1. Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, (1995)
2. Facts: Adarand is a highway construction firm that submitted the lowest bid on a subcontract. A minority-owned construction firm also bid, and won the contract because the general contractor was given bonus money under federal statutes for awarding the subcontract to a firm controlled by “economically ans socially disadvantaged” persons.
3. Procedural Posture: Adarand lost by summary judgment in both the District Court and the Court of Appeals. Both courts felt that the recent Supreme Court rulings in Fullilove and Metro Broadacasting, which applied a level of “intermediate scrutiny” to federal affirmative action (benign racial classifications), were controlling.
4. Issue: What is the proper standard of review for federal racial classifications.
5. Holding: Strict scrutiny. There are three general propositions with respect to governmental racial classifications, 1) skepticism (racial classifications are inherently suspect, invoking strict scrutiny), 2) consistency (the standard of review does not depend on which race is benefitted and which is discriminated against), and 3) congruence (equal protection under the 5th amendment is the same as that under the 14th amendment).
6. Majority Reasoning: The history of equal protection jurisprudence must be traced to determine the proper course. In Bolling v. Sharpe, the court stated that the phrase: “all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect” carries no less force in the federal context. Secondly, in Croson, the court announced that the strict scrutiny standard applied to any racial classification under the 14th amendment. Although some other cases have been more split (i.e. Bakke, and Wygant), the same themes are echoed there. Metro Broadcasting, which used intermediate scrutiny for the federal government, was a departure from stare decisis, and is therefore overruled to the extent that it is inconsistent with this opinion. All racial classifications require strict scrutiny in order to determine whether the supposedly “benign” purpose is valid, otherwise we risk making the same mistake as in Korematsu.
7. Concurrence Reasoning: [Scalia] felt that a racial classification could never serve a “compelling interest” [and thus never pass strict scrutiny] because that only fosters racial hatred, even when done for the most beneficial reasons. The Constitution protects individuals, not groups, and there are no debtor and creditor races. [Thomas] wrote separately to disagree with the dissent’s premise that there is “a racial paternalism exception to the principle of equal protection.”
8. Dissent Reasoning: [Stevens] Remedial-based race classifications are distinguishable from race discrimination and should be afforded a more intermediate standard of review consistent with Fullilove and Metro Broadcasting. It is wrong to have “consistency” between the standard of review for discriminatory and benign racial classifications because the first is a “No Trespassing” sign, where the second is a welcome mat. Furthermore, there is solid justification for treating the 5th and 14th amendments as affording different levels of protection, namely that Congressional deliberations about a matter should be accorded far greater deference than those of a State or municipality. Lastly, the stigma of affirmative action is surely less than that of discrimination.
