Will Louisville and all similar school districts have to return to systems like Louisvilles initial 1956 plan, which did not consider race at all? NO. gent upon a particular racial mix. If a school has reached the extremes of the racial guidelines, a student whose race would contribute to the schools racial imbalance will not be assigned there. The Supreme Court will be forced to closely examine the social and education benefits that, as the District argues, come from racial and ethnic diversity in secondary education. Mr. Korrell. Regardless of the outcome, this decision will surely have an effect on public schools, be it in the composition of their student body, their admissions policies, or their educational approach generally. 1.9 In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. See 426 F. 3d 1162, 11931196 (CA9 2005) (Kozinski, J., concurring); Comfort v. Lynn School Comm., 418 F.3d 1, 2729 (CA1 2005) (Boudin, C.J., concurring). [Footnote 7] Although Louisville once operated a segregated school system and was subject to a Federal District Courts desegregation decree, see ante, at 7; Hampton v. Jefferson Cty. Instead of accommodating different good-faith visions of our country and our Constitution, todays holding upsets settled expectations, creates legal uncertainty, and threatens to produce considerable further litigation, aggravating race-related conflict. The opinion of the Court and Justice Breyers dissenting opinion (hereinafter dissent) describe in detail the history of integration efforts in Louisville and Seattle. In 2001, after the decree had been dissolved, Jefferson County adopted the voluntary student assignment plan at issue in this case. The limitation of this power to instances where there has been de jure segregation serves to confine the nature, extent, and duration of governmental reliance on individual racial classifications. The amicus briefs in the cases before us mirror this divergence of opinion. The first is the compelling interest of remedying the effects of past intentional discrimination. 4 Memorandum Opinion and Order in Haycraft v. Board of Ed. 2, 4, 5 (WD Ky. 1999) (Hampton I). So it was, as the dissent observes, see post, at 1314, that Louisville classified children by race in its school assignment and busing plan in the 1970s. The Washington Supreme Court ruled that the Seattle School Districts use of race was valid under the state constitution. United States v. Fordice, 505 U. S. 717, 749 (1992) (Thomas, J., concurring). The Ninth Circuit affirmed. 250, 251 (1983) (similar in Arkansas); Bullock (citing Armor & Rossell, Desegregation and Resegregation in the Public Schools, in Beyond the Color Line 239 (A. Thernstrom & S. Thernstrom eds. Here the most Jefferson County itself claims is that because the guidelines provide a firm definition of the Boards goal of racially integrated schools, they provide administrators with the authority to facilitate, negotiate and collaborate with principals and staff to maintain schools within the 1550% range. Brief in Opposition in No. Although all governmental uses of race Although apparently Joshua has now been granted a transfer to Bloom, the school to which transfer was denied under the racial guidelines, Tr. See also ante, at 2223 (Thomas, J., concurring). No. 2005) (" Parents IV"). The agreement required the board to implement what became known as the Seattle Plan.. Because [o]ur Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens, such race-based decisionmaking is unconstitutional. of Boston v. Board of Education, 389 U. S. 572 (1968) (per curiam) (dismissing for want of a federal question a challenge to a voluntary statewide integration plan using express racial criteria). 2d, at 1289. The districts past and current plans are not unique. The Court recognized that seeking diversity and avoiding racial segregation in schools are compelling state interests. Likewise, a district may consider it a compelling interest to achieve a diverse student population. 36, 71 (1872) ([N]o one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in [all the Reconstruction amendments] . In this respect, Swann was not a sharp or unexpected departure from prior rulings; it reflected a consensus that had already emerged among state and lower federal courts. The plans at issue are not overly different from other plans that school districts have used with the express or implicit approval of courts. And it is a label that an individual is powerless to change. B to Roe Affidavit in Seattle School Dist. [Footnote 28]. In Louisville, Kentucky, the Jefferson County Public Schools voluntarily implemented a system of student assignments that set quota percentages for African-American students in each school. The issue here is whether the constitution permits, rather than prohibits, voluntary State action aimed toward reducing and eventually eliminating de facto school segregation. Brief for Petitioner at 3943. 