What kinds of behavior constitute an impermissible quota system?
Chief Justice Rehnquist, in his dissent on the Law School case, included a table showing the breakdown of the applicant pool and the selected class by race. The percentage admitted, out of those who applied, for the targeted minority races appeared fairly steady over the 10-year period (1987-1996), he summarized. His conclusion was that the Law School appeared to have a more or less constant numerical goal, in terms of percentage admitted from each minority of interest, and that this violated earlier precedents against quotas. The precedental cases concerning quotas, however, mostly refer to minorities as a percentage of all those admitted, rather than percentage admitted out of those in a minority who applied. Chief Justice Rehnquist did not argue that maintaining a fairly steady percentage of admissions relative to applicants, by group, was wrong in itself, but that that “the narrow fluctuation band raises an inference that the Law School subverted individual determination.” His cita
