In 1969 the medical school of the University of California at Davis confronted the reality that reliance upon its traditional admission criteria had led if to become a nearly all-white, segregated institution. In response, the medical school voluntarily adopted the “special admission” program at issue in this case to overcome the exclusionary effect of its past policies and to achieve an integrated student body composed of qualified students of all races and ethnic groups.
The Davis medical school, of course, was not alone in perceiving and acting to ameliorate the grave problems resulting from a largely segregated medical school and a largely segregated medical profession. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s over 100 medical schools throughout the country, including almost all of the most highly regarded medical institutions, instituted similar special admission programs aimed at increasing the enrollment of minority medical students and producing a more integrated medical profession. Moreover, in the past decade scores *65of other professional and graduate schools, as well as numerous undergraduate institutions, have implemented analogous “affirmative action” programs as part of a national effort to bring into the mainstream of American society members of minority groups who have long suffered discrimination and exclusion as a result of both governmental and private action.
By today’s decision, the majority deliver a severe, hopefully not fatal, blow to these voluntary efforts to integrate our society’s institutions and to ameliorate the continuing effects of past discrimination. Contrary to the majority’s assertion, time-honored constitutional principles and precedent by no means establish that the special admission program at issue in this case violates the Fourteenth Amendment. Indeed, as I explain, past decisions of both the United States Supreme Court and this court clearly demonstrate the constitutional propriety of the admission program instituted by the medical school to integrate its student body.
In reaching the conclusion that the special admission program at issue here is unconstitutional, the majority proceed from two fundamentally flawed premises. First, the majority erroneously equate the racial classifications utilized by the medical school to achieve an integrated student body with the traditional “invidious” racial classifications embodied in laws or state policies which discriminated against blacks and other racial or ethnic minorities, and hold that the use of racial classifications even to promote integration is presumptively unconstitutional and “suspect.” The governing authorities, however, lend no support to the conclusion that the use of racial classifications to ameliorate segregated conditions is presumptively unconstitutional. On the contrary,- numerous decisions recognize that as a practical matter racial classifications frequently must be employed if the effects of past discrimination and exclusion are to be overcome and if integration of currently segregated institutions is to be achieved; these cases establish that the Constitution does not forbid such use of remedial racial classifications. By failing to distinguish between invidious racial classifications and remedial or “benign” racial classifications, the majority utilize the wrong constitutional standard in evaluating the validity of the Davis special admission program. This fundamental error inevitably infects and invalidates the majority’s ultimate constitutional conclusion.
Second, the majority incorrectly assert that the minority students accepted under the special admission program are “less qualified”—under the medical school’s own standards—than nonminority applicants rejected by the medical school. (See pp. 38, 47, ante.) This is simply not *66the case. The record establishes that all the students accepted by the medical school are fully qualified for the study of medicine. By adopting the special admission program, the medical school has indicated that in its judgment differences in academic credentials among qualified applicants are not the sole nor best criterion for judging how qualified an applicant is in terms of his potential to make a contribution to the medical profession or to satisfy needs of both the medical school and the medical profession that are not being met by other students. In asserting that the accepted minority students are less qualified than rejected applicants, the majority in effect endow standardized test , scores and grade point averages with a greater significance than the medical school attributes to them or than independent studies have shown they will bear.
In implementing the special admission program at issue here, the medical school determined that in light of the contemporary needs of the medical profession and of society generally, the attainment of a racially integrated, diverse medical school student body, made up of qualified students of all races, is more important than the perpetuation of a segregated medical school composed of students with the highest objective academic credentials. To date, courts have always respected a college or professional school’s determination that the educational benefits of a diverse student body justify a departure from adherence to strict objective academic credentials for a particular group of applicants; such “preferential” policies have perhaps most commonly been adopted to promote geographic diversity, but similar admission preferences have regularly been employed to serve less compelling interests, for example to give preference to an applicant’s athletic ability or to his relationship to an alumnus or institutional benefactor.
Unless it can be said that the promotion of integration is a constitutionally illegitimate purpose—a proposition which the majority obviously do not intend to embrace—I ¡cannot understand how the admission policy at issue in this case can properly be found less permissible than these other long-accepted admission practices. There is, indeed, a very sad irony to the fact that the first admission program aimed at promoting diversity ever to be struck down under the Fourteenth Amendment is the program most consonant with the underlying purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment.
*671. The use of racial classifications to promote integration or to overcome the effects ofpast discrimination is neither “suspect” nor presumptively unconstitutional.
There is no denying that racial classifications have played an odious role throughout our nation’s history. In the course of the past 200 years, racial classifications have been utilized to subjugate racial and ethnic minorities to a separate and inferior existence in American society. At first, courts struck.down only the most blatant use of racial classifications against minorities, invalidating laws which directly denied blacks or similar minorities basic legal rights and privileges enjoyed by the majority of citizens. (See, e.g., Strauder v. West Virginia (1880) 100 U.S. 303 [25 L.Ed. 664]; Nixon v. Herndon (1927) 273 U.S. 536 [71 L.Ed. 759, 47 S.Ct. 446]; Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886) 118 U.S. 356 [30 L.Ed. 220, 6 S.Ct. 1064].)
Beginning with Brown v. Board of Education (1954) 347 U.S. 483 [98 L.Ed. 873, 74 S.Ct. 686, 38 A.L.R.2d 1180], the courts acknowledged the inherent inequalities of the “separate but equal” doctrine and struck down the racial classifications embodied in segregation laws, laws that, by officially excluding minorities from the principal governmental and social institutions utilized by the majority of Americans, stigmatized members of minority groups and consigned them to inherently inferior treatment. (See, e.g., Gayle v. Browder (1956) 352 U.S. 903 [1 L.Ed.2d 114, 77 S.Ct. 145]; Holmes v. City of Atlanta (1955) 350 U.S. 879 [100 L.Ed. 776, 76 S.Ct. 141].) More recently, courts have perceived the invidiousness of a somewhat more subtle use of racial classifications, and have invalidated laws embodying such classifications which coerced, facilitated or encouraged the private discrimination against minorities or the preservation of a segregated society. (See, e.g., Anderson v. Martin (1964) 375 U.S. 399 [11 L.Ed.2d 430, 84 S.Ct. 454]; McLaughlin v. Florida (1964) 379 U.S. 184 [13 L.Ed.2d 222, 85 S.Ct. 283]; Loving v. Virginia (1967) 388 U.S. 1 [18 L.Ed.2d 1010, 87 S.Ct. 1817]; Hunter v. Erickson (1969) 393 U.S. 385, 391 [21 L.Ed.2d 616, 89 S.Ct. 557]; cf. Reitman v. Mulkey (1967) 387 U.S. 369 [18 L.Ed.2d 830, 87 S.Ct. 1627].)
In all of these cases the racial classifications at issue were utilized, explicitly or covertly, to stigmatize, exclude or accord inferior treatment to minorities. In this context, courts most properly held, time and again, that such “racial classifications” are constitutionally “suspect” and presumptively unconstitutional. Because the central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to protect the black minority from the
*68discriminatory legal treatment it had previously suffered (see, e.g., Slaughterhouse Cases (1873) 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36, 81 [21 L.Ed. 394]; Bickel, The Original Understanding and the Segregation Decision (1955) 69 Harv.L.Rev. 1, 60), racial classifications which impose such inferior treatment upon minorities without doubt fundamentally conflict with the equal protection clause.
The racial classifications at issue in this case, however, are worlds apart from the invidious racial classifications deemed constitutionally suspect in prior cases. The racial classifications embodied in the special admission program are not intended to, nor do they in fact, exclude any particular racial group from participation in the medical school; on the contrary, the program is aimed at assuring that qualified applicánts of all racial groups are actually represented in the institution.1 Moreover, the racial classifications do not stigmatize any racial group as an “inferior” race, but instead give realistic recognition to the continuing effects resulting from several centuries of discriminatory treatment.2 Finally, the racial classifications are not the instruments through which a majority’s racial prejudice has imposed inferior treatment upon an impotent minority, but rather are remedial measures voluntarily implemented to give all students the distinct educational benefits flowing from an integrated education.
