Grutter v. Bollinger

Grutter v. Bollinger
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 1, 2003 Decided June 23, 2003
Full case name	Barbara Grutter, Petitioner v. Lee Bollinger, et al.
Docket no.	02-241
Citations	539 U.S. 306 (more) 123 S.Ct. 2325; 156 L. Ed. 2d 304; 71 U.S.L.W. 4498; 91 Fair Empl.Prac.Cas. (BNA) 1761; 84 Empl. Prac. Dec. (CCH) ¶ 41,415; 177 Ed. Law Rep. 801; 03 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 5378; 2003 Daily Journal D.A.R. 6800; 16 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 367
Case history
Prior	Held for Plaintiff and enjoined use of current admissions policy, 137 F. Supp. 2d 821 (E.D. Mich. 2001); reversed, 288 F.3d 732 (6th Cir. 2002) (en banc); certiorari granted 537 U.S. 1043 (2002)
Subsequent	Rehearing denied, 539 U.S. 982 (2003)
Holding
University of Michigan Law School admissions program that gave special consideration for being a certain racial minority did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy David Souter · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer
Case opinions
Majority	O'Connor, joined by Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer; Scalia, Thomas (in part)
Concurrence	Ginsburg, joined by Breyer
Concur/dissent	Scalia, joined by Thomas
Concur/dissent	Thomas, joined by Scalia (Parts I–VII)
Dissent	Rehnquist, joined by Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas
Dissent	Kennedy
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV
Abrogated by
Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023) Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina (2023)

Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), was a landmark case of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning affirmative action in student admissions. The Court held that a student admissions process that favors "underrepresented minority groups" did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause so long as it took into account other factors evaluated on an individual basis for every applicant. The decision largely upheld the Court's decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), which allowed race to be a consideration in admissions policy but held racial quotas to be unconstitutional. In Gratz v. Bollinger (2003), a separate case decided on the same day as Grutter, the Court struck down a points-based admissions system that awarded an automatic bonus to the admissions scores of minority applicants.

The case arose after a prospective student to the University of Michigan Law School alleged that she had been denied admission because the school gave certain minority groups a significantly greater chance of admission. The school admitted that its admission process favored certain minority groups, but argued that there was a compelling state interest to ensure a "critical mass" of students from minority groups. In a majority opinion joined by four other justices, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor held that the Constitution "does not prohibit the law school's narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body."

In her majority opinion, O'Connor wrote that "race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time," adding that the "Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today." Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer joined the Court's opinion, but did not subscribe to the belief that the affirmative measures in question would be unnecessary in 25 years. In a dissent joined by three other justices, Chief Justice William Rehnquist argued that the university's admissions system was, in fact, a thinly veiled and unconstitutional quota system.

In 2023, the Supreme Court effectively overruled Grutter v. Bollinger in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, finding that affirmative action in student admissions violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.^[1]