Opposition to affirmative action in California culminated in the passage in 1996 of the California Civil Rights Initiative (Proposition 209), which prohibited all government agencies and institutions from giving preferential treatment to individuals based on their race or sex. The Supreme Court effectively upheld the constitutionality of Proposition 209 in November 1997 by refusing to hear a challenge to its enforcement. Legislation similar to Proposition 209 was subsequently proposed in other states and was passed in Washington in 1998. The Supreme Court also upheld a lower-court ruling that struck down as unconstitutional the University of Texas's affirmative action program, arguing in Hopwood v. University of Texas Law School (1996) that there was no compelling state interest to warrant using race as a factor in admissions decisions. Afterward there were further legislative and electoral challenges to affirmative action in many parts of the country. In 2003, in two landmark rulings involving admissions to the University of Michigan and its law school, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the constitutionality of affirmative action, though it ruled that race could not be the preeminent factor in such decisions as it struck down the university's undergraduate admissions policy that awarded points to students on the basis of race.
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