Affirmative Action:

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Affirmative Action
Team 3 Elizabeth, Dan, Courtney, Jonathan,
Brittany, and Sarah
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Defined

• The Merriam -Webster dictionary defines
  Affirmative Action two ways
• A policy or a program that seeks to redress past
  discrimination through active measures to ensure
  equal opportunity, as in education and
  employment.
• An active effort (as through legislation) to
  improve the employment or educational
  opportunities of members of minority groups or
  women.
• Translation
• Installing legal regulations and laws that ensure
  discrimination against a gender or minority does
  not persist.

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FRAMEWORK

• Affirmative action policies include any policies
  that
• (a) attempt to actively dismantle
  institutionalized or informal cultural norms and
  systems of ascriptive group-based disadvantage,
  and the inequalities historically resulting from
  them, and/or that
• (b) attempt to promote an ideal of inclusive
  community, as in ideals of democracy,
  integration, and pluralism (multiculturalism),
  (c) by means that classify people according to
  their ascriptive identities (race, gender,
  ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.).
• 2 categories
• (1) First, arguments that oppose affirmative
  action policies on moral principle
  (considerations of justice). 
• (2) Second, arguments that oppose these policies
  on grounds of their bad consequences that they
  are self-defeating, harmful, or inefficient.

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CASE WORK

• International Union v. Johnson Controls
• Hiring and Promotions based upon Gender
• Firefighters v. Stotts
• Hiring and Promotions based upon minority (race)
• Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
• Quotas and Reverse Discrimination

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International Union v. Johnson Controls

• The District Court ruled for the employer it
  maintained a business necessity required a policy
  to protect a fetus.
• The United States Court of Appeals upheld the
  District Court, ruling that where there is a
  substantial health risk to a fetus and it is
  transmitted only through women and there is no
  alternative as effective in protecting a fetus,
  such a policy is allowed.
• The United States Supreme Court reversed. It held
  that the policy was sex discrimination forbidden
  under Title VII

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Firefighters v. Stotts

• Background
• pattern or practice of making hiring and
  promotion decisions on the basis of race
• District Court Decision
• Court of Appeals Decision
• Supreme Court Decision

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Regents of the University of California v. Bakke

• Background
• Race could be one of the factors considered in
  choosing a diverse student body inuniversity
  admissions decisions
• use of quotas in such affirmative action programs
  was not permissible
• Bakke had twice been rejected by the medical
  school, even though he had a higher grade point
  average than a number of minority candidates who
  were admitted.

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Affirmative Action Revisited

• Reverse Discrimination can occur from improper
  enforcement of quotas.