*69The majority, of course, recognize that the racial classifications at issue here are utilized for entirely different purposes than the racial classifications previously held constitutionally suspect. Nevertheless, they hold that the instant racial classifications must be equated with the invidious racial classifications of prior cases and be judged under the same exacting standard applied to such presumptively unconstitutional laws. The majority, however, can cite no decision which supports this conclusion.3
In fact, the existing authorities dictate just the opposite result. In recent years numerous decisions of this court, the United States Supreme Court and the lower federal courts have firmly established that the use of racial classifications to promote integration or to remedy the continuing effects of past discrimination is neither presumptively unconstitutional nor suspect, but rather is fully consistent with the precepts of the equal protection clause.
The question of the constitutional legitimacy of utilizing racial classifications to achieve integration first arose in the context of efforts to desegregate public primary and secondary schools. In San Francisco Unified School Dist. v. Johnson (1971) 3 Cal.3d 937, 948-951 [92 Cal.Rptr. 309, 479 P.2d 669], our court spoke directly to this issue, explicitly rejecting the contention that any use of racial classification in pupil assignments was unconstitutional, even for the purpose of integrating schools. We declared: “[I]n a society free of the perdition of past discrimination, the courts might well reject all attempts at racial classification. We seek, however, to provide for practical remedies for present discrimination, and to eradicate the effects of prior segregation; ‘at this point, and perhaps for a long time, true nondiscrimination may be attained, paradoxically, only by taking color into consideration.’ [Citation.] We conclude that the racial classification involved in the effective integration of public schools does not deny, but secures, the equal protection of the laws.” (Italics added.) (3 Cal.3d at p. 951.)
*70This clear holding was reiterated by the United States Supreme Court just a few months after Johnson. In Swann v. Board of Education (1971) 402 U.S. 1 [28 L.Ed.2d 554, 91 S.Ct. 1267], the Supreme Court addressed a school board assertion “that the Constitution requires that teachers be assigned on a ‘color blind’ basis”; the court’s answer was most explicit: “We reject that contention.” (Id., at p. 19 [28 L.Ed.2d at p. 568]; see, e.g., U.S. v. Montgomery Bd. of Educ. (1969) 395 U.S. 225 [23 L.Ed.2d 263, 89 S.Ct. 1670].) The court was equally emphatic in recognizing the constitutionality of utilizing racial classification of students to achieve integration in school assignments. “Just as the race of students must be considered in determining whether a constitutional violation has occurred, so also must race be considered in formulating a remedy. To forbid, at this stage, all assignments made on the basis of race would deprive school authorities of the one tool absolutely essential to fulfillment of their constitutional obligation to eliminate existing dual school systems.” (Board of Education v. Swann (1971) 402 U.S. 43, 46 [28 L.Ed.2d 586, 589, 91 S.Ct. 1284].)
Moreover, dispelling any notion that remedial racial classifications are only permissible to remedy an unconstitutional condition, the Swann court expressly approved a school board’s voluntary use of racial classifications to promote integration and to achieve racially balanced schools even in the absence of a constitutional obligation to desegregate. The court declared: “School authorities are traditionally chárged with broad powers to formulate and implement educational policy and might well conclude, for example, that in order to prepare students to live in a pluralistic society each school should have a prescribed ratio of Negro to white students reflecting the proportion for the district as a whole. To do this as an educational policy is within the broad discretionary powers of school authorities', absent a finding of a constitutional violation, however, that would not be within the authority of a federal court.” (Italics added.) (402 U.S. at p. 16 [28 L.Ed.2d at pp. 566-567].)4
This passage, of course, has a most direct application to the instant case. Here, the educational authorities have concluded that in order to prepare medical students to live and practice in a pluralistic society, the *71medical school should have an integrated student body, and they have utilized racial classifications to achieve such integration. Swann teaches that such a noninvidious use of racial classifications “is within the broad discretionary powers of school authorities,” and refutes the majority’s contention that in this context the use of racial classifications is presumptively unconstitutional.
It is not only in the school desegregation realm, moreover, that courts have recognized the necessity and propriety of utilizing racial classifications to promote integration and to overcome the continuing effects of past discriminatory treatment. In the employment area, for example, literally dozens of federal “Title VII” (42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq.) decisions have confirmed the propriety of using “preferential” minority hiring goals as a remedy when racial or ethnic minorities have been disproportionately excluded from hiring opportunities in the past.5 And while the remedial racial classifications in most Title VII cases have been embodied in court orders, a separate line of “Executive Order” (Exec. Order 11246, 30 Fed. Reg. 12319 as amended 32 Fed. Reg. 14303; 34 Fed. Reg. 12985) employment decisions, upholding affirmative action plans requiring federal contractors to utilize racial classifications to increase the number of minority employees, attests to the constitutionality of administratively implemented remedial racial classifications.6
Finally, one of the United States Supreme Court’s most recent employment decisions, Washington v. Davis (1976) 426 U.S. 229 [48 L.Ed.2d 597, 96 S.Ct. 2040]—decided just this past June—provides additional evidence that the majority is incorrect in asserting that remedial racial classifications are constitutionally suspect. Under the majority’s view, any use of racial classifications is presumptively unconstitutional; thus, the majority suggest that the medical school’s recruiting efforts, as well as its admission decisions, must be conducted strictly on a *72racially neutral basis. (See p. 55, ante.) In the recent Washington decision, however, a majority of the United States Supreme Court exhibited no hostility whatever to a trial court finding that the Washington, D.C. police had made special affirmative efforts to recruit black officers. On the contrary, the majority in Washington specifically relied upon these “affirmative efforts ... to recruit black officers” in concluding that no inference could properly be drawn that the police department had improperly discriminated on the basis of race. (426 U.S. at p. 246 [48 L.Ed.2d at p. 611].) The Washington court’s explicit approval of benign racial classifications cannot be reconciled with the majority’s present assertion that all such racially “non-neutral” efforts are presumptively unconstitutional.7
The use of benign racial classifications, furthermore, has been upheld in fields other than school desegregation and employment. As the First Circuit recently noted: “Intentional official recognition of race has been found necessary to achieve fair and equal opportunity in the selection of grand juries, Brooks v. Beto, 366 F.2d 1 (5th Cir. 1966); tenants for public housing, Otero v. New York City Housing Authority, 484 F.2d 1122 (2d Cir. 1973) . . . Gautreaux v. Chicago Housing Authority, 304 F.Supp. 736 (N.D.Ill. 1969); [and] school administration, Porcelli v. Titus (3d Cir. 1970) 431 F.2d 1254.” (Associated Gen. Contractors of Mass., Inc. v. Altshuler, supra, 490 F.2d 9, 16.) Indeed, reviewing the host of recent *73decisions which have approved the use of remedial racial classifications, the First Circuit observed “It is by now well understood . . . that our society cannot be completely colorblind in the short term if we are to have a colorblind society in the long term.” (Italics added.) (Id.)
This understanding has been lost on the majority. Although acknowledging the existence of at least some of the numerous decisions upholding benign racial classifications in diverse contexts, the majority claim that all of the precedents are distinguishable from the instant case either because the past racial classifications did not impose any “detriment” on nonminorities, or because such racial classifications were adopted to remedy specific effects of racial discrimination practiced by the defendant. Neither of these purported distinctions will withstand analysis.
To begin with, it is simply not true that the remedial racial classifications approved by the courts in recent years have not had the effect of placing nonminorities at some disadvantage vis-a-vis benefited minorities. The employment decisions noted above provide perhaps the clearest refutation of the majority’s position. Pursuant to both Title VII and Executive Order 11246, employers have been required to assure that some percentage of persons hired in the future are from minority groups; as a consequence, some nonminority applicants who might otherwise have been hired may not obtain employment because the employer is required to hire a number of qualified minority applicants. Although, in the majority’s terminology, such remedial programs can thus result in depriving nonminority applicants of a “benefit” that they would have enjoyed “but for their race,” federal courts have regularly upheld the constitutionality of such remedial racial classifications and have not equated such measures with invidious racial classifications. (See fns. 5, 6, ante.) The special admission program at issue here, of course, is directly analogous to such affirmative action programs.
