Narrow tailoring (also known as narrow framing) is the legal principle that a law be written to specifically fulfill only its intended goals. It is usually connoted to the judicial test of strict scrutiny.
This phrase is most commonly invoked in constitutional law cases in the United States, such as First Amendment cases, or Equal Protection cases involving racial discrimination by creating racial distinctions. In the case Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), the United States Supreme Court held that:
Even in the limited circumstance when drawing racial distinctions is permissible to further a compelling state interest, government is still constrained under equal protection clause in how it may pursue that end: the means chosen to accomplish the government's asserted purpose must be specifically and narrowly framed to accomplish that purpose. [1]
Prior to Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard , affirmative action programs in higher education were only considered legal because they further the compelling state interest of creating diversity on university campuses. Federal courts would consider certain programs to be illegal if they exceeded the scope that would be required to fulfill the academic institution's goals.
The Supreme Court case Korematsu v. U.S. in 1944 is widely known to have brought the first concerns revolving strict scrutiny and racial discrimination. However, it wasn't until Chicago v. Mosley in 1972 to have first coined the term "narrowly tailoring" when the restriction of rights outlined in the U.S. Constitution serves a compelling state interest.
Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), was a landmark case of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning affirmative action in student admissions. The Court held that a student admissions process that favors "underrepresented minority groups" did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause so long as it took into account other factors evaluated on an individual basis for every applicant. The decision largely upheld the Court's decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), which allowed race to be a consideration in admissions policy but held racial quotas to be unconstitutional. In its companion case, Gratz v. Bollinger (2003), the Court struck down a points-based admissions system that awarded an automatic bonus to the admissions scores of minority applicants.
Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the University of Michigan undergraduate affirmative action admissions policy. In a 6–3 decision announced on June 23, 2003, Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing for the Court, ruled the University's point system's "predetermined point allocations" that awarded 20 points towards admission to underrepresented minorities "ensures that the diversity contributions of applicants cannot be individually assessed" and was therefore unconstitutional. It was the companion case to Grutter v. Bollinger.
The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It mandates that individuals in similar situations be treated equally by the law.
In U.S. constitutional law, when a law infringes upon a fundamental constitutional right, the court may apply the strict scrutiny standard. Strict scrutiny holds the challenged law as presumptively invalid unless the government can demonstrate that the law or regulation is necessary to achieve a "compelling state interest". The government must also demonstrate that the law is "narrowly tailored" to achieve that compelling purpose, and that it uses the "least restrictive means" to achieve that purpose. Failure to meet this standard will result in striking the law as unconstitutional.
United States v. Carolene Products Company, 304 U.S. 144 (1938), was a case of the United States Supreme Court that upheld the federal government's power to prohibit filled milk from being shipped in interstate commerce. In his majority opinion for the Court, Associate Justice Harlan F. Stone wrote that economic regulations were "presumptively constitutional" under a deferential standard of review known as the "rational basis test".
Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), is a United States Supreme Court case that held that the state could deny unemployment benefits to a person fired for violating a state prohibition on the use of peyote even though the use of the drug was part of a religious ritual. Although states have the power to accommodate otherwise illegal acts performed in pursuit of religious beliefs, they are not required to do so.
Danny Julian Boggs is an American lawyer and a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He was appointed to the court in 1986 and served as its chief judge from September 2003 to August 2009. Boggs was on the short list of President George W. Bush's candidates for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Fundamental rights are a group of rights that have been recognized by a high degree of protection from encroachment. These rights are specifically identified in a constitution, or have been found under due process of law. The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 17, established in 2015, underscores the link between promoting human rights and sustaining peace.
Intermediate scrutiny, in U.S. constitutional law, is the second level of deciding issues using judicial review. The other levels are typically referred to as rational basis review and strict scrutiny.
Hopwood v. Texas, 78 F.3d 932, was the first successful legal challenge to a university's affirmative action policy in student admissions since Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In Hopwood, four white plaintiffs who had been rejected from University of Texas at Austin's School of Law challenged the institution's admissions policy on equal protection grounds and prevailed. After seven years as a precedent in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the Hopwood decision was abrogated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003.
In United States constitutional law, a suspect classification is a class or group of persons meeting a series of criteria suggesting they are likely the subject of discrimination. These classes receive closer scrutiny by courts when an Equal Protection claim alleging unconstitutional discrimination is asserted against a law, regulation, or other government action, or sometimes private action. When a law or government action affects a group that falls under a "suspect classification," courts apply the strict scrutiny standard in reviewing the constitutional validity of a law or action.
Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007), also known as the PICS case, is a United States Supreme Court case which found it unconstitutional for a school district to use race as a factor in assigning students to schools in order to bring its racial composition in line with the composition of the district as a whole, unless it was remedying a prior history of de jure segregation. Chief Justice Roberts wrote in his plurality opinion that "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 476 U.S. 267 (1986), was a case before the United States Supreme Court. It is the seminal case for the "strong-basis-in-evidence standard" for affirmative action programs.
Bush v. Vera, 517 U.S. 952 (1996), is a United States Supreme Court case concerning racial gerrymandering, where racial minority majority-electoral districts were created during Texas' 1990 redistricting to increase minority Congressional representation. The Supreme Court, in a plurality opinion, held that race was the predominant factor in the creation of the districts and that under a strict scrutiny standard the three districts were not narrowly tailored to further a compelling governmental interest.
Fisher v. University of Texas, 570 U.S. 297 (2013), also known as Fisher I, is a United States Supreme Court case concerning the affirmative action admissions policy of the University of Texas at Austin. The Supreme Court voided the lower appellate court's ruling in favor of the university and remanded the case, holding that the lower court had not applied the standard of strict scrutiny, articulated in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), to its admissions program. The Court's ruling in Fisher took Grutter and Bakke as given and did not directly revisit the constitutionality of using race as a factor in college admissions.
Schuette v. BAMN, 572 U.S. 291 (2014), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning affirmative action and race- and sex-based discrimination in public university admissions. In a 6-2 decision, the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause does not prevent states from enacting bans on affirmative action in education.
Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the court held that race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions processes violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. With its companion case, Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court effectively overruled Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), which validated some affirmative action in college admissions provided that race had a limited role in decisions.
Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama, 575 U.S. 254 (2015), was a U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned a previous decision by a federal district court upholding Alabama's 2012 redrawing of its electoral districts. The Alabama legislature had focused on reducing the difference in population between the districts to 1% or less, while keeping the same proportion of minority voters in each district. The Alabama Legislative Black Caucus and Alabama Democratic Conference challenged this on the grounds that it was an illegal racial gerrymander, banned under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Fisher v. University of Texas, 579 U.S. 365 (2016), also known as Fisher II, is a United States Supreme Court case which held that the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit correctly found that the University of Texas at Austin's undergraduate admissions policy survived strict scrutiny, in accordance with Fisher v. University of Texas (2013), which ruled that strict scrutiny should be applied to determine the constitutionality of the University's race-conscious admissions policy.
Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U.S. 899 (1996), was a United States Supreme Court case concerning redistricting and racial gerrymandering. This case and its predecessor, Shaw v. Reno, concerned North Carolina's congressional redistricting plans. The Court ruled in Shaw v. Hunt that the redistricting plan violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.