Regents of the University of California v. Bakke

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) was a landmark case in which the U.S. Supreme Court first addressed the merits of a claim on affirmative action, also identified by critics as race-conscious admissions policies or reverse discrimination (the term used in the plaintiff's complaint), an extremely controversial topic with regard to admissions programs in higher education. At issue in Bakke was whether the separate admissions policy that officials at the medical school of the University of California at Davis used for disadvantaged minorities violated the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause and/or Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The challenge for the Court was to balance the rights of individuals who sought equal treatment by officials at a public medical ...