Moreover, the employment cases are by no means the only instance in which judicially sanctioned benign racial classifications have “deprived” nonminorities of a benefit on the basis of their race. Although the majority maintain that the benign racial classifications employed in school desegregation do not have such an effect, that assertion clearly fails. In the first place, no one can realistically assert that white-Anglo students who have been transferred from schools with better facilities and more experienced teachers to presently “unequal” schools as part of *74the desegregation process have not suffered at least some detriment that they would not have suffered “but for” their race. The fact that such children have “no right to a segregated education” (see p. 47, ante) does not distinguish past desegregation decisions from the instant case since it is equally true that medical school applicants have no right to a segregated medical education.
The fallacy of the majority’s analysis becomes crystal clear upon merely a brief examination of the actual mechanics of the typical desegregation process. As the United States Supreme Court observed in Swann, “[a]n optional majority-to-minority transfer provision has long been recognized as a useful part of every desegregation plan.” (402 U.S. at pp. 26-27 [28 L.Ed.2d at p. 572].) Under such a transfer provision, minority students assigned to a predominantly minority school are afforded the opportunity to transfer to a better predominantly white-Anglo school in the district; a white-Anglo student who is initially assigned to the same predominantly minority school, however, is denied that transfer option “on the basis of his race.” The rationale of this racial classification, of course, is clear and quite legitimate; transfers that will improve school integration are permissible, while those that will lead to greater segregation are not. Nonetheless, under the constitutional approach applied by the majority in the instant case, such a normal tool of desegregation would apparently be unconstitutional. Given this court’s very recent unanimous approval of just such a plan (Crawford v. Board of Education (1976) 17 Cal.3d 280, 308 [130 Cal.Rptr. 724, 551 P.2d 28]), the flaw in the majority’s constitutional approach becomes patent.
Another example may further illustrate the similarity of the benign racial classifications utilized in the typical school desegregation process and the racial classifications at issue in this case. One increasingly common tool in the desegregation process is the establishment of a “magnet” school at the site of a predominantly minority school in an attempt to encourage nonminority students voluntarily to transfer to the school. Such ‘‘magnet” schools are made attractive by offering curriculum choices or special equipment not available in other schools in the district.
In order for the “magnet” school concept to achieve - integration, however, the establishment of the special offerings must invariably be accompanied by some racial guidelines or “quotas” for student enrollment. Thus, for example, if the “magnet” school offers an advanced science or an advanced music curriculum, admission is not provided *75solely on the basis of which applicants have the best grades or most potential in science or music; while such criteria may well be taken into account, racial criteria must also be used in order that the basic goal of an integrated school be achieved. Consequently, if applicants of a particular race have higher credentials than applicants of another race, it may be comparatively “easier” for applicants of the latter race to attain admission to the magnet school. Despite the “preference” inherent in such an integration tool, courts have repeatedly upheld the constitutionality of such programs. (See, e.g., Hart v. Community School Bd. of Ed., N. Y.Sch. Dist. #21 (2d Cir. 1975) 512 F.2d 37, 42-43, 54-55.)
The simple reality revealed by these examples is that in many circumstances any remedy for the inequities flowing from past discrimination will inevitably result in some detriment to nonminorities. Whenever there is a limited pool of resources from which minorities have been disproportionately excluded, equalization of opportunity can only be accomplished by a reallocation of such resources; those who have previously enjoyed a disproportionate advantage must give up some of that advantage if those who have historically had less are to be afforded an equitable share. This reality, however, has not led courts to invalidaté the remedial use of benign classifications. (See also Kahn v. Shevin (1974) 416 U.S. 351 [40 L.Ed.2d 189, 94 S.Ct. 1734]; Morton v. Mancari, supra, 417 U.S. 535.)
The majority are similarly in error in claiming that the instant case can be distinguished from past benign racial classification cases on the ground that prior cases only permit the use of such classifications as a remedy for racial discrimination undertaken in the past.
In the first place, the medical school’s special admission program is, in a very real and important sense, intended to overcome the continuing effect of past discrimination in this country. As the United States Supreme Court has acknowledged on numerous occasions, the effect of our nation’s sad legacy of racial discrimination runs deep and wide, and is in no sense limited to those schools, or to those states, which practiced de jure segregation. (See, e.g., Oregon v. Mitchell (1970) 400 U.S. 112, 284 [27 L.Ed.2d 272, 373, 91 S.Ct. 260].) Further, Supreme Court decisions specifically recognize that discrimination, endured by minorities in primary and secondary education will frequently result in later disadvantage to such minorities if educationally based tests are used as the primary criterion for conditioning access to a benefit. (See South *76Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966) 383 U.S. 301, 327-334 [15 L.Ed.2d 769, 786-790, 86 S.Ct. 803]; Gaston County v. United States (1969) 395 U.S. 285 [23 L.Ed.2d 309, 89 S.Ct. 1720]; Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971) 401 U.S. 424, 430 [28 L.Ed.2d 158, 163-164, 91 S.Ct. 849].) The medical school took this continuing discriminatory impact into account in concluding that the continuation of its traditional admission policies was unfair to disadvantaged minorities and in deciding to implement the special admission program.
The majority appear to suggest, however, that the medical school was not free to implement benign racial classifications because there is no evidence that the medical school had itself engaged in racial discrimination in the past. Initially, such a requirement is, on its face, completely illogical. The fact that a governmental institution has not itself engaged in discrimination affords no reason for precluding such an institution from taking into account, through remedial classifications, the present effects of past discrimination by other bodies. The rule proffered by the majority, moreover, would “penalize” precisely the wrong institutions. It must be remembered that the medical school here has voluntarily decided that it is in its educational interest to maintain an integrated medical school; the effect of the majority’s suggestion would be to deny Davis medical school the right to implement such a judgment, and to grant that opportunity only to institutions that have practiced racial discrimination in the past. No one can seriously maintain that such a result is dictated by the Constitution.
The confusion underlying the majority’s approach may be traced to statements in several benign racial classification cases indicating that an employer or educational institution may not be judicially compelled to adopt remedial racial classifications unless it has engaged in racial discrimination in the past. (See Swann v. Board of Education, supra, 402 U.S. 1, 16 [28 L.Ed.2d 554, 566-567].) As the Title VII cases teach, however, past “discrimination” that will constitutionally justify a remedial court order utilizing benign racial classifications need not amount to unconstitutional conduct, as the majority intimate, but may instead simply represent an objective condition of minority underrepresentation that is not satisfactorily justified by an employer. (See Washington v. Davis (1976) 426 U.S. 229 [48 L.Ed.2d 597, 96 S.Ct. 2040].) The majority do not explain why, if Congress can constitutionally mandate the use of remedial racial classifications to overcome such statutorily defined discrimination, the medical school cannot use such classifications to *77overcome a comparable condition of substantial minority underrepresentation.8
Moreover, in the “Executive Order” cases upholding federally compelled “affirmative action” employment programs for government contractors, courts have sanctioned the coercive implementation of benign racial classification schemes in the absence of any showing that a particular employer had engaged in racial discrimination in the past. (See Contractors Association of Eastern Pa. v. Secretary of Labor, supra, 442 F.2d 159, 176 and other cases cited at fn. 6, ante.) In light of these numerous authorities, the majority is simply incorrect in asserting that “[ajbsent a finding of past discrimination,. .. the federal courts, with one exception, have held that the preferential treatment of minorities in employment is invalid on the ground that it deprives a member of the majority of a benefit because of his race.” (See p. 57, ante.)9
*78In any event, however, limitations on thé government’s authority to compel the use of benign racial classification are entirely beside the point. Our question here is not whether the Davis medical school can constitutionally be compelled to establish benign racial classifications to remedy the exclusionary result of its past admission policies, but rather whether the Constitution forbids the medical school from taking such remedial action on its own. As noted, the United States Supreme Court has made it quite clear that a school authority’s power voluntarily to adopt benign racial classifications is in no way dependent upon its having engaged in unconstitutional conduct in the past. To reiterate, in Swann the court stated in this regard: “To do this [utilize racial classifications to achieve racially balanced schools] as an educational policy is within the broad discretionary power of school authorities; absent a finding of a constitutional violation, however, that would not be within the authority of a federal court.” (402 U.S. at p. 16 [28 L.Ed.2d at pp. 566-567]; see, e.g., Porcelli v. Titus (3d Cir. 1970) 431 F.2d 1254; Pellicer v. Brotherhood of Ry. and S.S. Clerks, etc. (5th Cir. 1954) 217 F.2d 205, affg. (S.D.Fla. 1953) 118 F.Supp. 254.)
