Grutter v. Bollinger

Facts of the Case

Grutter began in December 1997, when Barbara Grutter and other rejected applicants filed suit challenging the use of race by the University of Michigan Law School in its admissions program. In her class action suit, Grutter argued that the law school's race-conscious admissions plan amounted to racial or ethnic discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, because it favored Native American, African American, Mexican American, and mainland Puerto Rican applicants.

According to Title VI, citizens cannot be subject to discrimination in programs receiving federal financial assistance on the grounds of color, race, or national origin. The Equal Protection Clause ensures that the government provides the equal protection of the laws to its citizens. In response to Grutter 's claim, the law school argued that in order to demonstrate a commitment to diversity, it sought to enroll a “critical mass” of minority applicants. In so doing, the law school used race as one of many unqualified factors that could enhance an applicant's chances of admission.

When universities consider race and ethnicity in admissions plans to increase student body diversity, courts must apply a two-part test. A court must first examine whether promoting diversity in higher education is a compelling state interest. More specifically, a court must be satisfied that the goal of an admissions plan is compelling or extremely important. Second, a court must explore whether the means chosen to obtain a diverse student body through a race-conscious admissions program are “narrowly tailored.” In so doing, admissions programs must be flexible in considering several elements of diversity for each applicant. In other words, race-conscious admissions plans may not utilize quotas, but may rely on race as a “plus factor.” To be constitutional, racial classifications must satisfy both parts of the test.

When a federal trial court in Michigan considered the effect of race as a factor in admissions in Grutter, it learned that a significantly higher percentage of minority applicants with lower test scores and lower GPAs were admitted than were nonminority applicants with similar scores. The court decided that diversity was not a compelling state interest, pointing out that that the admissions policy was unconstitutional because it violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The court noted that even if it had found that diversity was a compelling state interest, the law school's program was not narrowly tailored.

On further review, the Sixth Circuit reversed and vacated the injunction that had prohibited the University of Michigan Law School from using race in its admissions process. The court maintained that constitutional language can support colleges and graduate [Page 413]schools that are seeking a meaningful number of minority students as long as they avoid quota systems. This judgment directly contradicted earlier race-conscious admission cases decided in the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits. The Supreme Court granted certio-rari in Grutter v. Bollinger in order to resolve the fate of race-conscious university admissions programs. The Supreme Court also granted certiorari to Gratz v. Bollinger (2003), another University of Michigan case focused on a race-conscious admissions program at the undergraduate level.

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