FACTS

OF

THE CASE:

1. Allan Bakke was born in 1940. He received his bachelors degree in Engineering from
the University of Minnesota. He then served 4 years with the U.S. Marines in
Vietnam. After returning from Vietnam, he obtained a masters degree from Stanford.
He got a job with NASA near San Francisco. At NASA he was involved with testing
the effects of weightlessness and radiation on animals. This work increased his
interest in medicine.
2. In 1972, he applied for admission into medical school at the University of California,
Davis. His MCAT score was above the 90th percentile in 3 out of 4 categories He had
a lesser score than those in the general admission pool. He reapplied in 1973 and got
rejected.
3. The medical school at UC Davis admitted 100 students in medical school every year.
The medical school at UC Davis created two admission programs. One, the regular
admissions program, measured the major pool of applicants; examining overall GPA,
letters of recommendation, interviews, and other factors that culminated in a
benchmark score. Then these scores dictated placement for acceptance. However, the
second program, called the special admissions committee, examined only members of
the following minority groups: African Americans, Latin Americans, Asians, and
American Indians. They reserved 16 seats for economically disadvantaged
candidates as part of the Universitys affirmative action program, in an effort to
redress longstanding, unfair minority exclusions from the medical profession.
Students in this pool were independently ranked, and would then be recommended for
acceptance by a special committee, a majority of whom where minorities. Students
also in this pool were held to lower admission standards.
4. Allan Bakke, a white applicant was rejected with a 468 benchmark score because no
one with a lower score than 470 was accepted from the general admissions pool. He
was not placed on the waiting list, and the open special admission slots were filled by
less qualified minority applicants. After this happened again the next year, in 1974,
Bakke sued the school under the equal protection clause and the civil rights act of
1964.

5. Bakke was denied admission in both years and was not admitted to any other medical
school. He filed a complaint against the University seeking mandatory, injunctive and
declaratory relief to compel the University to admit him, alleging he was qualified for
admission and the sole reason he was rejected was because he was of the Caucasian
race. The complaint also alleged that students under the special program were
members of racial minorities and that the program applied separate, preferential
standards of admission resulting in the acceptance of minority candidates who were
less qualified for the study of medicine than Bakke and other nonminority applicants
who were rejected. Bakke claimed that he had been the victim of invidious
discrimination because of his race, in violation of the equal protection clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.