Cite as: 515 U. S. 200 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
governmental interest. The Constitution guarantees that right to every person regardless of his background. Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U. S. [1, 22 (1948)]." Bakke, supra, at 299 (opinion of Powell, J.) (footnote omitted).
A year later, however, the Court took a surprising turn. Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. FCC, supra, involved a Fifth Amendment challenge to two race-based policies of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In Metro Broadcasting, the Court repudiated the long-held notion that "it would be unthinkable that the same Constitution would impose a lesser duty on the Federal Government" than it does on a State to afford equal protection of the laws, Bolling, supra, at 500. It did so by holding that "benign" federal racial classifications need only satisfy intermediate scrutiny, even though Croson had recently concluded that such classifications enacted by a State must satisfy strict scrutiny. "[B]enign" federal racial classifications, the Court said, "—even if those measures are not 'remedial' in the sense of being designed to compensate victims of past governmental or societal discrimination—are constitutionally permissible to the extent that they serve important governmental objectives within the power of Congress and are substantially related to achievement of those objectives." Metro Broadcasting, 497 U. S., at 564-565 (emphasis added). The Court did not explain how to tell whether a racial classification should be deemed "benign," other than to express "confiden[ce] that an 'examination of the legislative scheme and its history' will separate benign measures from other types of racial classifications." Id., at 564, n. 12 (citation omitted).
Applying this test, the Court first noted that the FCC policies at issue did not serve as a remedy for past discrimination. Id., at 566. Proceeding on the assumption that the policies were nonetheless "benign," it concluded that they served the "important governmental objective" of "enhancing broadcast diversity," id., at 566-567, and that they were
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