In sum, the governing authorities draw a clear distinction between invidious racial classifications and remedial, benign racial classifications. The majority eschew such a distinction, suggesting that there is no principled basis for distinguishing between laws which utilize racial classifications to stigmatize or accord inferior treatment to minorities and laws which utilize such classifications to overcome the effects of past discrimination or to promote integration but which have the incidental effect of disadvantaging those of the majority race. There are, however, several principled grounds for drawing just the distinction that the cases have in fact drawn.
First, such a distinction is justified by the history and central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment itself. It is well recognized, of course, that the primary purpose of the amendment was to preclude individual states from according discriminatory treatment to blacks; indeed, at first, the Supreme Court held that this special protection for blacks was the only purpose of the equal protection clause. (See Slaughterhouse Cases, supra, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36, 81 [21 L.Ed. 394, 411].) Gradually, however, and most properly, the court acknowledged that in light of the general wording of the equal protection clause, the court should interpret the *79amendment as affording special protection to other victimized minorities in positions analogous to that of blacks. (See, e.g., Yick Wo v. Hopkins, supra, 118 U.S. 356, 373-378 [30 L.Ed. 220, 227-229]; Oyama v. California (1948) 332 U.S. 633, 644-646 [92 L.Ed. 249, 258-259, 68 S.Ct. 269]; Hernandez v. Texas (1954) 347 U.S. 475 [98 L.Ed. 866, 74 S.Ct. 667]; Graham v. Richardson (1971) 403 U.S. 365, 372 [29 L.Ed.2d 534, 541-542, 91 S.Ct. 1848].) In each of the cases in which differential treatment was deemed presumptively unconstitutional, however, the minority group had suffered inferior—not favored—treatment. Nothing in the history of the Fourteenth Amendment suggests that the provision was intended to preclude the federal government or the states from especially attempting to meet the peculiar needs of minority groups, even when such efforts could be construed as according minorities some measure of preferential treatment. (Cf. Kahn v. Shevin, supra, 416 U.S. 351; Lau v. Nichols (1974) 414 U.S. 563 [39 L.Ed.2d 1, 94 S.Ct. 786]; Katzenbach v. Morgan (1966) 384 U.S. 641 [16 L.Ed.2d 828, 86 S.Ct. 1717].)
Second, in addition to the history and purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, constitutional decisions explicating the appropriate scope of judicial review provide a sound basis for the differential judicial treatment of invidious and benign racial classifications. Beginning with Justice Stone’s celebrated “footnote 4” in U.S. v. Carolene Products Co. (1938) 304 U.S. 144 [82 L.Ed. 1234, 58 S.Ct. 778], the Supreme Court has recognized that whereas in most areas courts properly entertain a presumption that governmental action is constitutional, “prejudice against discrete and insular minorities may be a special condition, which tends seriously to curtail the operation of the political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect minorities, and which may call for a correspondingly more searching judicial inquiry.” (Italics added.) (304 U.S. at pp. 152-153, fn. 4 [82 L.Ed. at p. 1242].)
Heightened judicial scrutiny is accordingly appropriate when reviewing laws embodying invidious racial classifications, because the political process affords an inadequate check on discrimination against “discrete and insular minorities.” (See, e.g., Graham v. Richardson, supra, 403 U.S. 365, 372 [29 L.Ed.2d 534, 541-542]; Frontiero v. Richardson (1973) 411 U.S. 677, 685-686 [36 L.Ed.2d 583, 590-591, 93 S.Ct. 1764]; Sail’er Inn, Inc. v. Kirby (1971) 5 Cal.3d 1, 18-20 [95 Cal.Rptr. 329, 485 P.2d 529, 46 A.L.R.3d 351]; cf. Massachussets Board of Retirement v. Murgia (1976) 427 U.S. 307 [49 L.Ed.2d 520, 96 S.Ct. 2562]; San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez (1973) 411 U.S. 1, 28 [36 L.Ed.2d 16, 39-40, 93 S.Ct. 1278].) By the same token, however, such stringent judicial review is not appro*80priate when, as here, racial classifications are utilized remedially to benefit such minorities, for under such circumstances the normal political process can be relied on to protect the majority who may be incidentally injured by the classification scheme.10
Concluding this discussion, we point out that the majority’s treatment of the medical school’s special admission program as constitutionally “suspect” is not supported by (1) existing case law, (2) the history and purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment or (3) the jurisprudential rationale justifying strict judicial review. The special admission program under review here does not presumptively conflict with the constitutional protection afforded by the equal protection clause.
2. The racial classifications embodied in the special admission program relate directly, and in a reasonable fashion, to the compelling state interest in promoting integration and are thus constitutional.
As discussed above, the remedial racial classifications at issue here cannot properly be viewed as presumptively unconstitutional and thus should not be tested against the standard applied to invidious racial classifications, the exacting, “seemingly insurmountable” strict scrutiny standard. (Dunn v. Blumstein (1972) 405 U.S. 330, 363 [31 L.Ed.2d 274, 296, 92 S.Ct. 995] (Burger, C. J. dissenting).) Although the strict scrutiny standard is not applicable, the appropriate constitutional standard to be employed in testing the constitutionality of benign racial classifications has not been clearly set forth. A number of relevant decisions of the United States Supreme Court suggest that the traditional “rational basis” equal protection test—which affords governmental bodies broad discretion in fashioning remedial policies—may well be the appropriate standard. (See Katzenbach v. Morgan, supra, 384 U.S. 641, 651, 657-658 [16 L.Ed.2d 828, 835-836, 839-840]; Swann v. Board of Education, supra, 402 U.S. 1, 16 [28 L.Ed.2d 554, 566-567]; Kahn v. Shevin, supra, 416 U.S. *81351, 355-356 [40 L.Ed.2d 189, 193]; Morton v. Mancari, supra, 417 U.S. 535, 554-555 [41 L.Ed.2d 290, 302-303].) Quite recently, however, several state and lower federal courts have suggested that in light of the potential “untoward consequences” of racial classifications of any kind—benign as well as invidious—a somewhat more rigorous judicial scrutiny than is traditionally applied under the “rational basis” test should be employed. (See Alevy v. Downstate Medical Center (1976) 39 N.Y.2d 326 [384 N.Y.S.2d 82, 88-91, 348 N.E.2d 537, 543-546]; Associated Gen. Contractors of Mass., Inc. v. Altshuler, supra, 490 F.2d 9, 17.)
There are sound reasons for the judiciary to take a somewhat cautious approach in reviewing ostensibly benign racial classifications. In light of the historical misuse of racial classifications in this country, it is important that courts carefully and realistically assess the purpose and effect of any racial classification to assure that the classification is actually devised for legitimate remedial purposes rather than as a covert method for imposing invidious racial discrimination. In undertaking such a realistic review, however, a court must also be mindful that remedies for the continuing effects of past discrimination have proven distressingly elusive, and that it is therefore important that entities attempting in good faith to promote integration be given reasonable leeway in experimenting with various methods to achieve this compelling societal objective. Accordingly, once a court is convinced that differential racial treatment has been adopted in a good faith attempt to promote integration, it should uphold a benign racial classification so long as it is directly and reasonably related to the attainment of integration. Under this standard, the racial classifications at issue here are clearly constitutional.
