Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 2014

Schuette v. Coal. to Defend Affirmative Action

134 S. Ct. 1623 | 188 L. Ed. 2d 613 | 2014 U.S. LEXIS 2932 | 82 U.S.L.W. 4251 | 572 U.S. 291 | 24 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 667

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Takeaway

In short, this case holds that voters may constitutionally ban race-conscious public-university admissions policies; the Equal Protection Clause does not require States to leave that policy choice to university officials.

Background

After Gratz v. Bollinger invalidated the University of Michigan’s undergraduate admissions system, Michigan revised that system but retained a limited consideration of race. In 2006, Michigan voters adopted Proposal 2, now Article I, § 26 of the Michigan Constitution. Section 26 prohibits Michigan governmental entities, including public universities, from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public education, employment, and contracting.

Students, faculty, prospective applicants, and advocacy groups challenged § 26. They argued that, by removing public universities’ authority to use race-conscious admissions policies while leaving university boards free to set other admissions criteria, the amendment imposed a special political burden on racial minorities. The Federal District Court upheld the amendment on summary judgment. A Sixth Circuit panel reversed, and the en banc Sixth Circuit agreed, holding that § 26 violated the Equal Protection Clause under the political-process doctrine of Hunter v. Erickson and Washington v. Seattle School District No. 1. The Supreme Court reversed.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether Michigan’s constitutional ban on race-based preferences in public-university admissions violates the Equal Protection Clause by restructuring the political process to burden racial minorities.

Holding

No. The Equal Protection Clause does not bar Michigan voters from adopting § 26 and prohibiting state universities from using race-based preferences in admissions.

Reasoning

The Court emphasized the narrowness of the question. It did not decide whether race-conscious admissions policies are constitutional or wise; Grutter and Fisher had already established that carefully limited race-conscious admissions programs may be permissible. The question instead was who may decide whether Michigan’s public institutions will use such policies: university officials or the State’s voters.

The Sixth Circuit had relied on Hunter and Seattle, which invalidated political restructurings that singled out race-related policies and made them harder for minorities to obtain. But the plurality read those cases against their particular contexts. In Hunter, Akron altered its procedures amid entrenched housing discrimination, placing special obstacles before laws protecting racial minorities. In Seattle, the initiative blocked a desegregative busing remedy against a background in which government action had contributed to racial segregation and the validity of the remedy was assumed.

The plurality rejected the Sixth Circuit’s broad reading of Seattle: that any policy thought to benefit racial minorities cannot be moved to a different level of government without strict scrutiny. That approach would require courts to decide which policies serve the interests of particular racial groups and would rest on the impermissible stereotype that people of the same race share the same political views and policy preferences.

Unlike the laws at issue in Hunter, Seattle, and Reitman v. Mulkey, § 26 did not authorize, encourage, or aggravate a specific racial injury. It directed Michigan governmental entities not to use race-based preferences. The Court found no precedent for treating a voter decision to end such preferences as an unconstitutional political restructuring.

Michigan’s voters used their ordinary constitutional initiative process to resolve a contested policy question. Absent an infringement of a federally protected right, States retain broad authority over their internal governmental arrangements. The Constitution protects individuals from unlawful racial discrimination, but it also protects citizens’ ability to debate difficult questions and enact policy through democratic means.

Concurrences

Chief Justice Roberts

Reasoning

Chief Justice Roberts stressed that reasonable people may disagree in good faith about whether racial preferences help or harm their intended beneficiaries. He rejected the suggestion that opposition to race-conscious admissions necessarily reflects denial of continuing racial inequality or unwillingness to discuss race candidly.

In his view, the dissent’s concern that race-conscious admissions promote inclusion did not change the constitutional question. Michigan voters and university governing boards could both conclude that racial preferences are undesirable, and the Equal Protection Clause does not make that policy judgment constitutionally suspect merely because it is reached through a statewide vote.

