History
Racial quotas in the United States began to be implemented with government approval after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, especially during the 1970s. Richard Nixon's Labor Secretary George P. Schultz demanded that anti-black construction unions allow a certain number of black people into the unions. The Department of Labor began enforcing these quotas across the country. After a Supreme Court case, Griggs v. Duke Power Company, found that neutral application tests and procedures that still resulted in de facto segregation of employees (if previous discrimination had existed) were illegal, more companies began implementing quotas on their own.
In a 1973 court case, a federal judge created one of the first mandated quotas when he ruled that half of the Bridgeport, Connecticut Police Department's new employees must be either black or Puerto Rican. In 1974, the Department of Justice and the United Steelworkers of America came to an agreement on the largest-to-then quota program, for steel unions.
In 1978, the Supreme Court ruled in Bakke v. Regents that public universities (and other government institutions) could not set specific numerical targets based on race for admissions or employment. The Court said that "goals" and "timetables" for diversity could be set instead. A 1989 Supreme Court case, United Steelworkers v. Weber, found that private employers could set rigid numerical quotas, if they chose to do so. In 1990, the Supreme Court found that a 10% racial quota for federal contractors was permitted.
Then in 1991, President George H. W. Bush made an attempt to abolish affirmative action altogether, maintaining that “any regulation, rule, enforcement practice or other aspect of these programs that mandates, encourages, or otherwise involves the use of quotas, preferences, set-asides or other devices on the basis of race, sex, religion or national origin are to be terminated as soon as is legally feasible." This claim led up to the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, however the document was not able to implement these changes. It only covered the terms for settling cases where discrimination has been confirmed to have occurred.
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