Lower Courts
In March 2001, U.S. District Court Judge Bernard A. Friedman ruled that the admissions policies were unconstitutional because they "clearly consider" race and are "practically indistinguishable from a quota system." In May 2002, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision, citing the Bakke decision and allowing the use of race to further the "compelling interest" of diversity. The plaintiffs subsequently requested the Supreme Court review. The Court agreed to hear the case, the first time the Court had heard a case on affirmative action in education since the landmark Bakke decision of 25 years prior.
On April 1, 2003 the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Grutter. The Court allowed the recordings of the arguments to be released to the public the same day, only the second time the Court has allowed same-day release of oral arguments. The first time was Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), the case that ultimately ended the 2000 presidential election.
Read more about this topic: Grutter V. Bollinger
Famous quotes containing the word courts:
“I find it a great and fatal difference whether I court the Muse, or the Muse courts me. That is the ugly disparity between age and youth.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“But O, young beauty of the woods,
Whom Nature courts with fruits and flowers,
Gather the flowers, but spare the buds;
Lest Flora, angry at thy crime
To kill her infants in their prime,
Do quickly make the example yours;
And ere we see,
Nip in the blossom all our hopes and thee.”
—Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)