affirmative action violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Lower courts The case was first heard in the Superior Court of Washington, in which the University of Washington moved to have the case dismissed on the grounds that relief could not be granted. The court rejected the proposed dismissal and filed an injunction that forced the school to admit DeFunis. The university argued that it used a complex formula to predict applicants' success, the Predicted First-Year Average (PFYA), but it was not the only thing taken into account during the application process. Applicants with higher PFYA scores were reviewed and were presented by a committee member before the whole committee. The committee member who represented a student was usually up to chance but not in the case of African American and other minority students. Their files were reviewed by three specific board members: Professor Geoffrey Crooks (director of the school's Council on Legal Education Opportunities program), Vincent Hayes (a second-year black law student), and Associate Dean Robert S. Hunt (the sole evaluator of the files of minorities other than African Americans). The court found that in reviewing the files of minority applicants, the committee attached less weight to the PFYA in making a total judgmental evaluation as to the relative ability of the particular applicant to succeed in law school. Also, the chairman testified that although the same standard was applied to all applicants (the relative probability of the individual succeeding in law school), minority applicants were directly compared to one another, but they were not compared to applicants outside of the minority group. As a result, the committee admitted a group of minority applicants, placed a group of such applicants on a waiting list, and rejected other minority applications. The dean of the law school testified that the law school has no fixed admissions quota for minority students but that the committee sought a reasonable representation of such groups in the law school. He added that the school had accepted no unqualified minority applicants but only those whose records indicated that they were capable of successfully completing the law school program. Because of the judgmental factors in the admissions process, as outlined, the ultimate determination of applicants to whom admission was offered did not follow exactly the relative ranking of PFYAs. Of those invited, 74 had lower PFYAs than plaintiff; 36 of