''Gratz v. Bollinger'', 539 U.S. 244 (2003), was a

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

Supreme Court In most legal jurisdictions, a supreme court, also known as a court of last resort, apex court, high (or final) court of appeal, and court of final appeal, is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

case Case or CASE may refer to: Instances * Instantiation (disambiguation), a realization of a concept, theme, or design * Special case, an instance that differs in a certain way from others of the type Containers * Case (goods), a package of relate ...

regarding the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

undergraduate

affirmative action Affirmative action (also sometimes called reservations, alternative access, positive discrimination or positive action in various countries' laws and policies) refers to a set of policies and practices within a government or organization seeking ...

admissions policy. In a 6–3 decision announced on June 23, 2003, Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing for the Court, ruled the University's point system's "predetermined point allocations" that awarded 20 points towards admission to underrepresented minorities "ensures that the diversity contributions of applicants cannot be individually assessed" and was therefore unconstitutional. It was the companion case to ''

Grutter v. Bollinger ''Grutter v. Bollinger'', 539 U.S. 306 (2003), was a landmark case of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning affirmative action in student admissions. The Court held that a student admissions process that favors "underrepresented mi ...

''.

Case

The University of Michigan used a 150-point scale to rank applicants, with 100 points needed to guarantee admission. The University gave underrepresented ethnic groups, including

African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

Hispanic The term Hispanic () are people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or broadly. In some contexts, Hispanic and Latino Americans, especially within the United States, "Hispanic" is used as an Ethnici ...

s, and Native Americans, an automatic 20-point bonus towards their score, while a perfect SAT score was worth 12 points. The petitioners, Jennifer Gratz and Patrick Hamacher, both residents of

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

, applied for admission to the

's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA). Gratz applied for admission in the fall of 1995 and Hamacher in the fall of 1997. Both were subsequently denied admission to the university. Gratz and Hamacher were contacted by the Center for Individual Rights, which filed a lawsuit on their behalf in October 1997. The case was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan against the University of Michigan, the College of LSA, James Duderstadt, and

Lee Bollinger Lee Carroll Bollinger (born April 30, 1946) is an American attorney and educator who served as the 19th president of Columbia University from 2002 to 2023 and as the 12th president of the University of Michigan from 1996 to 2002. Bollinger is c ...

. Duderstadt was president of the university while Gratz's application was under consideration, and Bollinger while Hamacher's was under consideration. Their class-action lawsuit alleged "violations and threatened violations of the rights of the plaintiffs and the class they represent to

equal protection The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "nor shall any State... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal pr ...

of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment... and for racial discrimination." Like '' Grutter,'' the case was heard in District Court, appealed to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and asked to be heard before the Supreme Court.

U.S. Supreme Court consideration

Issue of standing

It has been argued by some that Jennifer Gratz lacked legal standing to bring this action. Gratz applied in 1995, three years before the University of Michigan adopted its points system. Gratz could not claim injury as a result of the points system, and thus, under traditional legal rules, Gratz lacked standing. Gratz chose not to attend the University of Michigan by declining the university's offer to be placed on a waiting list. Every Michigan student who agreed to go onto the waiting list in the spring of 1995 was admitted to the University of Michigan for the Fall 1995 semester. However, Gratz argues that she did fill out the paperwork for the waiting list, but the University claims it got lost. Chief Justice Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the court. The court's majority found that Gratz and co-plaintiff Hamacher had standing to seek declaratory and injunctive relief, relying on ''Northeastern Fla. Chapter, Associated Gen. Contractors of America v. Jacksonville'', 508 U.S. 656 (1993). Here the "injury in fact" necessary to establish standing in the case was the denial of equal treatment resulting from the imposition of the barrier, and not in the ultimate inability to obtain the benefit.

Opinion of the Court

The court held that because the university’s use of race in its current freshman admissions policy was not narrowly tailored to achieve the respondents' asserted interest in diversity, the policy violated the Equal Protection Clause.

Dissent

Justices Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg dissented. Ginsburg wrote that "government decisionmakers may properly distinguish between policies of exclusion and inclusion...Actions designed to burden groups long denied full citizenship stature are not sensibly ranked with measures taken to hasten the day when entrenched discrimination and its after effects have been extirpated."

References

External links

*
Transcript of April 1, 2003 Supreme Court arguments
(

PDF format Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating system ...

) {{DEFAULTSORT:Gratz v. Bollinger United States equal protection case law United States affirmative action case law 2003 in United States case law United States class action case law University of Michigan University and college admissions in the United States Legal history of Michigan United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases of the Rehnquist Court United States racial discrimination case law History of the University of Michigan