Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae Supporting Petitioner. On Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Barbara Grutter, Petitioner, v. Lee Bollinger, et al. In the Supreme Court of the United States.

N

37

Access to Education; Affirmative Action; Civil Rights; College Admission; Ethnicity; Higher Education; Law Schools; Racial Discrimination; Racial Factors; Selective Admission

Bakke v Regents of University of California; Fourteenth Amendment; Gratz et al v Bollinger et al; Grutter et al v Bollinger et al

This legal document examines whether the University of Michigan Law School's use of racial preferences in student admissions violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. 2000d et. seq.), or 42 U.S.C. 1981. This brief filed by the federal government in support of the petitioner argues that respondents' use of race-based admission criteria is not justified in light of ample race-neutral alternatives: public universities have ample means to ensure that their services are open and available to all Americans; these ample race-neutral alternatives render respondents' race-based policy both unnecessary and unconstitutional; the Law School's admissions program operates as an impermissible quota system; and other requirements of this Court's narrow tailoring analysis reinforce the unconstitutionality of the respondents' race-based admission policy (the Law School's admission policy would permit race-based discrimination in perpetuity, its admissions policy places a disproportionate emphasis on racial considerations, and its race-based policy unfairly burdens innocent third parties). (SM)

2003

ED474872