Reverse Discrimination
Reverse Discrimation
Table of Contents
Introduction and Background..............................1
The Issues and Arguments for each side...................2
The Opinions and Decisions of the Supreme Court..........4
My Personal Opinion and Arguments........................5
Relevance to Current Issues..............................6
Conclusion...............................................7
Introduction and Background
In 1973 a thirty-three year-old Caucasian male named Allan Bakke
applied to and was denied admission to the University of California Medical
School at Davis. In 1974 he filed another application and was once again
rejected, even though his test scores were considerably higher than various
minorities that were admitted under a special program. This special
program specified that 16 out of 100 possible spaces for the students in
the medical program were set aside solely for minorities, w hile the other
84 slots were for anyone who qualified, including minorities.
What happened to Bakke is known as reverse discrimination. Bakke
felt his rejections to be violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the
14th amendment, so he took the University of California Regents to the
Superior Court of California. It was ruled that "the admissions program
violated his rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th
Amendment"1 The clause reads as follows:
"...No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor without due
process of the law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the
equal protection of the laws."2
The court ruled that race could not be a factor in admissions.
However, they did not force the admittance of Bakke because the court could...
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