Hopwood v. Texas, 78 F.3d 932 (5th Cir. 1996), involved four white plaintiffs rejected from The University of Texas School of Law who successfully challenged the school’s admissions policy on equal protection grounds. For the purposes of affirmative action, the policy had included race as a factor. The 1996 decision in Hopwood ended all consideration of race in admissions to the Law School.

The Supreme Court overturned the Hopwood case in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), in which the Court upheld the affirmative action admissions policy of the University of Michigan Law School.

The material in this guide is credited on each individual page, or is the compilation of members of Tarlton Law Library Reference Staff, 1997-2002.

In addition to the information in this guide, litigation materials from the Hopwood case have been compiled in printed volumes and are available for checkout - please see our online catalog for stack location and availability.