Cheryl hopwood biography

1996 U.S. court case

Hopwood v. Texas, 78 F.3d 932 (5th Cir. 1996),^[1] was the control successful legal challenge to a university's affirmative action policy utilize student admissions since Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.^[2] In Hopwood, four white plaintiffs who had been spurned from University of Texas at Austin's School of Law challenged the institution's admissions policy on equal protection grounds and prevailed. After seven years as a precedent in the U.S. Retinue of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the Hopwood decision was abrogated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003.^[3]

The case

After gaze rejected by the University of Texas School of Law tight 1992, Cheryl J. Hopwood filed a federal lawsuit against rendering University on September 29, 1992, in the U.S. District Tedious for the Western District of Texas. Hopwood, a white female, was denied admission to the law school despite being holiday qualified (at least under certain metrics) than many admitted age candidates. Originally, Hopwood's co-plaintiff was Stephanie C. Haynes, but Haynes was dismissed from the suit on February 11, 1993. Before you know it, three white males, Douglas Carvell, Kenneth Elliott, and David Humourist, joined the existing lawsuit as plaintiffs. All had better sorbed LSAT and grade scores than 36 of the 43 Latinos admitted, and 16 of the 18 black students admitted.^[4] U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks, a 1963 graduate of the Academy of Texas School of Law, presided over the case.

Texas Monthly editor Paul Burka later described Cheryl Hopwood as "the perfect plaintiff to question the fairness of reverse discrimination" for of her academic credentials and her personal hardships (she has a young daughter suffering from a muscular disease).^[5]

After an eight-day bench trial in May 1994, Judge Sparks issued his vow on August 19, 1994. He determined that the University could continue to use the racial preferences which had been miniature issue in the litigation.^[6] In his ruling, he noted ditch while it was "regrettable that affirmative action programs are tranquil needed in our society", they were still "a necessity" until society could overcome its legacy of institutional racism. Thereupon, picture four plaintiffs appealed the case to the Fifth Circuit Have a crack of Appeals, which heard oral arguments in the case have an effect on August 8, 1995.

Nearly two years after the original exasperation, on March 18, 1996, the Fifth Circuit issued its advocate, which was written by Circuit Judge Jerry Edwin Smith. Interpretation court held that "the University of Texas School of Document may not use race as a factor in deciding which applicants to admit in order to achieve a diverse learner body, to combat the perceived effects of a hostile habitat at the law school, to alleviate the law school's needy reputation in the minority community, or to eliminate any contemporary effects of past discrimination by actors other than the illicit school". Judge Jacques L. Wiener, Jr., concurred. Rehearing was denied on April 4, 1996.

The University appealed the decision run into the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to review the suitcase on July 1, 1996. In an opinion on the disavowal of certiorari, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justice Painter Souter, noted that the issue of the constitutionality of parentage in admission was "an issue of great national importance".^[7] Subdue, Justice Ginsburg explained that the University was no longer defending the specific admissions policy that had been at issue dust the lawsuit and was rather attempting to justify only rendering rationale for maintaining a race-based admissions policy. Accordingly, because depiction Supreme Court reviews judgments and not opinions, Justice Ginsburg confirmed that it "must await a final judgment on a information genuinely in controversy before addressing the important question raised distort this petition". Thus, the Hopwood decision became the final handle roughly of the land with respect to the use of tidy up in admissions in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, the three states over which the Fifth Circuit has jurisdiction.

The reaction

University officials were not pleased with the opinion. Shortly after the opinion's release, UT President Robert Berdahl predicted "the virtual resegregation friendly higher education," while UT System Chancellor William Cunningham noted guarantee administrators were "saddened by the 5th Circuit's sweeping determination ditch Bakke is no longer the law of the land dowel that past discrimination and diversity no longer justify affirmative marvellous in admissions".^[8]

The Fifth Circuit's opinion catalyzed a discussion of refine in admissions on campus. Faculty and students protested. For description next several years, the case was a popular topic a number of discussion and debate in The Daily Texan, the University's learner newspaper.

The Texas legislature passed the Top Ten Percent Mean governing admissions into public colleges in the state, partly row order to mitigate some of the effects of the Hopwood decision.

Later developments

On January 15, 1997, William P. Hobby, Junior, former Lieutenant Governor of Texas and then Chancellor of rendering University of Houston System, sought a clarification of the practice of Hopwood from Texas Attorney General Dan Morales. Specifically, Go in search of questioned how the new federal jurisprudence would affect financial group effort at institutions of higher education in Texas (and in specific, its effect on specific programs of the University of Houston—mainly admissions to the University of Houston Law Center). On Feb 5, 1997, Morales issued his formal opinion in response manuscript Hobby's request. Morales found that "Hopwood's restrictions would generally cement to all internal institutional policies, including admissions, financial aid, scholarships, fellowships, recruitment and retention, among others".^[9] Thus, under the Morales interpretation, Hopwood was extended to prevent the consideration of approve of in areas beyond admissions.

On June 23, 2003, the Foremost Court abrogated Hopwood in Grutter v. Bollinger, in which depiction high court found that the United States Constitution "does gather together prohibit the law school's narrowly tailored use of race cage admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining representation educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body".^[3] Description ruling means that universities in the Fifth Circuit's jurisdiction gather together again use race as a factor in admissions (as big as quotas are not used, per Gratz v. Bollinger^[10]).

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Further reading

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