By the late 1970s the use of racial quotas and minority set-asides led to court challenges of affirmative action as a form of “reverse discrimination.” The first major challenge was Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (5–4) that quotas may not be used to reserve places for minority applicants if white applicants are denied a chance to compete for those places. Although the court outlawed quota programs, it allowed colleges to use race as a factor in making college admissions decisions. Two years later a fragmented court upheld a 1977 federal law requiring that 10 percent of funds for public works be allotted to qualified minority contractors.
The Supreme Court began to impose significant restrictions on race-based affirmative action in 1989. In several decisions that year, the court gave greater weight to claims of reverse discrimination, outlawed the use of minority set-asides in cases where prior racial discrimination could not be proved, and placed limits on the use of racial preferences by states that were stricter than those it applied to the federal government. In Adarand Constructors v. Pena (1995), the court ruled that federal affirmative action programs were unconstitutional unless they fulfilled a “compelling governmental interest.”
Copyright © 1994-2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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