Grutter v. Bollinger

Facts of the Case

Grutter arose out of a challenge to the admissions policy at the University of Michigan. Law school officials sought to obtain the educational benefits of a diverse student body by considering race as one factor among many. Grutter was filed by an unsuccessful 43-year-old White female applicant who was in the 86th percentile nationally on the Law School Admissions Test. The applicant challenged the law school's use of race as a factor in admissions. During the litigation, university officials conceded that the plaintiff probably would have been admitted had she been a member of one of the underrepresented minority groups, which the policy defined as African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans.

The Supreme Court's Ruling

Ultimately, the Supreme Court, in a five-to-four judgment authored by Justice O'Connor, upheld the law school's policy. The Court was convinced that the policy was constitutional because it was narrowly tailored to achieve the law school's goal of a diverse student body.

Compelling Governmental Interest

The Supreme Court has established repeatedly and with great clarity that classifications based on [Page 225]racial and ethnic distinctions are inherently suspect and are subject to the most exacting judicial examination of strict scrutiny under Fourteenth Amendment equal protection analysis. Moreover, the Court noted that the government, and by extension, officials at public colleges and universities, bear the burden of proving that racial classifications are narrowly tailored measures that further compelling governmental interests. The fact that racial classifications may be used to help racial minorities has not changed the Court's analysis. If anything, the Court has insisted on strict scrutiny in every context, even for so-called “benign” racial classifications such as race-conscious university admissions policies.

In Grutter, the Supreme Court recognized that context matters in the review of race-based governmental policies, because not all actions are equally objectionable; strict scrutiny is designed to provide a framework for carefully examining the importance of the reasons advanced by governmental decision makers for their use. The Grutter Court did not hold that obtaining racial diversity by correcting the underrepresentation of specified racial groups was a compelling governmental interest. In fact, university officials had never argued that it was. Rather, the university's lawyers emphasized that enrolling specified racial groups was only part of a goal of assembling a class of students that was both exceptionally academically qualified and broadly diverse.

The Supreme Court, then, found that public institutions of higher education have a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from diverse student bodies. In so ruling, the Court explained that it was embracing the concept of diversity articulated 25 years earlier by Justice Powell in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978). Yet because no other justice joined the diversity portion of Justice Powell's opinion in Bakke, lower courts were divided on whether it constituted binding precedent. However, in Grutter, the majority expressly endorsed Justice Powell's view that diversity is not an “aesthetic” quality to be judged by the mosaic of skin tones composing a student body. Instead, for Powell, diversity arises from students who can contribute the most to the robust exchange of ideas on their campuses. In this way, Powell was emphatic that programs focusing solely on ethnic diversity would hinder rather than further the attainment of genuine diversity.

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