1. Jessie Hauser

2. Regents of the University of California v. Bakke “ This landmark Supreme Court case imposed limitations on affirmative action to ensure that providing greater opportunities for minorities did not come at the expense of the rights of the majority—affirmative action was unfair if it led to reverse discrimination”. Involved the University of California, Davis, Medical School. The school had two separate admissions pools, one for standard applicants, and one for minority and economically disadvantaged students. The school reserved 16 of its 100 places for the minority and economically disadvantaged group. The Supreme Court ruled that race was a legitimate factor in school admissions, the use of strict quotas was not constitutional.

3. Fullilove v. Klutznick Bakke struck down strict quotas, while in Fullilove the Supreme Court ruled that some modest quotas were constitutional. The Court upheld a federal law requiring that 15% of federal funding for public works be set aside for obtaining services or supplies from qualified businesses owned by minority group member contractors. The "narrowed focus and limited extent" of the affirmative action program did not violate the equal rights of non-minority contractors. According to the Court there was no "allocation of federal funds according to inflexible percentages solely based on race or ethnicity.”

4. Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education Challenged a school board's policy of protecting minority employees by laying off non-minority teachers first, even though laid off teachers had seniority. The Supreme Court ruled against the school board, maintaining that the "denial of a future employment opportunity was not as intrusive as loss of an existing job" and “the injury suffered by non-minorities affected could not justify the benefits to minorities”.

5. United States v. Paradise In 1970, a federal court found the State of Alabama Department of Public Safety had systematically discriminated against hiring blacks "in the thirty- seven-year history of the patrol there has never been a black trooper.“ The court said that the state needed to change its hiring practices to stop "pervasive, systematic, and obstinate discriminatory exclusion of blacks.“ Twelve years and several lawsuits later, the department had not promoted any blacks above entry level or started a racially fair hiring system. In response, the court ordered racial quotas to fix the issue. For every white hired or promoted, one black would also be hired or promoted until at least 25% of the upper ranks of the department were made up of of blacks. These numerical quotas were challenged. The Supreme Court upheld the use of strict quotas in this case as one of the only means of combating the department's overt racism.

6. City of Richmond v. Croson A Richmond program setting aside 30% of city construction funds for black-owned firms was challenged. Affirmative action was judged as a "highly suspect tool." Supreme Court ruled that an "amorphous claim that there has been past discrimination in a particular industry cannot justify the use of an unyielding racial quota." It maintained that affirmative action must be subject to "strict scrutiny" and is unconstitutional unless racial discrimination can be proven to be "widespread throughout a particular industry.”

7. Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña The Court called for "strict scrutiny" in determining whether discrimination existed before starting a federal affirmative action program. "Strict scrutiny" meant that the affirmative action programs were a "compelling governmental interest" and "narrowly tailored" to fit the situation.

8. Hopwood v. University of Texas Law School University of Texas was challenged in regards to their affirmative action program. The 5th U.S. Court of Appeals suspended the university's affirmative action admissions program and decided that the 1978 Bakke decision was invalid. Bakke rejected racial quotas and maintained that race could serve as a factor in admissions. The Supreme Court allowed the ruling to stand. In 1997, the Texas Attorney General announced that all "Texas public universities should employ race-neutral criteria."

9. Gratz v. Bollinger A federal judge ruled that race as a factor in admissions at the University of Michigan was constitutional. “Just as preference is granted to children of alumni, scholarship athletes, and others groups for reasons deemed beneficial to the university, so too does the affirmative action program serve a compelling interest by providing educational benefits derived from a diverse student body.”

10. Grutter v. Bollinger Similar to the University of Michigan undergraduate lawsuit. A different judge drew an opposite conclusion, invalidating the law school's policy and ruling that "intellectual diversity bears no obvious or necessary relationship to racial diversity." On May 14, 2002, the decision was reversed, ruling that the admissions policy was constitutional.

11. Supreme Court Upholds Affirmative Action in University Admissions The Supreme Court upheld the University of Michigan Law School's policy, ruling that race can be one of many factors considered by colleges when selecting their students because it furthers "a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body." The Supreme Court ruled that the point system, giving twenty automatic points to a minority, had to be modified. “The undergraduate program, unlike the law school's, does not provide the individualized consideration of applicants deemed necessary in previous Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action.”

12. Parents v. Seattle and Meredith v. Jefferson In Parents v. Seattle and Meredith v. Jefferson, affirmative action suffered a setback when a divided court ruled that programs in Seattle and Louisville, Kentucky, which tried to maintain diversity in schools by considering race when assigning students to schools, were unconstitutional.

13. Ricci v. DeStefano In a lawsuit brought against the city of New Haven, 18 plaintiffs—17 white and 1 Hispanic—argued that results of the 2003 lieutenant and captain exams were thrown out when it was determined that few minority firefighters qualified for advancement. The city claimed they threw out the results because they feared liability under a disparate- impact statute for issuing tests that discriminated against minority firefighters. The plaintiffs claimed that they were victims of reverse discrimination under the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the firefighters, saying New Haven's "action in discarding the tests was a violation of Title VII."