Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf
Page Number: 25.0

Cite as:  600 U. S. ____ (2023) 

17 

Opinion of the Court 

272–275.  The plaintiff, Allan Bakke, was denied admission 
two years in a row, despite the admission of minority appli-
cants  with  lower  grade  point  averages  and  MCAT  scores. 
Id., at 276–277.  Bakke subsequently sued the school, argu-
ing that its set-aside program violated the Equal Protection 
Clause. 

In a deeply splintered decision that produced six different 
opinions—none  of  which  commanded  a  majority  of  the 
Court—we  ultimately  ruled  in  part  in  favor  of  the  school 
and  in  part  in  favor  of  Bakke.    Justice  Powell  announced 
the Court’s judgment, and his opinion—though written for
himself  alone—would  eventually  come  to  “serv[e]  as  the
touchstone for constitutional analysis of race-conscious ad-
missions policies.”  Grutter, 539 U. S., at 323. 

Justice Powell began by finding three of the school’s four
justifications for its policy not sufficiently compelling.  The 
school’s first justification of “reducing the historic deficit of 
traditionally  disfavored  minorities  in  medical  schools,” he 
wrote, was akin to “[p]referring members of any one group 
for no reason other than race or ethnic origin.”  Bakke, 438 
U. S., at 306–307 (internal quotation marks omitted).  Yet 
that was “discrimination for its own sake,” which “the Con-
stitution forbids.”  Id., at 307 (citing, inter alia, Loving, 388 
U. S., at 11).  Justice Powell next observed that the goal of 
“remedying . . . the effects of ‘societal discrimination’ ” was 
also insufficient because it was “an amorphous concept  of 
injury  that  may  be  ageless  in  its  reach  into  the  past.” 
Bakke,  438  U. S.,  at  307.    Finally,  Justice  Powell  found 
there  was  “virtually  no  evidence  in  the  record  indicating
that  [the  school’s]  special  admissions  program”  would,  as
the school had argued, increase the number of doctors work-
ing in underserved areas.  Id., at 310. 

Justice Powell then turned to the school’s last interest as-
serted to be compelling—obtaining the educational benefits
that flow from a racially diverse student body.  That inter-
est, in his view, was “a constitutionally permissible goal for