March 6, 1961
Executive Order 10925 makes the first reference to “affirmative action”
Under President John F. Kennedy, the Executive Order creates the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity which mandates that projects financed with federal funds “take affirmative action” to ensure that hiring and employment practices are free of racial bias.
July 2, 1064
Civil Rights Act signed by President Lyndon Johnson
Prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin.
June 4, 1965
Speech made by President Johnson which expanded on the definition of affirmative action
“You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: ‘now, you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.’ You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe you have been completely fair . . . This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity—not just legal equity but human ability—not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result.”
Sept. 24, 1965
Executive Order enforces affirmative action for the first time
Requires government contractors to “take affirmative action” toward prospective minority employees in all aspects of hiring and employment.
1969
The Philadelphia Order
The most forceful plan thus far to guarantee fair hiring practices in construction jobs. Philadelphia was selected as the test case because, as assistant secretary of labor Arthur Fletcher explained, “The craft unions and the construction industry are among the most egregious offenders against equal opportunity laws . . . openly hostile toward letting blacks into their closed circle.”
June 28, 1978
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
Imposed limitations on affirmative action to ensure that providing greater opportunities for minorities did not come at the expense of the rights of the majority—affirmative action was unfair if it led to reverse discrimination. The case involved the Univ. of California, Davis, Medical School, which had two separate admissions pools, one for standard applicants, and another for minority and economically disadvantaged students. The school reserved 16 of its 100 places for this latter group. The Supreme Court ruled that while race was a legitimate factor in school admissions, the use of such inflexible quotas as the medical school had set aside was not.
May 19, 1986
Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education
This case challenged a school board’s policy of protecting minority employees by laying off non-minority teachers first, even though the non-minority employees had seniority. The Supreme Court ruled against the school board, maintaining that the injury suffered by non-minorities affected could not justify the benefits to minorities.
Jan. 23, 1989
City of Richmond v. Croson
This case involved affirmative action programs at the state and local levels—a Richmond program setting aside 30% of city construction funds for black-owned firms was challenged. For the first time, affirmative action was judged as a “highly suspect tool.” The Supreme Court ruled that an “amorphous claim that there has been past discrimination in a particular industry cannot justify the use of an unyielding racial quota.” It maintained that affirmative action must be subject to “strict scrutiny” and is unconstitutional unless racial discrimination can be proven to be “widespread throughout a particular industry.”
July 19, 1995
White House guidelines on affirmative action
In a White House memorandum, President Bill Clinton called for the elimination of any program that “(a) creates a quota; (b) creates preferences for unqualified individuals; (c) creates reverse discrimination; or (d) continues even after its equal opportunity purposes have been achieved.”
March 18, 1996
Hopwood v. University of Texas Law School
Cheryl Hopwood and three other white law-school applicants at the University of Texas challenged the school’s affirmative action program, asserting that they were rejected because of unfair preferences toward less qualified minority applicants. As a result, the 5th U.S. Court of Appeals suspended the university’s affirmative action admissions program and ruled that the 1978 Bakke decision was invalid—while Bakke rejected racial quotas it maintained that race could serve as a factor in admissions. In addition to remedying past discrimination, Bakke maintained that the inclusion of minority students would create a diverse student body, and that was beneficial to the educational environment as a whole. Hopwood, however, rejected the legitimacy of diversity as a goal, asserting that “educational diversity is not recognized as a compelling state interest.” The Supreme Court allowed the ruling to stand. In 1997, the Texas Attorney General announced that all “Texas public universities [should] employ race-neutral criteria.”
Nov. 3, 1997
Proposition 209 enacted in California
A state ban on all forms of affirmative action was passed in California: “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”
Dec. 3, 1998
Initiative 200 enacted in Washington State
Washington becomes the second state to abolish state affirmative action measures when it passed “I 200,” which is similar to California’s Proposition 209.
Feb. 22, 2000
Florida bans race as factor in college admissions
Florida legislature approves education component of Gov. Jeb Bush’s “One Florida” initiative, aimed at ending affirmative action in the state.
Dec. 13, 2000
University of Michigan’s undergrad affirmative action policy
In Gratz v. Bollinger, a federal judge ruled that the use of race as a factor in admissions at the University of Michigan was constitutional. The gist of the university’s argument was as follows: just as preference is granted to children of alumni, scholarship athletes, and others groups for reasons deemed beneficial to the university, so too does the affirmative action program serve “a compelling interest” by providing educational benefits derived from a diverse student body.
March 27, 2001
University of Michigan Law School’s affirmative action policy
In Grutter v. Bollinger, a case similar to the University of Michigan undergraduate lawsuit, a different judge drew an opposite conclusion, invalidating the law school’s policy and ruling that “intellectual diversity bears no obvious or necessary relationship to racial diversity.” But on May 14, 2002, the decision was reversed on appeal, ruling that the admissions policy was, in fact, constitutional.
Supreme Court Upholds Affirmative Action in University Admissions
In the most important affirmative action decision since the 1978 Bakke case, the Supreme Court (5-4) upholds the University of Michigan Law School’s policy, ruling that race can be one of many factors considered by colleges when selecting their students because it furthers “a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.” The Supreme Court, however, ruled (6-3) that the more formulaic approach of the University of Michigan’s undergraduate admissions program, which uses a point system that rates students and awards additional points to minorities, had to be modified. The undergraduate program, unlike the law school’s, does not provide the “individualized consideration” of applicants deemed necessary in previous Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action.
Supreme Court Rules Against Considering Race to Integrate Schools
In Parents v. Seattle and Meredith v. Jefferson, affirmative action suffers a setback when a bitterly divided court rules, 5–4, that programs in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., which tried to maintain diversity in schools by considering race when assigning students to schools, are unconstitutional.
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