Although he has a strong benchmark score, he was rejected because he was under the general admissions program, while four special admissions slots were unfilled and reserved for minorities. In July of 1995 there was a decision made by the Board of Regents of the University of California to end race and gender-based preferences in admissions (240). Five months later, Proposition 209 was passed which is a state constitutional amendment that brought the exclusion of the use of race and gender-based decision-making in public institutions (240). These laws caused a debate over affirmative action, which leads us to the question: Should the UC's race-based affirmative action admissions policies be reinstated? The response I have for this ongoing debate is that I think that raced-based affirmative action admissions policies at UC should not be reinstated because they are unlawful and unjust. The special programs created by the University of California, Davis, excluded people because of their race. These special programs act as quotas, which are unconstitutional. Affirmative action is not the right way to fulfill the Douglass statute because any type of discrimination is unjust. .
Justice Powell in the Bakke case believes that UC-Davis's quota system is unconstitutional, but he thinks that it is constitutional to take race into account to redress the effects of past discrimination. However, I will use Justice Stevens, Justice Stewart, and Justice Rehnquist's opinion from Regents of the University of California v. Bakke to show how the admissions policies at the UC are like quotas, and taking race into account to redress the effects of past discrimination is unconstitutional. Next, I will explain why I think that both the UC Davis program and the Harvard program are unconstitutional and .
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how they violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth amendment. I will also support Justice Stevens, Justice Stewart, and Justice Rehnquist's opinion using Blackstone's argument of reverse discrimination.