Grutter v. Bollinger

UEAALDF successfully intervened on behalf of 41 students of all races from all across the country in the landmark University of Michigan Law School affirmative action case, Grutter v. Bollinger. As a result of the efforts of UEAALDF and other civil rights forces, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld affirmative action on June 23, 2003 (see the ruling), allowing universities across the country to maintain affirmative action programs in their admissions systems.

The case UEAALDF made at trial was the most comprehensive case for affirmative action ever made in a court of law, and has since been the focus of extensive legal scholarship.

The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), a student-activist organization that works closely with UEAALDF, spearheaded a national mobilization to the U.S. Supreme Court for the day oral arguments would be heard in Grutter. In conjunction with the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, NAACP, UAW, and other national organizations, BAMN mobilized over 50,000 people to the Supreme Court on April 1, 2003.

Argument to the Court

UEAALDF Brief to the U.S. Supreme Court

Oral Argument to the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals

Expert Testimony from the Trial of Grutter v. Bollinger

Walter Allen – UCLA Professor of Education testified on the hostile environment experienced by minority students on the feeder campuses to the UM Law School and the impact of that environment on academic achievement. He made clear that law school admissions criteria such as undergraduate GPA, are distorted by the effects of hostile campus climate.

 

 

Eric Foner – The nation’s leading authority on post-Civil War Reconstruction, testified on the significance of race and racism in American history. He made clear that throughout our nation’s history there has been a double standard applied to black people and as a result, black and white Americans have experienced their own shared history in very different ways.

 

 

Dr. John Hope Franklin – Leading historian, author of From Slavery to Freedom and Co-Chair of the President’s Initiative on Race, testified about race relations throughout the Twentieth Century. He testified both as a historian and from his own personal experience on subjects ranging from the Tulsa race riots, the the “improvisational” character of Jim Crow, and his current experiences with racism, making clear that we do not live in a “post-racial” society.

 

Eugene Garcia- Currently Dean of the College of Education at Arizona State University, former Dean of the Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley, Dr. Garcia testified to the segregated and unequal conditions of education for Latino/Chicano and black youth in K-12 education in California and the growing re-segregation of the UC system as a consequence of Prop 209. He also addressed the particular problems of discrimination experienced by Latino/as and the special disadvantage of all students who do not learn academic English in their homes.

 

Gary Orfield – The nation’s leading authority on K-12 segregation and co-founder of The Civil Rights Project at UCLA (formerly the Harvard Civil Rights Project), testified on the harm of segregation in K-12 education, and the growth of K-12 segregation today. He also described how federal housing policy dramatically increased residential segregation in Detroit and how that led to the educational segregation that exists today.

 

Jay Rosner – Director of the Princeton Review Foundation, testified to the narrowness of test taking skills, the biases involved in standardized tests like the SAT and LSAT, the limited usefulness of the tests as indicators of qualifications for law students and to the substantial score improvement provided by test preparation.

 

 

Martin Shapiro – Professor at Emory University and expert on psychometrics, testified on the inherent flaws of standardized testing methodology and its discriminatory impact on minority groups. He explained how the disparate impact of standardized tests is endlessly reproduced through the process of test question selection.

 

 

Frank Wu – Currently Dean of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, at the time of the trial, a Professor of Law at Howard University, Wu testified about the benefits of affirmative action to Asian Pacific Americans. He described the long history of institutional discrimination faced by Asian Americans in the United States, and specifically addressed racist stereotypes about Asian Americans and the myth of the “model minority”.

 

David White – Leading authority on the bias of standardized testing and founder of Testing for the Public, testified on the racial bias of the law school admissions test, LSAT, and other standardized tests. In particular he presented the research carried out under his supervision which proved that white and black students who performed equally (GPA within a tenth of a point in the same major in the same school) in their undergraduate studies showed large gaps in performance on the LSAT.

 The Trial in Federal District Court: January/February 2001, Detroit, MI

“Trial Outline” - a one-page summary/guide to the trial testimony
(PDF file)

Transcript of Grutter v. Bollinger trial in Federal District Court (plaintext format)

What follows is the full transcript of the 15-day Grutter v. Bollingertrial. Taken in its entirety, the transcript reveals the breadth and depth of the defense of affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School launched by the intervening student defendants in this historic trial.

The student defendants presented the strongest, most legally and sociologically comprehensive defense of affirmative action ever in the history of affirmative action litigation. Our groundbreaking case was not only the most rigorous legal defense ever made of affirmative action, it was also the broadest, most comprehensive exposition of race and racism ever put forward in an American court. We put racism and social inequality on trial.

Day 1 – Jan. 16, 2001 - Opening arguments; Stillwagon; Munzel
Day 2 – Jan. 17, 2001 - Larntz
Day 3 – Jan. 18, 2001 - Larntz; Motions; Bollinger; Lempert
Day 4 – Jan. 19, 2001 - Raudenbush; Shields
Day 5 – Jan. 22, 2001 - Syverud; Lehman
Day 6 – Jan. 23, 2001 - Dowdell; Orfield
Day 7 – Jan. 24, 2001 - Franklin; Rosner
Day 8 – Feb. 6, 2001 - Shapiro; Rosner; Escobar
Day 9 – Feb. 7, 2001 - James; Allen
Day 10 – Feb. 8, 2001 - Allen; Garcia; Foner
Day 11 – Feb. 9, 2001 - Garcia; White
Day 12 – Feb. 10, 2001 - Arguments; Larntz
Day 13 – Feb. 12, 2001 - Raudenbush; Wu; Smith
Day 14 – Feb. 15, 2001 - Lempert; Kappner
Day 15 – Feb. 16, 2001 - Closing arguments

**UEAALDF witnesses shown in bold type 

Other Links

Legal pleadings in the the University of Michigan Law School affirmative action case, Grutter v. Bollinger: See University of Michigan website page on Grutter v. Bollinger

Link to the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action & Integration and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary – BAMN, one of the three intervening civil rights organizations in Grutter v. Bollinger