Justice Scalia

Reasoning

Justice Scalia agreed that § 26 must stand, but he would have gone further than the plurality. In his view, the Equal Protection Clause prohibits governmental racial discrimination; therefore, a state constitutional provision directing public institutions not to discriminate or grant preferences based on race cannot itself violate equal protection.

He would overrule Hunter and Seattle’s political-process doctrine rather than reinterpret those decisions. The doctrine, he argued, is atextual and unadministrable because it requires courts to decide which issues are racial and what policies a racial group supposedly regards as being in its interest. It also improperly treats equal protection as protecting racial groups rather than individual persons.

Justice Scalia further maintained that a facially neutral law cannot violate equal protection without discriminatory purpose. Because § 26 requires equal treatment and does not classify persons by race, he concluded that it cannot be invalidated based solely on its political effects or an alleged disparate impact. Justice Thomas joined this concurrence in the judgment.

Justice Breyer

Reasoning

Justice Breyer agreed with the judgment but took a narrower route. He assumed that diversity-based race-conscious admissions programs of the kind approved in Grutter are constitutionally permissible, though not constitutionally required. He also limited his analysis to programs using race solely to obtain the educational benefits of student-body diversity, not programs designed to remedy identified past discrimination or its direct effects.

He accepted Hunter and Seattle’s central principle: racial minorities must have an equal opportunity to participate meaningfully in the political process. But he concluded that those cases did not apply because Michigan’s race-conscious admissions policies had in practice been adopted by unelected university faculty members and administrators, even though elected university boards retained ultimate supervisory authority.

Section 26 therefore moved decisionmaking from an administrative setting to the voters, rather than from one elected political level to another in a way that undid a minority group’s prior electoral success. Extending Hunter and Seattle to every transfer of authority from administrators to politically accountable actors would be difficult to administer and would unduly impede democratic experimentation over admissions policy.

Dissents

Justice Sotomayor

Reasoning

Justice Sotomayor argued that § 26 violated the political-process doctrine established in Hunter and Seattle. In her view, equal protection safeguards not only against intentional racial discrimination in the enforcement of laws, but also against state action that denies racial minorities a meaningful and equal opportunity to participate in the political process. Justice Ginsburg joined her dissent.

Before § 26, Michigan’s elected university boards had authority over every aspect of admissions policy, including whether to consider race as one factor in an individualized admissions process. Supporters and opponents of race-conscious admissions could lobby the boards and elect candidates who shared their views. Section 26 left that ordinary process available for legacy preferences, athletic preferences, geographic preferences, and other admissions criteria, but required supporters of race-conscious admissions alone to secure a state constitutional amendment.

That selective transfer of authority imposed a uniquely high burden on racial minorities seeking policies that primarily benefit them. Under Hunter and Seattle, Justice Sotomayor argued, a State may not change the rules of political decisionmaking so that a racial minority alone must surmount a more onerous process to obtain legislation in its interest. Because Michigan did not contend that § 26 survived strict scrutiny, she would have affirmed the Sixth Circuit.

The plurality, she argued, effectively discarded Hunter and Seattle while claiming merely to narrow them. Those cases were not limited to laws enacted with discriminatory intent or to government-caused racial injury. Their stated rule was that a majority may not use the racial nature of an issue to reallocate political power and impose unique barriers on racial minorities.

Justice Sotomayor rejected the claim that applying the doctrine requires improper racial stereotyping. Courts routinely examine racial effects and the historical circumstances surrounding political arrangements. Ignoring race, she argued, does not eliminate the continuing consequences of racial exclusion; it risks allowing majorities to manipulate political procedures while formally leaving minorities the right to vote.

She also described the historical exclusion of Black and other minority students from Michigan higher education and the declines in minority enrollment associated with bans on race-conscious admissions. Although she did not treat the policy merits of affirmative action as dispositive, she maintained that the practical effect of § 26 was to deny minorities an equal route to advocate for a constitutionally permissible means of achieving educational diversity.