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

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

Supreme Court case regarding the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

undergraduate affirmative action 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.

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 referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...

Hispanic The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad. The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to viceroyalties forme ...

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 U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

, 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 The Center for Individual Rights (CIR) is a non-profit public interest law firm in the United States. Based in Washington, D.C., the firm is "dedicated to the defense of individual liberties against the increasingly aggressive and unchecked auth ...

, 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 lawyer and educator who is serving as the 19th and current president of Columbia University, where he is also the Seth Low Professor of the University and a faculty member of Columbia La ...

. 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 ...

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 The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (in case citations, 6th Cir.) is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts: * Eastern District of Kentucky * Western District of K ...

, and asked to be heard before the Supreme Court.

U.S. Supreme Court consideration

Issues of standing

It has been argued by some that Jennifer Gratz lacked

legal standing Law is a set of rules that are created and are law enforcement, enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. ...

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 said waiting list, but the University claims it got lost.

Opinion of the court

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. 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 Class action lawsuits University of Michigan University and college admissions Legal history of Michigan United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases of the Rehnquist Court United States racial discrimination case law