# Gratz v. Bollinger (June 23, 2003) On **June 23, 2003**, the Supreme Court ruled **6–3** that the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions system was unconstitutional. The university's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts scored applicants on a 150-point scale, with 100 points guaranteeing admission, and gave every applicant from an underrepresented minority group — African American, Hispanic or Native American — an automatic **20 points**. Chief Justice [[William Rehnquist]] wrote for the majority. **Why it matters:** it was decided the same day as [[Grutter v. Bollinger]], which upheld the university's law-school admissions 5–4. Together the two rulings set the rule for the next twenty years: colleges could consider race as one factor in reviewing each applicant, but not through a fixed, mechanical bonus. ## The case **Jennifer Gratz** and **Patrick Hamacher**, two white Michigan residents denied admission in 1995 and 1997, sued the university, with its president Lee Bollinger as the named defendant. The Center for Individual Rights, a conservative public-interest law firm, recruited them and filed the suit in October 1997. The Supreme Court heard argument on **April 1, 2003**. ## What the Court held The majority — Rehnquist, joined by Justices [[Sandra Day O'Connor]], Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and [[Clarence Thomas]] — held that the policy violated the [[Equal Protection Clause]], Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and 42 U.S.C. § 1981. It accepted, as *Grutter* held, that educational diversity can justify considering race, but found that a system which "automatically distributes 20 points, or one-fifth of the points needed to guarantee admission" was not narrowly tailored, because it left no room for individual review. [[Stephen Breyer]] agreed with the result without joining the opinion, making the vote 6–3. - **O'Connor**, the deciding vote in *Grutter*, wrote that the undergraduate system lacked the individual review the law school used. - **Thomas** would have gone further and barred racial preferences in admissions altogether. ## The dissents Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by Justice David Souter, argued that the plaintiffs could not seek forward-looking relief because they had already enrolled elsewhere. Justices Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg also dissented on the merits; Ginsburg argued that policies meant to include minority applicants should not be judged as harshly as policies meant to exclude them. ## What came after Michigan voters banned race-conscious admissions at the state's public universities in 2006 (Proposal 2), and the Supreme Court upheld that ban in 2014 in [[Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action]]. In 2023, [[Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard]] ended race-conscious admissions nationwide, effectively ending the *Grutter* framework that *Gratz* had helped define. ## Why it's on the map *Gratz* is an early win for the conservative legal campaign against affirmative action: a public-interest firm recruiting plaintiffs to bring a test case, the same model [[Edward Blum]] later used to bring the case that ended race-conscious admissions in 2023. The arc runs from [[Regents of the University of California v. Bakke]] (1978) through *Gratz* and *Grutter* (2003) to *Students for Fair Admissions* (2023). ## Connections - [[Affirmative Action]] · [[Grutter v. Bollinger]] · [[Regents of the University of California v. Bakke]] · [[Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard]] - [[Equal Protection Clause]] · [[Edward Blum]] - [[William Rehnquist]] · [[Sandra Day O'Connor]] · [[Clarence Thomas]] - [[Supreme Court Rulings Hub]] ## Sources - [Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003) — Justia](https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/539/244/) - [Gratz v. Bollinger — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratz_v._Bollinger) - [Supreme Court Affirms Ban On Race-Conscious College Admissions — NPR (2014-04-22)](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/04/22/305850221/supreme-court-affirms-ban-on-race-conscious-college-admissions) - [Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action — Ballotpedia](https://ballotpedia.org/Schuette_v._Coalition_to_Defend_Affirmative_Action)