Word: wygant
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Some court watchers think they see a recent willingness in Rehnquist to be more accommodating. This spring he joined the court's majority in Wygant vs. Jackson Board of Education to strike down racial quotas in laying off schoolteachers, even though the language of the opinion included a guarded endorsement of affirmative action...
Whatever it meant in the larger struggle, the outcome meant victory for Wendy Wygant and the other white teachers who brought the suit after being laid off in 1981. On hearing the news, she says, "we whooped it up a little." Most had already been rehired, but they may now press for back pay. The layoff plan had been necessary, the Jackson board of education had contended, to assure enough minority role models for its minority students. Lewis Powell, joined by Chief Justice Warren Burger and William Rehnquist plus O'Connor, disagreed. In their view, a minority preference plan could...