The background of the Davis special admission program demonstrates that its racial classifications were clearly devised as a realistic attempt to promote integration. Prior to the implementation of the special admission program, the medical school had pursued an admission process which relied heavily on an applicant’s scores on the standardized Medical College Aptitude Test (MCAT) and on an applicant’s undergraduate grade point average. The use of such traditional admission criteria resulted in the rejection of almost all qualified minority applicants. Thus, although the medical school regularly received applications from a vast number of qualified applicants of all races and ethnic backgrounds, as a consequence of its prior admission policies the medical school functioned, in effect, as a largely segregated educational institution.
*82To remedy this segregated condition the medical school implemented the special admission program. The program has several aspects. First, whereas the medical school, for administrative purposes, had established a 2.5 undergraduate grade point average as a somewhat arbitrary “cut-off” point in its normal admission decisions, the special admission program eliminated this automatic cut-off point for disadvantaged minorities on the ground that in light of such applicants’ peculiar circumstances—a different cultural background combined with economic needs that often required such applicants to hold jobs during their undergraduate years—grade point averages were quite frequently not a reliable indicator of these applicants’ potential for success in the medical profession. (See Simon, Performance of Medical Students Admitted Via Regular and Admission-Variance Routes (1975) 50 J.Med.Ed. 237.) Second, by adopting a specific goal of students to be accepted under the special admission program—approximately one-sixth of the student body—the medical school made a policy judgment that the benefits of integration required the acceptance of more than a token number of minority students.
It must be emphasized, however, that the special admission program did not contemplate, nor sanction, the admission of unqualified applicants simply because they were minorities. As reflected in the majority opinion, the medical school did not by any means accept all minority students who applied for admission; in 1973, the school granted interviews to only one-third of the special admission applicants, and in 1974, only one-sixth of such applicants were interviewed. Moreover, no minority applicant was admitted into the medical school without being found fully qualified for medical school study by the same admissions committee that passed on all other applicants.
The majority claim that in accepting some minority applicants with grade point averages, test scores or “benchmark” scores that would have resulted in rejection if such applicants had been white, the medical school has accepted “less qualified” minorities over “more qualified” nonminorities, and therefore that the program is discriminatory and unreasonable.11 The majority err, however, in maintaining that an *83applicant’s race or ethnic background is never relevant to his qualification for medical school. As the medical school points out, there are a number of reasons that an applicant’s membership in a minority race or ethnic group was properly taken into consideration in evaluating his relative qualification for medical school and his potential for making a contribution to the medical profession.
First, as the chairman of the school’s admission committee explained, disadvantaged minorities were accorded differential treatment in part because the school concluded that the “objective” academic credentials on which the school had largely relied in the past did not accurately predict such minority applicant’s qualifications and did not provide an equitable basis for comparison with other applicants.12 To the extent that the differential treatment of minority applicants was thus based on the school’s determination that its traditional criteria were “culturally biased” against minorities, it seems, incontrovertible that the school, at the very least, was entitled voluntarily to adjust its standards to overcome any built-in bias. (Cf. Griggs v. Duke Power Co., supra, 401 U.S. 424.)
Indeed, the medical school’s decision to deemphasize MCAT scores and grade point averages for minorities is especially reasonable and *84invulnerable to constitutional challenge in light of numerous empirical studies which reveal that, among qualified applicants, such academic credentials bear no significant correlation to an individual’s eventual achievement in the medical profession.13 The findings of these studies are not surprising when one considers all of the nonacademic qualities-—energy, compassion, empathy, dedication, dexterity, and the like—-which make for a “successful” physician. As medical school admissions officials themselves acknowledge, these studies raise questions of the most serious order as to the propriety of the continuing use of traditional admission criteria.14
While such empirical data might well have justified a revamping of the school’s admission policies for all applicants, the medical school cannot be said to have acted unreasonably or unconstitutionally in deciding, perhaps as a first step,15 to decrease its reliance on the traditional criteria *85with respect to applications from disadvantaged minorities, who as a group had been so disproportionately excluded by such criteria. As the United States Supreme Court has explained in upholding a benign racial classification in an analogous context: “[I]n deciding the constitutional propriety of the limitations in such a reform measure we are guided by the familiar principles that a ‘statute is not invalid under the Constitution because it might have gone farther than it did’ [citation], that a legislature need not ‘strike at all evils at the same time’ [citations], and that ‘reform may take one step at a time, addressing itself to the phase of the problem which seems most acute to the legislative mind’ [citation].” (Katzenbach v. Morgan, supra, 384 U.S. 641, 657 [16 L.Ed.2d 828, 839].)
Moreover, as the medical school asserts, the minority background of an applicant is relevant to his qualification for medical school and medical practice for reasons beyond the correction of culturally biased academic credentials. As we have already seen, in Swann v. Board of Education, supra, 402 U.S. 1, 16 [28 L.Ed.2d 554, 566-567], the Supreme Court explicitly confirmed that school authorities are constitutionally empowered to utilize benign racial classifications to achieve racially balanced schools “in order to prepare students to live in a pluralistic society.” The special admission process at issue here, of course, was in fact implemented for just such an educational purpose, to provide a diverse, integrated student body in which all medical students might learn to interact with and appreciate the problems of all races so as to adequately prepare them for medical practice in a pluralistic society. This educational .interest in a diverse student body is no mere “makeweight”; undergraduate schools and professional institutions of the highest calibre have long recognized that the quality of one’s educational experience is “affected as importantly by a wide variety of interests, talents, backgrounds and career goals [in the student body] as it is by a fine faculty and .. . libraries [and] laboratories. . . .” (65 Official Register of Harv. U. No. 25 (1968), pp. 104-105.) Thus, given the race and ethnic background of the great majority of students admitted by the medical school, minority applicants possess a distinct qualification for medical school simply by virtue of their ability to enhance the diversity of the student body.
In addition to promoting diversity in the medical school itself, the special admission program was aimed at alleviating the largely segregated nature of the medical profession generally. There is no question but that during the years in question here minorities were grossly underrepresented in the medical profession. (See Thompson, Curbing the Black *86Physician Manpower Shortage (1974) 49 J.Med.Ed. 944.) Realizing that a segregated medical profession might well remain largely oblivious to the realities of life of disadvantaged minorities and the nature and scope of their medical problems, the medical school established the special admission program in part in recognition of its obligation to meet the broad needs of the medical profession at large.
One of the most pressing medical problems in the country, of course, is the paucity of medical services available to residents in poor minority neighborhoods. The medical school tailored its special admission program specifically to meet this problem; all of the minority students accepted under the program came from a disadvantaged background and all expressed their intent to return to practice in poor, minority communities upon completion of their medical training.
The majority, at one point, suggest that this purpose of the special admission program is somehow improper, and that the medical school has, by its approach, committed itself to the illegitimate task of producing, for example, “black [doctors] for blacks.” This simplistic characterization of the special admission process surely does a grave disservice to the medical school. The medical school has by no means undertaken to train black doctors simply to treat blacks, or to train chicano doctors simply to treat chícanos; a minority doctor’s medical degree is not, of course, a license only to treat minorities. In my view, however, it was neither unreasonable nor improper for the medical school to conclude that at least one of the reasons for the deplorable lack of effective medical services in minority communities is the shortage of minority physicians, and to determine that an increase of disadvantaged minority doctors might play at least some role in improving the situation. (See Karst & Horowitz, Affirmative Action & Equal Protection (1974) 60 Va.L.Rev. 955, 970.)
Indeed, the majority itself recognizes the logic of such an approach with respect to the preference accorded by the medical school to applicants from Northern California. As the majority acknowledge, in the years under consideration here the Davis medical school accorded preferential consideration to applicants from Northern California because of the shortage of doctors in that part of the state; the assumption behind that policy, of course, was that such residents were likely to return to the vicinity of their homes when they began their practice. The majority do not question the propriety or reasonableness of *87such assumption, and do not invalidate such preferential treatment, although this aspect of the admission procedure, as well as the special admission program, may have hurt plaintiff’s chances for admission. Nor do the majority inquire—as they do with the special admission program—whether the shortage of doctors in Northern California could be remedied by alternative means, for example, a government subsidy to all doctors who choose to practice in that area. Since the medical school’s interest in increasing medical services in disadvantaged minority communities is surely no less valid than its interest in overcoming the shortage of doctors in rural, less populated areas, I do not see how we can uphold the preferential admission of rural applicants, but strike down such preference to applicants from urban minority communities.
