Allan Bakke: Discrimination In Medical Schools

On October 12, 1977, a thirty-five-year-old white male by the name of Allan Bakke took the University of California Davis Medical School to the California Supreme Court for rejecting his admission into the school “because of his race”; he believed his rights had been violated under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The University of California Davis Medical School reserved sixteen spots for minorities out of every 100 students. Allan Bakke, wanting to become a doctor, applied for medical school at the university two years in a row, and was rejected both times. Bakke discovered all of the minority students let into the school instead of him had lower test scores and grade point averages than he did, and so he was convinced that if the school didn’t have the minority program, he would be accepted into the university. However, Bakke was one of 2,664 applicants that year for 100 available spaces. In the California lower court, they ruled that the school's admission …show more content…
The California Supreme Court then appealed to Bakke, saying it was up to the university to prove that he would not have been admitted if the special program had not been in effect. The school answered that they could not satisfy the requirement, and the court ordered the university to accept