Factbox: Major U.S. Supreme Court affirmative action cases
Reuters
57 minutes ago

(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on Wednesday in a major affirmative action case involving racial policies in college admissions. The case was brought by a white applicant denied a place at the University of Texas at Austin.

Following are major Supreme Court decisions affecting university affirmative action.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978)

In a 5-4 ruling, the court decided that universities may consider an applicant's race as one of many factors in admissions without violating the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equality but they may not impose quotas or set aside a specific number of places for minorities. Justice Lewis Powell highlighted the value of diversity in education as he provided the key fifth vote for both parts of the ruling.

Grutter v. Bollinger, Gratz v. Bollinger (2003)

By a 5-4 vote in the first case and a 6-3 vote in the second, the court upheld a University of Michigan law school program that considered the race of an applicant among several factors, and separately rejected an undergraduate admissions system that automatically gave minorities extra credit to boost their chances of acceptance. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote the leading opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger allowing the continuation of race-based affirmative action on campus.

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Timeline: Milestones in U.S. top court's affirmative action case
Reuters
45 minutes ago

(Reuters) - The dispute over race-based university student admissions policy set to be heard by the U.S. Supreme on Wednesday traces to 2008.





Here is a timeline of key action in the case.


2008

Abigail Fisher, a high school student in suburban Houston at the time, is rejected for admission to the University of Texas at Austin. Conservative legal activist Edward Blum, a Fisher family friend who has long backed lawsuits against racial policies, enlists Abigail to challenge the university's admissions program.

The white teenager claims she was wrongly rejected while minority students with lesser scores and grades were accepted. That assertion and her individual situation have never been tested at trial. Rather, as the case has worked its way to the Supreme Court, it has tested whether the university's admissions policy was sufficiently tailored to its interest in fostering campus diversity. The state's flagship public university enrolls most freshmen through a program guaranteeing admission to students in roughly the top 10 percent of their high school classes. A supplemental program considers the race of applicants along with other characteristics intended to bring more diversity to the university's student population.


2009

A U.S. district court judge rules for the University of Texas, rejecting Fisher's claim that the racial policy violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal protection under the law.

More:
http://news.yahoo.com/timeline-milestones-u-top-courts-affirmative-action-case-130230343.html

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