Finally, over and above the benefits accorded to the medical school and to the medical profession, the special admission program was implemented to serve the larger national interest of promoting an integrated society in which persons of all races are represented in all walks of life and at all income levels. As Professor O’Neill has explained: “For minority youth, . . . professionals from and within their community offer essential role models. Success and expanding opportunities suggest that there are ways of ‘making it’ without resort to violence. Conversely, the denial or closing off of opportunities for education cannot help but breed frustration, resentment and anger at the predominantly white Anglo society.” (O’Neill, Racial Preference and Higher Education: The Larger Context (1974) 60 Va.L.Rev. 925, 944.) If any state interest can be said to be “compelling” for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment, it is just such an interest in overcoming the isolation of minorities and bringing them into the mainstream of American society.
Any one of the numerous objectives served by the special admission program would appear sufficient, in itself, to justify the program’s existence; surely, when viewed cumulatively, they remove any doubt as to the propriety of the medical school’s consideration of race as one relevant factor in the admission decision.
The majority maintain, however, that although the objectives served by the special admission program may be compelling, the medical school could not properly take race into account in achieving such goals. This suggestion simply ignores the nature of these objectives. First, to the extent that standardized test scores and undergraduate grades are particularly poor measures of the potential of minority applicants, any classification which attempts to correct such inequity must inevitably *88focus on minority status. Second, because all of the additional objectives of the program—a diverse student body, a desegregated profession, an integrated society—necessitate the effective racial and ethnic integration of the student body, consideration of the race and ethnic background of individual applicants cannot be avoided. As the school desegregation cases teach, as a practical matter “race [must] be considered in formulating a remedy” for segregated institutions. (Board of Education v. Swann, supra, 402 U.S. 43, 46 [28 L.Ed.2d 586, 589].)
It may be argued that while the medical school could appropriately consider race in the admission process, the special admission program at issue here went too far in setting up a fixed “quota” of 16 places in each medical school class. There is no question that if the 16 places represented a predetermined limit on the number of disadvantaged minorities that would be accepted regardless of how they compared with other applicants, the “quota” would pose very grave, probably fatal, constitutional questions. The plaintiff here, however, does not raise any such objection and, if the program actually operates in such fashion, we must await an appropriate constitutional challenge to this aspect of the admission procedure.
If instead of constituting a limit on disadvantaged minority enrollment, the 16 places “reserved” for the special admission program simply represented the university’s determination that a more than token representation of disadvantaged minorities was needed to achieve the numerous benefits of integration, the specific numerical goal becomes more defensible. Although one may question the medical school’s decision to establish a designated figure as a matter of policy, past benign racial classification cases suggest that no constitutional infirmity attaches to the establishment of explicit concrete integration goals. (See, e.g., Swann v. Board of Education, supra, 402 U.S. 1, 16 [28 L.Ed.2d 554, 566-567]; U.S. v. Montgomery Bd. of Educ., supra, 395 U.S. 225, 235-236 [23 L.Ed.2d 263, 272-273, 89 S.Ct. 1670]; Southern Illinois Builders Association v. Ogilvie, supra, 471 F.2d 680, 686.)
In light of California’s sizable minority population16 and the current underrepresentation of minorities in the medical profession, the allocation of 16 out of 100 places to the special admission program can hardly be criticized as unreasonably generous. Moreover, only fully qualified applicants were admitted under the program and thus if there had not *89been a sufficient number of qualified disadvantaged minority applicants the medical school would not have accepted minority applicants simply to fill a quota. (Cf. Associated Gen. Contractors of Mass., Inc. v. Altshuler, supra, 490 F.2d 9, 18-19.) In this respect, the 16 places represented a “goal” rather than a “quota.”17
In striking down the special admission program, the majority rely heavily on the medical school’s asserted failure to prove that it could not have accomplished its objectives by “less onerous” nonracial alternatives. Since benign classifications are not presumptively unconstitutional, however, the majority err in placing upon the medical school the burden of proving the nonexistence of such alternatives. If alternative remedies are relevant to the constitutionality of the program at all, the party attacking the validity of the program should bear the burden of demonstrating the realistic availability of alternative methods of achieving the medical school’s numerous objectives. Plaintiff completely failed to make any such showing in this case.
Moreover, although the majority conclude that the medical school failed to demonstrate the unavailability of alternatives, the only evidence in the present record on this point is the admission committee chairman’s statement that, “in the judgment of the faculty of the Davis Medical School, the special admissions program is the only method whereby the school can produce a diverse student body which will include qualified students from disadvantaged backgrounds. . . . [Tjhere would be few, if any, black students and few Mexican-American, Indian or Orientals from disadvantaged backgrounds in the Davis Medical School or any other medical school, if the special admissions program and similar programs at other schools did not exist....” (Italics added.) The majority simply reject this unimpeached statement out-of-hand, and, without any support from the record, suggest a number of alternatives which on their face are either disingenuous or impractical or both.
The majority initially suggest that the medical school could achieve its goals by utilizing such nonracial means as opening its special admission program to disadvantaged applicants of all races. This alternative—like most of the other nonracial classifications which have been suggested— bears the initial vice of disingenuousness. Because the principal objective *90of the medical school is to achieve a racially and ethnically integrated, rather than an economically diverse, student body, any nonracial classification will achieve the medical school’s objective only to the extent that such nonracial classification in fact correlates with minority race and ethnic background. Thus, the process of selecting a racially neutral criterion to promote integration cannot honestly be described as a “nonracial” decision. Yet the majority commands just such a manipulation of labels, so that the perfectly proper purposes of the program must be concealed by subterfuge. I do not concur in this retreat into obfuscating terminology.
Moreover, although the majority speculate that the broadening of the special admission program to disadvantaged applicants of all races will result in approximately the same amount of integration as the present program, that conclusion appears untenable on its face. Because all disadvantaged students need financial aid, the total number of such students a medical school can afford to admit is limited. As a consequence, inclusion of all disadvantaged students in the special admission program would inevitably decrease the number of minority students admitted under the program and thus curtail the achievement of all integration-related objectives. (See, e.g., Sandalow, Racial Preferences in Higher Education: Political Responsibility and the Judicial Rule (1975) 42 U.Chi.L.Rev. 653, 690-692.)
The majority’s alternative suggestion that the integration of medical schools can be accomplished by increasing the size and number of medical schools is similarly unrealistic. The cost of medical educational facilities is enormous; absolutely nothing suggests that the' necessary financial commitment for increased facilities will be forthcoming in the foreseeable future. It is a cruel hoax to deny minorities participation in the medical profession on the basis of such clearly fanciful speculation.
In the end, the majority ultimately defend their holding on the ground that, while there are many laudable objectives served by the special admission program, “there are more forceful policy reasons against preferential admissions based on race.” (Italics added.) (See p. 61, ante.) I do not doubt that both sides of the present controversy can urge strong policy considerations for their positions. (See generally Cox, The Role of the Supreme Court in American Government (1976) pp. 61-68.) Some commentators, like the majority, contend that the adverse effects of any racial classification outweigh any potential benefits (see, e.g., Lavinsky, DeFunis v. Odegaard: The “Non Decision” with a Message (1975) 75 *91Colum.L.Rev. 520; Posner, The DeFunis Case and the Constitutionality of Preferential Treatment of Racial Minorities 1974 Sup.Ct.Rev. 1); at least as many other scholars, however, maintain that the failure to adopt benign classifications as a temporary measure will perpetuate racial and ethnic deprivation for the indefinite future and will preclude ever achieving a colorblind society. (See, e.g., O’Neill, Discriminating Against Discrimination (1975); Karst & Horowitz, Affirmative Action and Equal Protection (1974) 60 Va.L.Rev. 955.) Similarly, while some commentators argue that racial classifications inevitably have a negative educational impact (see, e.g., Kaplan, Equal Justice in an Unequal World: Equality for the Negro—The Problem of Special Treatment (1966) 61 Nev.U.L.Rev. 363, 379-380), others have suggested just the contrary. (See Ely, The Constitutionality of Reverse Racial Discrimination (1974) 41 U.Chi.L.Rev. 723; Note, Developments in the Law—Equal Protection (1969) 82 Harv.L.Rev. 1065, 1113.) In light of these conflicting judgments, it is understandable that the majority might conclude, as a matter of policy, that it is preferable to avoid any use of racial classification.
