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2003 proved to be a watershed year for the United States Supreme Court.  In that year, the Court took a stand after almost twenty-four years of silence on one of the most contentious issues in the history of the United States Constitution.  The issue was whether or not state universities could use race-based criteria to determine the admissibility of applicants. Whether in the selection of government funded contractors, employees, or students applying to educational institutions, programs that employ such criteria, commonly called affirmative action programs (AAPs), have a long history that dates back to the post-Civil war era.  Their goal has traditionally been to remedy the unfair effects of systemic prejudice, most notably racism and sexism.  In Grutter v. Bollinger, the Court ruled that state university AAPs are constitutional under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as long as they are narrowly tailored to achieve the compelling government interest of cultivating racial and ethnic diversity on campus. . . .