Barbara Grutter sued the University of Michigan Law School over her denied admission due to her belief that the school didn’t guarantee her right of “equal protection” under the Fourteenth Amendment, according to the U.S. Constitution. Grutter graduated high school with a 3.8 GPA and had scored qualifying standardized test scores for the law school. She was suing the law school’s affirmative action policy, a policy which justifies the use of race in admissions.
Grutter was a white, in-state resident who met the grade requirements, but that did not mean her admission was guaranteed. It could have been possible that the admissions office did not find her application essay satisfactory, or simply did not feel Grutter was someone they wanted at their school. Grutter claimed that the school chose a “less-qualified minority applicant” over her to increase diversity at the University of Michigan, which violated her right of the Fourteenth Amendment (nytimes.com: “10 Supreme Court Cases Every Teen Should Know”).
The Supreme Court justified the school’s policy since the school examined each applicant’s qualifications and did not use race as a deciding factor in admissions. It is not really necessary to require race in admissions unless a school is trying to regulate diversity. However, based on the class of 2020 admission statistics of the University of Michigan Law School, 73.13 percent of applicants are white and 25.32 percent of applicants are minorities. A student should be judged on grades, writing pieces, personal achievements, financial aid, household income, etc., when applying to college, not based on their color or ethnicity. It is inequitable if an admissions office is interested in a student but discovers he or she is a minority, and which could later negatively influence their admission decision.