Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1974

DeFunis v. Odegaard

416 U.S. 312 | 94 S. Ct. 1704 | 40 L. Ed. 2d 164 | 1974 U.S. LEXIS 128

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Takeaway

In short, DeFunis is principally an Article III mootness case: the Court avoided deciding the constitutionality of race-conscious admissions because the individual plaintiff was assured he could graduate whatever the Court said.

Background

Marco DeFunis, Jr., applied to the University of Washington Law School in 1971. The state-operated law school had roughly 1,600 applicants for 150 first-year places. Its admissions process gave separate consideration to applicants identified as members of certain minority groups. DeFunis, who was not admitted, alleged that the program discriminated against him because of race in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

DeFunis sued only on his own behalf, not as a class representative, and sought an injunction requiring his admission to the entering class. The trial court granted that relief, and he began law school in fall 1971. The Washington Supreme Court reversed, holding that the admissions policy was constitutional. Justice Douglas, acting as Circuit Justice, stayed that judgment while DeFunis sought Supreme Court review, allowing him to remain enrolled.

By the time the Supreme Court heard argument, DeFunis had registered for the final quarter of his third and final year. The University represented that it would not cancel that registration and that he could complete the term and receive his degree if he satisfied graduation requirements. The Court therefore reconsidered whether a live Article III controversy remained.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether DeFunis's challenge to the law school's admissions policy remained a live Article III case or controversy after he had enrolled in the final quarter of law school.

Holding

No. The case was moot because DeFunis could complete his legal education and receive his degree regardless of how the Court resolved the constitutional question.

Reasoning

Article III permits federal courts to decide only disputes that can affect the legal rights of the parties before them. Although Washington law would preserve the appeal because of the public importance of its issues, mootness in the Supreme Court is a federal constitutional question.

DeFunis sought only an injunction requiring his admission to the law school, and he had already received that practical relief. Once he registered for the final quarter and the University assured the Court that it would honor his registration regardless of the merits, a decision could neither secure nor prevent his completion of law school.

Because DeFunis brought an individual action rather than a class action, no separate claim by similarly situated applicants remained before the Court. The controversy was no longer definite and concrete or one affecting parties with adverse legal interests.

The Court vacated the Washington Supreme Court's judgment and remanded for further proceedings that court considered appropriate, rather than allowing an unreviewed state-court merits decision to stand after the case became moot on review.

Issue #2

Whether the University's assurance that DeFunis could finish law school was merely voluntary cessation of allegedly unlawful conduct, which ordinarily does not moot a case.

Holding

No. The voluntary-cessation doctrine did not prevent mootness because the case became moot through DeFunis's final enrollment and the school's settled practice of permitting enrolled students to finish a term, not through abandonment of the challenged admissions policy.

Reasoning

A defendant ordinarily cannot moot a case simply by voluntarily stopping challenged conduct, because it may resume that conduct after the litigation ends. That doctrine would be relevant if the University had changed or abandoned the admissions procedures under attack.

Here, however, the disputed practice was the admissions process, not the University's decision to let DeFunis complete a term for which he was already registered. The University's representation did not purport to end the minority admissions policy; it established only that no merits ruling could affect DeFunis's graduation.

The Court accepted the State Attorney General's professional representation that DeFunis's status would not be affected by the Court's views on the merits, consistent with its practice of relying on such representations in other cases.

Issue #3

Whether the challenge fell within the exception for controversies capable of repetition yet evading review.

Holding

No. The exception did not apply because DeFunis personally would not again undergo this admissions process, and future challenges to the policy were not likely to evade judicial review.

Reasoning

For the exception to apply, the same complaining party must face a reasonable likelihood of being subjected again to the challenged action. DeFunis, nearing graduation, would never again need to apply for admission to the law school.

The Court also rejected the premise that admissions challenges inherently evade review. This case reached the Court late because of its particular procedural course, but the Washington Supreme Court had now ruled on the policy, making it reasonable to expect a later challenge to reach the Supreme Court more quickly if the policy continued.

Issue #4

Whether the University's minority admissions program violated the Equal Protection Clause.

Holding

The Court did not decide the constitutional merits because Article III mootness deprived it of authority to do so.

Reasoning

The Court recognized that the parties had presented substantive constitutional questions about race-conscious admissions. But a federal court may not issue what would effectively be an advisory opinion once its decision can no longer alter the litigant's rights.

Accordingly, the Court expressed no view on the validity of the University of Washington's admissions policy or on the Washington Supreme Court's constitutional analysis.

Dissents

Justice Douglas

Reasoning

Justice Douglas agreed with Justice Brennan that the case remained live and would have reached the merits. In his view, the importance of the constitutional questions surrounding racial preferences in professional-school admissions made it especially necessary to decide the case rather than dismiss it as moot.

Douglas described the law school's process as one that applied different evaluative systems based on race. Minority applicants were assessed separately from other applicants and, in practice, some were admitted even though the school's ordinary criteria would have led to their rejection. He believed that such a racial classification required the most searching equal-protection review.

At the same time, Douglas emphasized that standardized tests and conventional academic measures may fail to capture an individual's talent, motivation, and potential, particularly where cultural background affects performance. A school may consider an applicant's individual achievements in light of obstacles overcome, but it should not confer a preference solely because the applicant belongs to a racial group.

Douglas regarded the record as inadequate to determine whether the LSAT and related admissions criteria imposed culturally biased barriers or whether separate treatment was needed to make assessment genuinely race-neutral. He would vacate and remand for a new trial examining those questions, including whether conventional tests should be eliminated or modified for minority applicants.

His larger concern was that reserving positions for selected racial groups invites unstable disputes over which groups qualify, how many seats each should receive, and what level of representation is appropriate. The Equal Protection Clause, he concluded, protects each applicant's right to an individualized, racially neutral evaluation rather than a place assigned by racial classification.

Justice Brennan

Reasoning

Justice Brennan, joined by Justices Douglas, White, and Marshall, concluded that the case was not moot. Although DeFunis had registered for his final term, unexpected events such as illness, financial hardship, or academic failure could prevent graduation and require him to seek reenrollment. The University had indicated that such continued enrollment would require further discretionary action.

A ruling for DeFunis could still matter because it could ensure that, if he needed another term, he could reenroll without again facing the allegedly unlawful admissions policy. Thus, the University's limited assurance that it would let him complete the current term did not eliminate every realistic prospect that the policy would again affect him.

Brennan also viewed the University's position as a form of voluntary cessation that did not satisfy the government's heavy burden to show that the challenged conduct could not recur. The University had not conceded that its policy was unlawful and remained free to apply it if DeFunis later needed to continue his studies.

Finally, the case had already been fully litigated in the state courts, briefed, and argued on a developed record. Given the sharp adverseness of the parties, the broad public importance of the issue, and the likelihood that the question would return to the Court, Brennan believed the Court should decide the equal-protection merits rather than avoid them through an unnecessarily strict mootness ruling.