Summary of Johnson v. Board of Regents of University System of Georgia (2000)

Plaintiff: Three High School Girls Who Applied to University of Georgia (UGA)

Defendant: UGA; the defendants had an admission program where they awarded extra points to minority applicants (.5 points extra) and male applicants (.25 ponts extra). So a minority male got .75 extra points. The plaintiffs were not accepted in the incoming freshman class and since they were white females, they did not get any extra points. If they had received extra .75 points, their chances of getting in were going to be much higher, as a matter of fact, one of the plaintiff was going to get in for sure. So the plaintiffs brought this lawsuit against UGA under Title VI and Title IX.

Issue: Did the defendant’s admissions program violated Title VI and Title IX?

Holding: Yes

Legal Reasoning: Firs of all, the court decided that since Title VI and Title IX were very much similar, strict scrutiny test should be applied to judge the violations for both of these statues. The court further ruled that the UGA’s interest in creating diversity at its institution was not a compelling interest. The court reasoned that in all the prior Supreme Court cases, a majority has never ruled that diversity is compelling interest under strict scrutiny. So the court ruled that since diversity can never be narrowly tailored, it can not be considered a compelling intersest. The court further ruled that the defendant’s program also violated Title IX because it was just designed to bring proportionality in the number of male and female students, and this type of goal can not be considered a compelling interest. So the court ruled that UGA stop its discriminatory admission tactics and it also ordered UGA to admit the defendants.