Case Study: The Seattle School System

The Seattle school case and Gratz v. Bollinger were in fact colorblind. The Seattle school system didn’t want to become un-proportional in terms of race. Any school that became out of line with that would start to evaluate the race of students, trying to keep as close to 60-40 as possible. The court begins to question the fact the only thing being considered is the race of the students when putting them into particular schools. They believed it is not just about color, but about where the kids have grown up, what religion the child might identify with, their value system and so on and so forth. Although the school system wants to become more diverse the court also said there had to be a preexisting problem of racial bias along with a history
of trying to make up for discrimination, which Seattle didn’t have and therefore this process was struck down by the court. The fact that this case pertained to secondary education is important, as it was teaching kids that race matters to much in their lives at a young age. As for Gratz. v. Bollinger, a point system was being used in the application process of the University Of Michigan's undergraduate program. Up to twenty extra points could be awarded for being a minority, because of this two white men claimed it violated their equal protection clause as they did not get admitted to the university. The court stepped in and agreed with the two men, stating that diversity within the school is important but they way the university was going about it was not narrowly tailored enough. All of these cases a particularly hard to tackle as institutions are trying to achieve diversity, measured by race. Yet, the court said that you can’t just use race, you have to use other measures. Although the only way you really can measure it is by race, so the way in which universities or other institutions go about this process has to be very precise and knowledgeable of the law.