VI. The Equal Protection Clause: Problems
Problem
The University of Maryland refused to accept black students until 1945. They have been accepting students on a non-discriminatory basis since then. The University bases its admissions to a large extent on students’ scores on a nationwide, standardized test, the SAT. The University has found that African American students do not score as well on this test as white students, resulting in a very low percentage of African Americans being accepted into the school. They would like to increase the number of African American students in a way that would not violate the equal protection clause. They pass the following policy:
Policy Statement
The University of Maryland will add 50 points to the SAT score of any student who has graduated from a public high school in the city of Baltimore.[i] We are doing this for three reasons:
1. To increase the diversity of the student body
2. To compensate for the inferior education in the city schools
3. To compensate for the fact that the LSAT has a cultural bias which results in minority and inner-city students scoring lower than white suburban students of similar ability.