mr. beat presents supreme cold breathe
California 1973 Alan Bakke a 33 year old
man of European origin wants to be a
doctor and applies to various medical
schools
baki was an accomplished NASA engineer
and Marine Corps veteran who served in
Vietnam he had always done well in
school and scored well on the medical
college admissions test or MCATs despite
all of this all twelve medical schools
he applied to rejected him one of those
schools that rejected his admission was
the University of California at Davis
baki applied there in 1973 and the
university committee gave him 468 points
out of 500 on their rating scale a 470
automatically got you in by the way dr.
Theodore West who interviewed Bakke said
he was quote a well-qualified candidate
for admission whose main hardship is the
unavoidable fact that he is now 33
unquote dr. West recommended him yeah
despite that Bakke was rejected he
complained to dr. George Lowery the
chairman of the admissions committee at
the Medical School Lowery directed him
to assistant dean Peter store aunt who
probably made the mistake of telling
Bakke essentially yeah buddy you were
close you should apply again and if you
don't get in after the second time maybe
consider I don't know suing the college
yeah later stir ants likely was fired
due to that so Bucky applied again and
UC Davis rejected him again in addition
at the time Bakke was rejected the
school had a special admission program
which was basically an affirmative
action quota system affirmative action
aka positive discrimination means
favoring folks belonging to groups
previously discriminated against and of
course the United States had a long
history of discriminating against ethnic
minorities the UC Davis med school
automatically held 16 spots for each new
class of 104 quotes
qualified minorities this meant that
several students with considerably lower
academic scores than box
were admitted due to being a minority on
June 20th 1974 Lackey sued the Regents
of the University of California which
was the group that supervised to UC
Davis it went through the Superior Court
of California in Yolo County Bakke
argued that the special admission
program for minorities at UC Davis win
against the Civil Rights Act
specifically title six which said there
should not be discrimination on the
basis of race color or national origin
in any program or activity that gets
money from the federal government UC
Davis's legal team argued that Bakke
wouldn't have been admitted to the
medical school even if the special
admission program for minorities didn't
exist on November 20th 1974 Judge F
Leslie menker ruled the program
unconstitutional and that racial quotas
in general when against the Equal
Protection Clause of the 14th amendment
and thus title 6 of the Civil Rights Act
menker ordered the medical school to
stop the special admission program for
minorities both Bakke and UC Davis
appealed Bakke because he still wasn't
admitted to their med school and UC
Davis because they had to end the
special admission program it went
straight to the California Supreme Court
they surprisingly ruled against the
college upholding the lower court's
ruling six to one justice Stanley mosque
wrote that quote no applicant may be
rejected because of his race in favor of
another who is less qualified as
measured by standards applied without
regard to race unquote the California
Supreme Court said UC Davis had to prove
Bakke wouldn't have got in under a race
neutral program when UC Davis couldn't
do that they ordered the school to let
Bakke go there the Regents of the
University of California petitioned the
Supreme Court to take a look at the case
the Supreme Court was like okay and
heard oral arguments on October 12 1977
this one drew a lot of national
attention and was constantly in the
media the Regents hired a high-profile
due
to represent them Archie Cox a former US
Solicitor General Cox had argued many
cases before the Supreme Court and was
even the Watergate special prosecutor
anyway the question was fairly
straightforward did you see Davis go
against the Equal Protection Clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment and also the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 by practicing
an affirmative action policy to
encourage more minorities in its medical
school yes and no the decision was a
straight-up mess officially the court
ruled 8 to 1 in ba keys favor however
that's very misleading the court issued
six separate opinions for this case none
of them have the support of a majority
of the court so this is what you call a
plurality opinion I'm not going to go
through each opinion let's just simplify
this for you basically these four
justices agreed with bokki that the
university's affirmative action quota
system violated Title six of the Civil
Rights Act these four justices argued
that it didn't justice Lewis Powell
broke the tie by splitting down the
middle but still on the side of ba key
so the courts ruled five two four four
ba key based on the argument that
affirmative action programs were okay
and could take ethnic background into
account however fixed quotas for a
certain number of minorities was
unconstitutional as the methods of
affirmative action went against the
Equal Protection Clause of the 14th
amendment Regents of the University of
California v Bakke banned racial quotas
for affirmative action but still left a
lot of confusion regarding how
affirmative action could be applied it
became less confusing after the 2003
case Rueter V Bollinger but to this day
affirmative action is constantly being
challenged in court all we know is that
it's still legal so UC Davis admitted
Allen baki baki
who never liked all the attention he got
for this case quietly graduated from
medical school in June 1982 almost ten
years after first applying there his
first residency was at the Mayo Clinic
he worked as an anesthesiologist in
Minnesota
after that all the way until his
retirement in 2008 and then sold medical
devices after that he's still alive
that's about all we know hey I told you
he's a very private guy
[Music]
I'll see you for the next Supreme Court
case jury this was the first case to
look at affirmative action and first
just so happens to be a theme that a lot
of edgy tubers are collaborating about
this week check out the playlist in the
description and pen comment for all of
the first theme videos so what do you
think about this case the debate about
affirmative action continues as the
Supreme Court looks at a case called
students for fair admissions V Harvard
going on right now it's about Harvard's
admission policy that several say
discriminates against asian-americans
let's check that case out if you haven't
been paying attention pay attention will
you thanks for watching