The Would-Be Doctor

Do university admissions programs that favor minority applicants violate the civil rights of whites? The "reverse discrimination" question came before the Supreme Court two years ago in the case of Marco DeFunis, who had sued the University of Washington Law School for barring him while accepting a minority student with lower test scores than his. But DeFunis, who had been admitted by order of a lower court, had nearly finished his studies by the time his case reached the Supreme Court, and so the Justices declined to make a ruling. Since then several similar cases have come before the lower courts, with mixed results. Now the Supreme Court appears ready to rule on the issue.

The case arose at the Medical School of the University of California at Davis, which reserves 16 out of 100 places in each entering class for minority students. That quota system at Davis was challenged by Civil Engineer Allan Bakke, 36, who has degrees from Minnesota and Stanford, and scored in the 95th percentile on his entrance tests. Bakke, a somewhat mysterious figure who refuses to be interviewed or photographed, says through a lawyer only that he finds engineering "unsatisfying" and that he believes medicine would be "more rewarding."

The Court Speaks. The California Supreme Court supported Bakke and declared that racial discrimination is illegal even "if the race discriminated against is the majority rather than the minority." Instead of relying on a quota system, it said, the university might enroll more minority students by means of active recruiting and remedial teaching. The university was dubious. Says its general counsel, Donald Reidhaar: "No one has yet been able to come up with other really effective special admissions programs."

The university asked the Supreme Court to stay the California court's decision until it could prepare an appeal. Last week it granted that stay for 30 days. Paradoxically, however, many civil rights leaders opposed the appeal for fear that the Supreme Court might strike down many affirmative action programs. Explained a Mexican-American civil-rights official, Frank Cronin: "Virtually all of the court decisions that have ordered goals or quotas or affirmative action as remedies have been based on a judicial finding of past discrimination. The university didn't produce any history of discrimination. Tactically, this case is kind of a loser." Despite such objections, the university's board of regents voted at week's end to seek an authoritative ruling by filing its appeal to the Supreme Court.

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