439 U. S., at 1383. The dissent emphasizes local control, see post, at 4849, the unique history of school desegregation, see post, at 2, and the fact that these plans make less use of race than prior plans, see post, at 57, but these factors seem more rhetorical than integral to the analytical structure of the opinion. See generally Washington v. Seattle School Dist. of Ed. In the Seattle case, the school district has gone further in describing the methods and criteria used to determine assignment decisions based on individual racial classifications, but it has nevertheless failed to explain why, in a district composed of a diversity of races, with only a minority of the students classified as white, it has employed the crude racial categories of white and non-white as the basis for its assignment decisions. This is made for the. The Department of Education has characterized this as a compelling interest in regulations and various other statements. the Chief Justice, joined by Justice Scalia, Justice Thomas, and Justice Alito, concluded for additional reasons in Parts IIIB and IV that the plans at issue are unconstitutional under this Courts precedents. Conversely, to take another example, evidence from a district in Norfolk, Virginia, shows that resegregated schools led to a decline in the achievement test scores of children of all races. W. Bowen & D. Bok, The Shape of the River 118 (1998) (hereinafter Bowen & Bok). But with reference to schools, the effect of the legal wrong proved most difficult to correct. Scholars have differing opinions as to whether educational benefits arise from racial balancing. Narrow tailoring requires "serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives", Grutter, supra, at 339, 123 S. Ct. 2325, 156 L. Ed. Context matters when reviewing race-based governmental action under the Equal Protection Clause. No. If the Supreme Court affirms this holding, it will be a departure from that in Gratz and Grutter which specified diversity as a compelling state interest and emphasized the importance of considering race as only one factor in a holistic review of an applicants potential contribution to the diversity of the school. v. Detiege, 358 U. S. 54 (1958) (per curiam) (public parks); Gayle v. Browder, 352 U. S. 903 (1956) (per curiam) (buses); Holmes v. Atlanta, 350 U. S. 879 (1955) (per curiam) (golf courses); Mayor of Baltimore v. Dawson, 350 U. S. 877 (1955) (per curiam) (beaches). Pp. The cost of busing, the harm that members of all racial communities feared that the Seattle Plan caused, the desire to attract white families back to the public schools, and the interest in providing greater school choice led the board to abandon busing and to substitute a new student assignment policy that resembles the plan now before us. PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS v. SEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306, 371 (2003) (Thomas, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (citing Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peńa, 515 U. S. 200, 239 (1995) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment)). No. b. explicitly overturned the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Roberts wrote: "The fact that it is possible that children of group members will not be denied admission to a school based on their racebecause they choose an undersubscribed school or an oversubscribed school in which their race is an advantagedoes not eliminate the injury claimed. must be analyzed by a reviewing court under strict scrutiny. Ante, at 31, n.16 (quoting Adarand, 515 U. S., at 227). Then-Justice Rehnquist, in denying emergency relief, stressed that equitable consideration[s] counseled against preliminary relief. Diversity, depending on its meaning and definition, is a compelling educational goal a school district may pursue. 05915, at 22. 05908, at 7. A compelling interest exists in avoiding racial isolation, an interest that a school district, in its discretion and expertise, may choose to pursue. 1, supra, at 461; Complaint and Motion to Dismiss or Affirm in Seattle School Dist. See post, at 79, 23. The Current Plan: Project Renaissance Modified, 1996 to 2003. Is each to be the subject of litigation in the District Courts?); Brief for Kansas on Reargument in Brown v. Board of Education, O.T. 1953, No. In Seattle, the parties settled after the school district pledged to undertake a desegregation plan. Aside from constitutionally compelled remediation in schools, this Court has permitted government units to remedy prior racial discrimination only in narrow circumstances. (a)Because racial classifications are simply too pernicious to permit any but the most exact connection between justification and classification, Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U. S. 448, 537 (Stevens, J., dissenting), governmental distributions of burdens or benefits based on individual racial classifications are reviewed under strict scrutiny, e.g., Johnson v. California, 543 U. S. 499, 505506. 