Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action (572 U.S. 291)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided April 22, 2014 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 572 U.S. 291 · 134 S. Ct. 1623
- Docket
- No. 12-682
- Argued
- October 15, 2013
- Decided
- April 22, 2014
- Term
- October Term 2013
- Vote
- 6–2
- Majority author
- Justice Kennedy
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
How the Justices voted
- Majority
- Chief Justice Roberts (wrote a concurrence), Justice Kennedy (wrote), Justice Alito
- Concurring in the judgment
- Justice Scalia (wrote), Justice Thomas, Justice Breyer (wrote)
- Dissenting
- Justice Ginsburg, Justice Sotomayor (wrote)
Oral argument transcript and advocates · Opinion on Justia
Opinion excerpt
The Court in this case must determine whether an amendment to the Constitution of the State of Michigan, approved and enacted by its voters, is invalid under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. In 2003 the Court reviewed the constitutionality of two admissions systems at the University of Michigan, one for its undergraduate class and one for its law school. The undergraduate admissions plan was addressed in Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 , 123 S.Ct. 2411 , 156 L.Ed.2d 257 . The law school admission plan was addressed in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 , 123 S.Ct. 2325 , 156 L.Ed.2d 304 . Each admissions process permitted the explicit consideration of an applicant's race. In Gratz, the Court invalidated the undergraduate plan as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. 539 U.S., at 270, 123 S.Ct. 2411 . In Grutter, the Court found no constitutional flaw in the law school admission plan's more limited use of race-based preferences. 539 U.S., at 343, 123 S.Ct. 2325 . In response to the Court's decision in Gratz, the university revised its undergraduate admissions process, but the revision still allowed limited use of race-based preferences. After a statewide debate on the question of racial preferences in the context of governmental decisionmaking, the voters, in 2006, adopted an amendment to the State…
Excerpt of a 198,271-character opinion. The full text and citation network load in the interactive viewer above.