Constitutional Law: Quiz #5 Study Guide

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Gratz v. Bollinger

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(2003) was a case regarding the University of Michigan undergraduate affirmative action admissions policy. In a 6-3 decision (announced on June 23, 2003), Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing for the Court, ruled the University's point system's "predetermined point allocations" that awarded 20 points to underrepresented minorities "ensures that the diversity contributions of applicants cannot be individually assessed" and was therefore unconstitutional. (Equal protection of the laws) (Gratz argued that this violated her fourteenth amendment right to equal protection clause)

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Gratz v. Bollinger

Brown v. Board of Education

(1954), was a case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education. (Handed down on May 17, 1954,) the Warren Court's unanimous (9-0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." As a result, de jure racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This ruling paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement.

U.S. Department of Agriculture v. Moreno

(1973) was a case in which the Court held that the "unrelated person" provision was irrelevant to the stated purpose of the Food Stamp Act and violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Plessy v. Ferguson

(1896), is a decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal".

The decision was handed down by a vote of 7 to 1 with the majority opinion written by Justice Henry Billings Brown and the dissent written by Justice John Marshall Harlan. "Separate but equal" remained standard doctrine in U.S. law until its repudiation in the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education.

Lochner v. New York

(1905) was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that held that "liberty of contract" was implicit in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case involved a New York law that limited the number of hours that a baker could work each day to ten, and limited the number of hours that a baker could work each week to 60. By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court rejected the argument that the law was necessary to protect the health of bakers, deciding it was a labor law attempting to regulate the terms of employment, and calling it an "unreasonable, unnecessary and arbitrary interference with the right and liberty of the individual to contract."