ABSTRACT
The Fourteenth Amendment made it unconstitutional for a state to deny any person "the equal protection of the laws". The Constitution and laws of the United States prohibit racial discrimination. By the time of the Stotts decision, however, many people had concluded that racial preferences and quotas were necessary to eradicate the effects of past discrimination against minorities, to achieve a better racial balance, to prevent race riots, or to avoid litigation. Reynolds and Solicitor General Charles Fried eventually filed briefs that argued against racial preferences in each case, and Reynolds made the oral argument before the Supreme Court in Cleveland. When Reynolds returned to the Supreme Court in 1987, the principal legal issue concerned the meaning of "narrow tailoring", as it had arisen in the context of lawsuits that challenged preferences in California and Alabama. In addition, Justice Scalia's dissent in Santa Clara County was a powerful statement that had caused other justices to add footnotes to their opinions.