The majority are in serious error, however, in equating their own view of appropriate policy with constitutional commands. In this realm, it is the educational authorities, not the courts, that are empowered to render policy judgments. The very difference of opinion among fairminded and responsible educators and scholars suggests that policy decisions in this area should be left to the discretion of individual educational institutions. As we have seen, nothing in either the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, or in the governing authorities, requires the invalidation of the present special admission program.
Two centuries of slavery and racial discrimination have left our nation an awful legacy, a largely separated society in which wealth, educational resources, employment opportunities—indeed all of society’s benefits—remain largely the preserve of the white-Anglo majority. Until recently, most attempts to overcome the effects of this heritage of racial discrimination have proven unavailing. In the past decade, however, the implementation of numerous “affirmative action” programs, much like the program challenged in this case, have resulted in at least some degree of integration in many of our institutions.
To date, this court has always been at the forefront in protecting the rights of minorities to participate fully in integrated governmental institutions. (See Jackson v. Pasadena City School Dist. (1963) 59 Cal.2d 876 [31 Cal.Rptr. 606, 382 P.2d 878]; Crawford v. Board of Education, *92supra, 17 Cal.3d 280.) It is anomalous that the Fourteenth Amendment that served as the basis for the requirement that elementary and secondary schools could be compelled to integrate, should now be turned around to forbid graduate schools from voluntarily' seeking that very objective.
I cannot join with the majority in concluding that the Constitution precludes the state through the medical school of the University of California at Davis from pursuing of/its own volition a program to provide for the effective integration of its student body.
The petition of the defendant and appellant for a rehearing was denied October 28, 1976, and the opinion was modified to read as printed above. Tobriner, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.
The majority engage in indefensible rhetoric in suggesting that the medical school excluded whites on the basis of their race. (See p. 62, ante). The great majority of students admitted by the medical school-were, of course, white; the racial classifications were thus clearly not used to exclude any race but rather to assure that no race was excluded. In short, the racial classifications at issue here are a far cry from those struck down in such cases as Sweatt v. Painter (1950) 339 U.S. 629 [94 L.Ed. 1114, 70 S.Ct. 848].
It is sometimes suggested that racial classifications that accord “preferential” treatment to minorities stigmatize such minorities, implying that minority individuals cannot “make it” on their own merit. (See DeFunis v. Odegaard (1974) 416 U.S. 312, 343 [40 L.Ed.2d 164, 184, 94 S.Ct. 1704] (Douglas, J. dissenting).) But this view fails to recognize that the so-called “preference” extended to minorities is in no sense a statement of their inferior ability, but rather a recognition either that an allegedly “objective” measure is actually culturally biased against minorities or that minorities’ performance does not connote their true ability, but reflects the continuing disabilities of past discrimination. Indeed, the failure of the medical school to take such action might well be stigmatizing, for such inaction could imply that the minorities’ current underrepresentation in medical school admissions accurately reflects their lesser abilities.
The view that “preferential” racial classifications are stigmatizing, moreover, overlooks the fact that such classifications are often imposed by courts or by executive order in recognition of the fact that minorities continue to be the victims of racial discrimination which cannot easily be detected or proven. (See cases cited at fns. 5, 6, post.) Thus, the establishment of explicit percentage hiring or promotion “goals” for minorities does not suggest minorities cannot make it on their own merit, but instead provides some method for evaluating the actual nondiscriminatory character of an employer’s hiring or promotion policies.
The very recent Case of McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transportation Co. (1976) 427 U.S. 273 [49 L.Ed.2d 493, 96 S.Ct. 2574] is no exception. Although in McDonald the. court did hold that under two federal civil rights statutes discrimination against whites is to be evaluated by the same standards as discrimination against blacks, the court was careful to emphasize that the racial discrimination at issue in that case was unrelated to any affirmative action program, such as is involved in the case at bar. Justice Marshall, writing for the McDonald court explained: “Santa Fe disclaims that the actions challenged here were any part of an affirmative action program . . . and we emphasize that we do not consider here the permissibility of such a program, whether judicially required or otherwise prompted.” (427 U.S. at p. 281, fn. 8 [49 L.Ed.2d at p. 501].)
Swann’s conclusion in this regard is consistent with the numerous court decisions holding that school authorities have the constitutional authority to utilize racial classification to undo de facto school segregation, even if such de facto segregation is not in itself unconstitutional. (See, e.g., Offerman v. Nitkowski (2d Cir. 1967) 378 F.2d 22; Wanner v. County School Board of Arlington County, Va. (4th Cir. 1966) 357 F.2d 452; Springfield School Committee v. Barksdale (1st Cir. 1965) 348 F.2d 261.)
See, e.g., United States v. Wood, Wire and Metal Lath. Int. U., Loc. No. 46 (2d Cir. 1973) 471 F.2d 408, cert. den. 412 U.S. 939 [37 L.Ed.2d 398, 93 S.Ct. 2773]; United States v. Local Union No. 212, etc. (6th Cir. 1973) 472 F.2d 634; United States v. Ironworkers Local 86 (9th Cir. 1971) 443 F.2d 544, cert. den. 404 U.S. 984 [30 L.Ed.2d 367, 92 S.Ct. 447].
See Contractors Ass’n of Eastern Pa. v. Secretary of Labor (3d Cir. 1971) 442 F.2d 159, cert. den. 404 U.S. 854 [30 L.Ed.2d 95, 92 S.Ct. 98] (Philadelphia Plan); Weiner v. Cuyahoga Community College District (1969) 19 Ohio St.2d 35 [48 Ohio Ops.2d 48, 249 N.E.2d 907] (Cleveland Plan); Joyce v. McCrane (D.N.J. 1970) 320 F.Supp. 1284 (Newark Plan); accord Southern Illinois Builders Association v. Ogilvie (7th Cir. 1972) 471 F.2d 680 (state affirmative action plan); Associated Gen. Contractors of Mass., Inc. v. Altshuler (1st Cir. 1973) 490 F.2d 9, cert. den. (1974) 416 U.S. 957 [40 L.Ed.2d 307, 94 S.Ct. 1971] (same).
Another recent employment decision of the United States Supreme Court further refutes the majority’s conclusion that remedial racial classifications are constitutionally suspect. In Morton v. Mancari (1974) 417 U.S. 535 [41 L.Ed.2d 290, 94 S.Ct. 2474], several non-Indian employees of the Bureau of Indian Affairs challenged the validity of a provision of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (25 U.S.C. § 461) which granted an employment preference—in both hiring and promotion—to qualified Indians; the plaintiff" employees contended that this preference (1) was inconsistent with and impliedly repealed by the anti-discrimination provisions of the Equal Employment Opportunities Act (42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq.) which prohibits the federal government from discrimination in employment decisions on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex or national origin” and, (2) if not so repealed, was contrary to the equal protection principles embodied in the Fifth Amendment.
A unanimous Supreme Court rejected both of these contentions and upheld the validity of the employment preference. In dismissing the argument that the preferential treatment of Indians was inconsistent with the provisions of the Equal Employment Opportunities Act, the court observed: “The anti-discrimination provision [of the Equal Employment Opportunities Act], aimed at alleviating minority discrimination in employment, obviously is designed to deal with an entirely different and, indeed, opposite problem. Any perceived conflict is thus more apparent than real . . .” (417 U.S. at p. 550 [41 L.Ed.2d at p. 300].) By parity of reasoning, “any perceived conflict” between the remedial preferential racial classification at issue in this case and the anti-discrimination principles embodied in the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment “is more apparent than real.”
