Affirmative Action or Reverse Discrimination

Colleen Koehn
Business Law 1038
Instructor Jackie Sexson
March 1, 2010
South University Online

There has been a large debate in recent years if affirmative action has gone against the American way, has affirmative action caused reverse discrimination? The establishment of affirmative action was put into place to create equal rights for racial minorities, ethnic minorities, women, the physically disabled and those who served in the military. Affirmative Action was born during the civil rights movement to give special consideration to minorities and women in the work place and education. In order for businesses and schools to increase their diversity they put in place quota systems. …show more content…

Sandra Day O’Connor was the first women named to the US Supreme Court. She was involved in the Grutter vs. Bollinger case. Grutters was being overlooked for acceptance to a law school based on a quota system they had in place to accept a certain number of minorities. The college was accepting under qualified minority applicants and overlooking Grutters. In this case O’Connor stated, “In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry it is necessary that the path of leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.” When looking at court cases involving Affirmative action there is another case Ricci vs. DeStefano. In this case it was about White and Hispanic firefighters being denied promotions due to the fact that no African American passed the promotion test given by the fire station. In June 2009 in the case Ricci v. DeStefano in New Haven, Conn. a group of White and Hispanic firefighters stating that they were a subject of reverse discrimination. The case fought that firefighters were denied promotions based on their skin color. New Haven rejected all promotions when they received the written test scores and no African American and only two Hispanics would be eligible for promotions. The city feared a lawsuit. Fear of litigation from minorities resulted in the ones that did pass not receiving