The standards were meant to provide access to the future successes of a UC-Davis education despite previous disadvantage, but were not without flaw.
In 1973 and the following year, Bakke applied to the medical school with a benchmark score of 468 out of 500. Each time he was rejected, as were all students in the regular applicant pool with a score below 470. Yet, four special admissions spots remained, and he was not considered to fill them. Bakke wrote a letter of complaint to the Chairman of the Admissions Committee, complaining about the program's admissions bias, but in 1974, his lowest review in committee was from the same chairman, who cited his opinions as too narrow minded for the UC-Davis standards. In both years, though, Bakke applied with a higher GPA and MCAT score than his special admissions peers. Infuriated, he filed suit with the Superior Court of California seeking an injunction. He claimed that the very program that was meant to overcome the aftermath of institutional prejudice was in fact committing the same crime to him.
The core of his case involved an argument that the medical school's admissions standards undermined the Equal Protection Clause, the California Constitution, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Turning the idea of racial prejudice on its head, the California Supreme Court voted in his favor 8 to 1. The University appealed to the Supreme Court, seeking to maintain its special admissions programs. On June 28, 1978, the Court decided in Bakke's favor, holding that while race can be one of many factors of consideration in the admissions...
They understood that race was an issue that needed to be taken into consideration in admissions, but the unconstitutionality of the quotas could not be denied. Justice Powell stated that race could be used as a factor in admissions to mollify the social separation inherent in post-segregationist America, and he drew public attention to the Harvard College Admissions program which used race as part of "holistic review" of applicants. While he was in favor of the consideration of race but against the quotas at UC-Davis, the rest of the Justices were split firmly in half.
Since the case, the decision of the Court has affirmed Powell's approach to the admissions process and its treatment of race. In 2003, Grutter vs. Bollinger attacked the race processes used in admissions at the University of Michigan Law School, where Lee Bollinger, now the leader of Columbia University, presided over a process where race serves as a "predominant" factor of consideration. By establishing race as a point of "compelling interest," Bakke dealt directly with the problem of social hierarchy in the aftermath of the civil rights movement and segregation, and the ensuing concern with a modern reverse-prejudice, in a manner that remains relevant and…