The majority’s position similarly cannot be justified by a claim that remedial racial classifications are justified only to benefit the particular victims of past discrimination, or to disadvantage those particular nonminorities who have received the illicit advantage of past discrimination. The remedial “racial ratio” plans approved in the numerous Title VII cases noted above did not confine benefits to victims of past discrimination, but provided for broad relief to all members of a minority group that had been excluded from employment in the past. Similarly, the United States Supreme Court has recently made clear that no constitutional infirmity inheres in a Title VII remedial order by virtue of the fact that the order may incidentally detrimentally affect “innocent” nonminority employees. (See Franks v. Bowman Transportation Corp., Inc. (1976) 424 U.S. 770, 779 [47 L.Ed. 444, 96 S.Ct. 1251].
Although the majority cite five cases to support their contention that the federal courts have not permitted “preferential” benign classifications absent a finding of past discrimination, only two district court cases—one of which is not even published—are at all on point. In Anderson v. San Francisco Unified School District (N.D. Cal. 1972) 357 F.Supp. 248, 250, the court did hold that defendant school district could not utilize benign racial classifications to provide a more integrated administrative staff; the opinion does not cite a single authority, and thus neither discusses nor attempts to distinguish the numerous federal cases approving such benign classifications. Brunetti v. City of Berkeley (N.D. Cal. 1975) No. C-74-0051 RFP, the unpublished district court decision, while citing many relevant authorities, fails to discuss the distinction between a governmental entity’s authority voluntarily to utilize racial classification to remedy an existing imbalance and a court’s power to compel such use of racial classifications.
The three remaining decisions relied upon by the majority (Chance v. Board of Examiners (2d Cir. 1976) 534 F.2d 993; Kirkland v. New York St. Dept. of Correctional Serv. (2d Cir. 1975) 520 F.2d 420; Weber v. Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corp. (E.D.L. 1976) 415 F.Supp. 761), all Title VII cases, are not relevant to the question at issue here. Chance and Kirkland merely hold that on the showing made in those cases, the trial court should not have entered a remedial order requiring the establishment of preferential racial classifications; those cases do not address the propriety of the voluntary use of remedial racial classifications under circumstances similar to the instant case. Weber, while invalidating a voluntarily adopted preferential scheme under the provisions of Title VII, does not suggest that such a remedial procedure is unconstitutional but, on the *78contrary, indicates that Congress possesses the constitutional authority to authorize such a benign use of racial classifications absent past discrimination. (415 F.Supp. at p. 763.)
It is sometimes claimed that such reasoning ignores the fact that the white majority is not a homogeneous group and that preferential treatment of minorities may in fact be utilized as a means of discriminating against a small subclass of the majority group. (See p. 50, fn. 16, ante.) If such discrimination against a subgroup is indeed present, I would agree that the classification scheme could not properly be characterized as “benign” and presumptively constitutional. There is, however, absolutely no indication in the instant record that the special admission program at Davis was instituted to discriminate against a particular subclass of nonminorities, nor is there any claim that the program had in fact such a differential impact. Under these circumstances, there is no justification for treating the remedial racial classification embodied in the special admissions program as equivalent to invidious racial classification, and no reason to declare the program presumptively unconstitutional.
Although the majority suggest that the “benchmark” scores assigned by the admissions committee to each applicant reflected the medical school’s overall evaluation of the applicant’s qualifications (see p. 47, ante), this conclusion overlooks the fact that the assignment of benchmark scores was only one element of the admissions procedure. The significance of the “benchmark” scores cannot properly be judged in isolation, for the medical school specifically utilized such benchmarks only in conjunction with, and complementary to, its separate special admissions program. By so structuring its *83admissions program, the medical school demonstrated its determination that disadvantaged minority status is itself a relevant qualification in determining an applicant’s potential for contributing to the medical school and the medical profession. The medical school’s admission decisions testify that the benchmark scores assigned to regular and special admission applicants were not intended as comparative measures of overall qualification for medical school. Thus the fact that some special admission applicants were admitted with lower “benchmark” scores than nonminorities does not mean that such applicants were either “less qualified” or “unqualified” for medical practice, under the medical school’s own standards. Indeed, even among regular admission applicants benchmark scores were not determinative of admission decisions, for the record demonstrates that the medical school regularly made exceptions to benchmark rankings to serve other policies, such as accommodating the spouses of previously admitted applicants.
Although the majority claim that I have assumed the very point in issue by suggesting that race or ethnic background may be one relevant factor in determining an applicant’s qualifications for medical school, (see p. 47, ante), the majority overlook the crucial fact that it was the medical school itself—and not this dissent—that determined that minority race or ethnic background is relevant to an applicant’s qualification for medical school. Thus, the majority cannot properly state, as they do, that applicants admitted under the special admission program are less qualified than rejected white applicants under the medical school's own standards. (See p. 48, ante.)
A number of scholarly articles in the medical field have pointed up the cultural bias implicit in the traditional academic admission criteria. (See e.g., Marshall, Minority Students for Medicine and the Hazards of High School (1973) 48 J.Med.Ed. 134; Whittico, The Medical School Dilemma (1969) 61 J. Nat. Med. A. 185; Nelson, Expanding Education Opportunities in Medicine for Black and Other Minority Students (1970) 45 J.Med.Ed. 731.)
See, e.g., Rhoades, Motivation, Medical School Admissions and Student Performance (1974) 49 J.Med.Ed. 1119, 1125; Turner, Predictors of Clinical Performance (1974) 49 J.Med.Ed. 338; Haley & Lerner, The Characteristics and Performance of Medical Students During Preclinical Training (1972) 47 J.Med.Ed. 446; Gough, Evaluation of Performance in Medical Training (1964) 39 J.Med.Ed. 679. See generally, Hoyt, The Relationship Between College Grades and Adult Achievement (1963) page 30.
In one early study, Dr. Price found that with respect to four separate categories of physicians—(1) medical school faculty members, (2) board-certified specialists, (3) urban general practitioners, and (4) rural general practitioners—there was absolutely no correlation between academic performance, as measured by undergraduate and medical school grade point average, and physician performance. Commenting on these findings, Dr. Price stated: “This is a somewhat shocking finding for a medical educator like myself who has spent his professional life selecting applicants for admission to medical school, and in teaching and grading students after admission. It is true that strong suspicion that grades have been weighted much too heavily in predicting performance in medical school and after graduation from medical school ts what led to the initiation of this whole study in the first instance; but to have that suspicion so forcefully corroborated has-led me to question the adequacy of some of our traditional admission policies, as well as the reliability of conventional grades as a measure of progress of the student during his medical course, or as the sole criterion for promotion, or as a dependable predictor of future success in practice.” (Price, Measurement of Physician Performance (1964) 39 J.Med.Ed. 203, 209.)
An amicus brief submitted by the Association of American Medical Colleges reports that substantial general changes in medical school admission procedures may well be imminent. “Recognizing the current need for better assessment of academic and personal qualifications, the Association will begin use in 1977 of a revised set of admissions tests as part of a new admissions assessment program.'Such tests will not only measure achievement in particular areas of knowledge pertinent to medical study, but will also demonstrate abilities in interpretation of written communications and in problem-solving skills. The development of instruments for evaluating personal qualities deemed necessary for the successful practice of medicine is underway. Seven broad areas have been identified for study: compassion, interprofessional relations, coping capability, sensitivity in interpersonal relations, decision-making capacity, .staying power, and realistic self-appraisal.” (Pp. 9-10.)
According to recent figures of the California Department of Finance, minorities comprise more than 25 percent of the state’s population.
Professor O’Neill has written: “The distinction between a goal and a quota can be simply stated. ... [A] goal simply declares an objective which will be met only if a sufficient number of qualified applicants apply, while a quota specifies the number to be admitted from a given group regardless of the pool of qualified applicants.” (O’Neill, Discriminating Against Discrimination (1975) p. 68.)