UC Davis’s affirmative action quota aimed at societal rather than institutional discrimination

Evidence

Ten years after graduating from the University of Minnesota with a degree in engineering, Allan Bakke decided to become a physician. He applied to the medical school of the University of California at Davis in 1973 and again in 1974, but on both occasions he was rejected. At that time the university had a special admissions program, under which 16 seats in the entering class were reserved for minority students. This quota system was not established to remedy past discrimination by the medical school—there was no evidence that the school had discriminated—but to redress societal discrimination against minority group members. Bakke, who was white, did not qualify for admission under the program. However, his undergraduate grades and his score on the Medical College Admission Test were higher than those of some students accepted under the special admissions program. Bakke claimed that he was the victim of “reverse discrimination” and sued the university in state court, insisting that his constitutional rights had been violated. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 205

Categorization

• XREF: The Bakke case is a standard fixture in constitutional law courses and connects to equal-protection doctrine discussions in American legal pedagogy.