facial validity

In the predawn hours of June 21, 1990, petitioner R.A.V., then a juvenile, and several other teenagers assembled a crudely made cross by taping together broken chair legs and burned the cross inside the fenced yard of a black family that lived across the street from the house where R.A.V. was staying. Although this conduct could have been punished under several Minnesota statutes carrying significant penalties, the City of St. Paul chose to charge R.A.V. under the St. Paul Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance. The ordinance provides that whoever places on public or private property a symbol, object, appellation, characterization or graffiti, including but not limited to a burning cross or Nazi swastika, which one knows or has reasonable grounds to know arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender commits disorderly conduct and shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. R.A.V. moved to dismiss the charge on the ground that the ordinance was substantially overbroad and impermissibly content-based and therefore facially invalid under the First Amendment, and the trial court granted the motion. The Minnesota Supreme Court reversed, construing the ordinance to reach only fighting words and concluding that it was not impermissibly content-based. This Court granted certiorari.

In March 1970, Jane Roe, a single woman residing in Dallas County, Texas, instituted a federal action against the District Attorney of the county. She sought a declaratory judgment that the Texas criminal abortion statutes were unconstitutional on their face. She also sought an injunction restraining enforcement of the statutes. Roe alleged that she was unmarried and pregnant. She wished to terminate her pregnancy by an abortion performed by a competent licensed physician under safe clinical conditions. She was unable to obtain a legal abortion in Texas because her life did not appear to be threatened by continuation of the pregnancy. She could not afford to travel to another jurisdiction to secure a legal abortion. James Hubert Hallford, a licensed physician, sought and was granted leave to intervene in Roe's action. In his complaint he alleged that he had been arrested previously for violations of the Texas abortion statutes. Two such prosecutions were pending against him in the Criminal District Court of Dallas County. He described conditions of patients who came to him seeking abortions. He claimed that for many cases he was unable to determine whether they fell within or outside the exception recognized by Article 1196 of the Texas Penal Code. John and Mary Doe, a married couple, filed a companion complaint also naming the District Attorney as defendant. The Does alleged that they were a childless couple. Mrs. Doe was suffering from a neural-chemical disorder. Her physician had advised her to avoid pregnancy until her condition materially improved. She had discontinued use of birth control pills pursuant to medical advice. If she should become pregnant she would want to terminate the pregnancy by an abortion performed by a competent licensed physician under safe clinical conditions. The two actions were consolidated and heard together by a duly convened three-judge district court for the Northern District of Texas. Upon the filing of affidavits, motions were made for dismissal and for summary judgment. The court held that Roe and members of her class and Dr. Hallford had standing to sue and presented justiciable controversies. The Does had failed to allege facts sufficient to state a present controversy and did not have standing. It concluded that the Texas criminal abortion statutes were void on their face. The court dismissed the Does' complaint while denying injunctive relief. The plaintiffs Roe and Doe and the intervenor Hallford appealed to the Supreme Court from that part of the District Court's judgment denying the injunction. The defendant District Attorney cross-appealed from the grant of declaratory relief. Both sides also took protective appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. That court ordered the appeals held in abeyance pending decision by the Supreme Court.

In 1997, the State of Hawaii had a highly concentrated wholesale oil market due to its small size and isolation over 1,600 miles from the mainland, with only two refineries and six gasoline wholesalers operating in the state. Chevron U.S.A. Inc. was the largest refiner and marketer, controlling 60 percent of the in-state gasoline market and 30 percent of the wholesale market on Oahu. Gasoline was sold at retail through approximately 300 service stations, about half leased by oil companies to independent lessee-dealers. Chevron operated 64 such lessee-dealer stations under arrangements where it leased land, constructed stations, and leased them to dealers while setting wholesale prices and requiring supply contracts. In June 1997, the Hawaii Legislature enacted Act 257, which capped the rent oil companies could charge lessee-dealers at 15 percent of gross profits from gasoline sales plus 15 percent of other product sales, and imposed other restrictions on station ownership. Thirty days after enactment, Chevron filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii against the Governor and Attorney General, challenging the rent cap. The parties stipulated that the cap would reduce aggregate rent on 11 of Chevron's stations by about $207,000 per year but allow increases on the remaining 53, potentially raising overall rental income by nearly $1.1 million annually, and that Chevron had not recovered station maintenance costs through rent alone over the past 20 years. The District Court granted summary judgment to Chevron. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit vacated the judgment and remanded the case. After a one-day bench trial featuring competing expert economists, the District Court entered judgment for Chevron. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari in 2004.

The Medical School of the University of California at Davis opened in 1968 with an entering class of 50 students. In 1971 the size of the entering class was increased to 100 students, a level at which it remains. The first class contained three Asians but no blacks, no Mexican-Americans, and no American Indians. Over the next two years the faculty devised a special admissions program to increase the representation of disadvantaged students in each Medical School class. The special program consisted of a separate admissions system operating in coordination with the regular admissions process. Under the regular admissions procedure candidates whose overall undergraduate grade point averages fell below 2.5 on a scale of 4.0 were summarily rejected. About one out of six applicants was invited for a personal interview. Following the interviews each candidate was rated on a scale of 1 to 100 by his interviewers and four other members of the admissions committee. The ratings were added together to arrive at each candidate's benchmark score. Since five committee members rated each candidate in 1973 a perfect score was 500. In 1974 six members rated each candidate so that a perfect score was 600. The full committee then reviewed the file and scores of each applicant and made offers of admission on a rolling basis. The special admissions program operated with a separate committee a majority of whom were members of minority groups. Special candidates did not have to meet the 2.5 grade point average cutoff applied to regular applicants. The special committee continued to recommend special applicants until a number prescribed by faculty vote were admitted. While the overall class size was still 50 the prescribed number was 8. In 1973 and 1974 when the class size had doubled to 100 the prescribed number of special admissions also doubled to 16. From the year of the increase in class size through 1974 the special program resulted in the admission of 21 black students 30 Mexican-Americans and 12 Asians for a total of 63 minority students. Over the same period the regular admissions program produced 1 black 6 Mexican-Americans and 37 Asians for a total of 44 minority students. Although disadvantaged whites applied to the special program in large numbers none received an offer of admission through that process. Allan Bakke is a white male who applied to the Davis Medical School in both 1973 and 1974. Despite a strong benchmark score of 468 out of 500 Bakke was rejected. His total was 549 out of 600. Again Bakke's application was rejected. In both years applicants were admitted under the special program with grade point averages MCAT scores and benchmark scores significantly lower than Bakke's. After the second rejection Bakke filed the instant suit in the Superior Court of California. He sought mandatory injunctive and declaratory relief compelling his admission to the Medical School. He alleged that the Medical School's special admissions program operated to exclude him from the school on the basis of his race in violation of his rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment Art. I § 21 of the California Constitution and § 601 of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 42 U.S.C. § 2000d. The trial court found that the special program operated as a racial quota because minority applicants in the special program were rated only against one another and 16 places in the class of 100 were reserved for them. The court refused to order Bakke's admission however holding that he had failed to carry his burden of proving that he would have been admitted but for the existence of the special program. The California court accepted the findings of the trial court with respect to the University's program. On this basis the court initially ordered a remand for the purpose of determining whether under the newly allocated burden of proof Bakke would have been admitted to either the 1973 or the 1974 entering class in the absence of the special admissions program. In its petition for rehearing below however the University conceded its inability to carry that burden. The California court thereupon amended its opinion to direct that the trial court enter judgment ordering Bakke's admission to the Medical School. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the important constitutional issue.