme Court upheld Louisiana’s Separate Car Act, requiring racially segregated railroad facilities, under the condition that such facilities were equal. This “separate but equal” doctrine was quickly, and legally, applied t...
The decision to integrate Boston schools in the 1970’s created negative race relations and later fueled a political debate that would change schools across the country. Most desegregation efforts in the United States began with the case of Oliver Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954. The case ruled that segregation on the basis of race was prohibited because it violated citizen’s rights under the Constitution. On June 21, 1974 in the case of Morgan vs. Hennigan, Judge Garret made a ruling that accused the Boston School Committee of engaging in racial segregation. “This ruling later would serve to fuel one of the prominent controversies embedded in our nation’s ongoing struggle for racial desegregation.” The busing policy created extreme acts of violence, invaded personal freedoms, hindered students’ education and
Kapp-Klote, H. (February 28, 2013). Scalia is Wrong: 10 Supreme Court Cases That Show How the Court Can Advance Racial Equality
In 1896 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law of racial segregation in public. It was known as separate but equal. Yet one cannot be equal, because Cauca...
Harlan once said, “But in the view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” The state of Louisiana passed a law that required separate railway cars for blacks and whites. It was all based around accommodations being “separate but equal”, meaning that public facilities were split up by races but the place had to serve the same purpose. In 1892, Homer Plessy was one eighth African American and he took a seat in a "whites only" car of a Louisiana train. He refused to move to the car only for blacks and was arrested. I believe that this was unconstitutional because of the 13th and 14th Amendments.
As early as 1879, the United States Supreme Court, in Strauder v. West Virginia, loudly denounced the systematic exclusion of Black Americans from jury pools, finding that the practice violated the constitution, but state officials resisted its finding. The US Supreme Court has had to reapply the same basic principles to stop many state schemes designed to preclude Blacks from participating on grand juries, petit juries or both. In ...
Brown v. Board of the Education in 1954 was a landmark decision in the education arena. The decision maintained that schools that separated students by the color of their skin could no longer be maintained. The court saw this as necessary, since in their mind schools for black students would always be inferior. This inferiority would not be caused by lack of resources, although that usually was a contributing factor to the poor quality of the school, physically and performance-wise. As the Supreme Court saw it, s...
Board of Education court case and the enactment of the fourteenth amendment? The problem doesn’t solely lie on a system failure but also on the misconstrued ideas and beliefs that are inculcated in the minds of individuals since childhood. The system methodically segregates minorities into specific cities and regions, majority of which are impoverished neighborhoods. (Kornblum & Julian) This method interferes with the possibility of children coexisting amongst different races and ethnicities harmoniously, but instead reinforces the idea that whites are superior to others. Children are taught to fear blacks, because of the common stereotype of blacks being a dangerous underclass. And while whites enjoy superior education, minorities are left with underfunded, underachieving, poor schools, ensuring that they remain in poverty. In fact, research has proven that people of color were two (2) to three (3) more likely to inhabit in neighborhoods with commercial landfills that release toxic waste, severely affecting their health