After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month, people began to wonder what other legal precedent will the current majority Conservative SCOTUS crack down? The initial assumptions were that the court would target either LGBT rights, contraception access or interracial marriage since these issues involve some of the same logic that led to the abortion decision. However, after the court announced the topics they will hear next year, it became clear that Affirmative Action will be one of the next precedents to be challenged.
Affirmative Action was upheld by the Supreme Court for the first time in 1978 in UC Regents v. Bakke. The court ruled allowing race to be one of the considerations in the college admissions process but did not permit UC Davis Medical School to continue using their set quotas. Once again in 2013, the court ruled in Grutter v. Bollinger that admissions programs that favor racial minority groups that have been underrepresented on school campuses do not violate the clauses of the fourteenth amendment so long as other qualifications are considered on a case-by-case basis.
A year later, in 2014, the organization Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) filed a lawsuit against Harvard and UNC. SFFA challenged the constitutionality of their admissions programs arguing that such programs are to the detriment of White and Asian applicants. After both cases were won by the Universities in lower courts, the Supreme Court has decided to hear these cases. Experts predict that the court will end the 44 year old precedent and ban Affirmative Action in the college admission process.
This blog post is part of the CIMA Law Group blog. If you are located in Arizona and are seeking legal services, CIMA Law Group specializes in Immigration Law, Criminal Defense, Personal Injury, and Government Relations.
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