The Continuing Court Battle Over
Affirmative Action
in Higher Education:
The Case of Hopwood v. State of Texas (1996)
The University of Texas School of Law is one of the nation's leading law schools,
[fiercely competitive] and consistently ranking in the top twenty [law schools in
the United States]
....
In the early 1990s, the law school largely based its initial admissions decisions
upon an applicant's so-called Texas Index ("TI") number, a composite of
undergraduate grade point average ("GPA") and Law School Aptitude Test
("LSAT") score. The law school used this number as a matter of administrative
convenience in order to rank candidates and to predict, roughly, one's probability
of success in law school.
....
Of course, the law school did not rely upon numbers alone. The admissions
office . . . [took] into consideration other factors such as the strength of a
student's undergraduate education, the difficulty of his major, and significant
trends in his own grades. . . . Admissions personnel also considered . . . an
applicant's background, life experiences, and outlook. Not surprisingly, these
hard-to-quantify factors were especially significant for marginal candidates.
....
For the class entering in 1992—the admissions group at issue in this case—the
law school placed the typical applicant in one of three categories according to his
TI scores: "presumptive admit," "presumptive deny," or a middle "discretionary
zone." An applicant's TI category determined how extensive a review his
application would receive.
Most, but not all, applicants in the presumptive admit category received offers of
admission with little review. . . . Applicants in the presumptive denial category
also received little consideration. . . . Applications in the middle range were
subjected to the most extensive scrutiny.
....
Blacks and Mexican Americans were treated differently from other candidates,
however. First, compared to whites and non-preferred minorities, the TI ranges
that were used to place them into the three admissions categories were lowered
to allow the law school to consider and admit more of them. In March 1992, for
example, the presumptive TI admission score for resident whites and non-
preferred minorities was 199. Mexican Americans and blacks needed a TI of only
189 to be presumptively admitted. . . . The presumptive denial score for
"nonminorities" was 192; the same score for blacks and Mexican Americans was
179.
....
The stated purpose of this program of lowering of standards for minorities was to
meet an "aspiration" of admitting a class consisting of 10% Mexican Americans
and 5% blacks, portions roughly comparable to the percentages graduating from
Texas colleges. The law school found meeting these "goals" difficult, however,
because of uncertain acceptance rates and the variable quality of the applicant
pool. In 1992, for example, the entering class contained 41 blacks and 55
Mexican Americans, respectively 8% and 10.7% of the class.
In addition to maintaining separate presumptive TI levels for minorities and
whites, the law school ran a segregated application evaluation process. Upon
receiving an application form, the school color-coded it according to race. If a
candidate failed to designate his race, he was presumed to be in a
nonpreferential category. Thus, race was always an overt part of the review of
any applicant's file.
The law school reviewed minority candidates within the applicable discretionary
range differently from whites. . . . black and Mexican American applicants' files
were reviewed by a minority subcommittee of three, which would meet and
discuss every minority candidate. Thus, each of these candidates' files could get
extensive review and discussion.
....
Finally, the law school maintained segregated waiting lists, dividing applicants by
race and residence . . . many of those minority applicants who were not admitted
could be set aside in "minority-only" waiting lists. Such separate lists apparently
helped the law school maintain a pool of potentially acceptable, but marginal,
minority candidates.
....
Cheryl Hopwood, Douglas Carvell, Kenneth Elliott, and David Rogers (the
"plaintiffs") applied for admission to the 1992 entering law school class. All four
were white residents of Texas and were rejected.
The plaintiffs were considered as discretionary zone candidates. Hopwood . . .
had a TI of 199, a score barely within the presumptive-admit category for resident
whites, which was 199 and up. She was dropped into the discretionary zone for
resident whites (193 to 198), however, because [it was] decided her educational
background overstated the strength of her GPA. Carvell, Elliott, and Rogers had
TI's of 197, at the top end of that discretionary zone. . . .
....
The plaintiffs sued primarily under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment. . . . The plaintiffs' central claim is that they were subjected to
unconstitutional racial discrimination by the law school's evaluation of their
admissions applications. . . .
....
. . . [T]he district court held that the school had violated the plaintiffs' equal
protection rights...[but] the court refused to [stop] the law school from using race
in admissions decisions. . . .
Directions
Use the diagram below to describe the admissions process
for The University of Texas Law School.
Click here to download and print the diagram in PDF format.
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