Charges of reverse discrimination became common during the 1970s, as more and more corporations and private businesses, often under pressure from federal enforcement agencies, began more hiring of minorities and women. The question of whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act also protected whites against discrimination arose inMcDonald v. Sante Fe Transportation Company. The case involved a company that fired two white employees who had been charged with theft but retained a black employee similarly charged. The court ruled unanimously that whites, as well as blacks, are protected from racial discrimination under the antidiscrimination provisions of Title VII. Despite this ruling, a number of subsequent court decisions would hold that Title VII permitted the preferential treatment of minorities and women in hiring and promotion decisions (but not in decisions affecting layoffs) if such treatment were part of an affirmative action plan designed to increase the employment of previously excluded or underrepresented groups.

Perhaps the most important of these decisions came in the case of United Steelworkers of America v. Weber. The Weber case involved a white worker (Brian F.Weber) who was refused admission to an on-the-job training program at the Kaiser Aluminum Company plant at which he worked, although he had higher seniority than some of the minority workers who were accepted. In an attempt to increase minority representation in its workforce, Kaiser Aluminum had developed two seniority lists, one for whites and one for blacks, and it filled its vacancies by selecting persons from the top of each list. Weber filed suit, claiming that the 1964 Civil Rights Act specifically prohibited this use of racial quotas. Although winning at the district court level, Weber lost in the Supreme Court, which claimed that Title VII, though not requiring race-conscious affirmative-action preferences in employment, nevertheless permitted them if the purpose was to increase the employment of groups previously discriminated against.