05915, at 81; McFarland I, supra, at 842. Id., at 43. It contains 34 countywide districts with central cities (the 11 Florida districts fit this description, plus Clark County, Nevada and others) and a small number of consolidated districts (New Castle County, Delaware and Jefferson County, Kentucky). Second, the plurality downplays the importance of Swann and related cases by frequently describing their relevant statements as dicta. These criticisms, however, miss the main point. The Court in Grutter expressly articulated key limitations on its holdingdefining a specific type of broad-based diversity and noting the unique context of higher educationbut these limitations were largely disregarded by the lower courts in extending Grutter to uphold race-based assignments in elementary and secondary schools. 1, p.38 (Spring 2002); Mickelson, Subverting Swann: First- and Second-Generation Segregation in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, 38 Am. A compelling interest exists in avoiding racial isolation, an interest that a school district, in its discretion and expertise, may choose to pursue. This racially imbalanced environment has reportedly produced test scores higher across all grade levels in reading, writing and math. Ibid. It is an interest in teaching children to engage in the kind of cooperation among Americans of all races that is necessary to make a land of three hundred million people one Nation. The dissent finds that the school districts have identified a compelling interest in increasing diversity, including for the purpose of avoiding racial isolation. . [1][2] Chief Justice Roberts wrote in his plurality opinion that The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.[1] Some have credited this decision as contributing to schools resegregating in the United States, and it's been noted that American schools are more racially segregated now than in the late 1960s.[3]. It gave third preference to students residing in the neighborhood. 1(Parent Involved in Community Schools), limited the use of race in K-12 integration plans on Equal Protection grounds. See, e.g., Federal Maritime Commn v. South Carolina Ports Authority, 535 U. S. 743, 770 (2002) (Stevens, J., dissenting). v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 1, 4950 (1973) (extolling local control for the opportunity it offers for participation in the decisionmaking process that determines how . Adarand, 515 U. S., at 228229. Jefferson County Public Schools & Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 137 F.Supp. Choice, therefore, is the predominant factor in these plans. The schools base their numbers in demographics, therefore making this goal a means to achieve a numerical quota to achieve racial balancing. R. Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black Americas Struggle for Equality, p. x (1975) (arguing that perhaps no other Supreme Court case has affected more directly the minds, hearts, and daily lives of so many Americans); Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education xxvii (2001) (identifying Brown as the most eagerly awaited and dramatic judicial decision of modern times). 1991). as Amici Curiae in No. 1, 127 S. Ct. 2738 (U.S. 2007) Brief Fact Summary. See Brief for Respondent at 3132. 3. That, though, is not the case. 2d, at 842, based on the objective of achieving at all schools an African-American enrollment equivalent to the average district-wide African-American enrollment of 34 percent. See, e.g., Adarand, supra; Gratz, supra; Grutter, supra. It consequently conducted a nearly year-long review of its plan. 149 through 154 (Dec. 8, 2003). Reply Brief for Petitioner in No. In doing so, it sought to deemphasize the use of racial criteria and to increase the likelihood that a student would receive an assignment at his first or second choice high school. It first appeared in Plessy, where the Court asked whether a state law providing for segregated railway cars was a reasonable regulation. 163 U. S., at 550. The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact the dissents newly minted understanding of liberty. A racial imbalance determination requires the district to submit a plan to correct the racial imbalance, which plan may include mandatory pupil reassignment. 10226e5(a) and (c)(4). The districts have also failed to show that they considered methods other than explicit racial classifications to achieve their stated goals. 421, 424425 (History, too, tells us that segregation was imposed on one race by the other race; consent was not invited or required. Rev. 23 (OCR, Apr. See North Carolina Bd. Accepting racial balancing as a compelling state interest would justify the imposition of racial proportionality throughout American society, contrary to our repeated recognition that [a]t the heart of the Constitutions guarantee of equal protection lies the simple command that the Government must treat citizens as individuals, not as simply components of a racial, religious, sexual or national class. Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 911 (1995) (quoting Metro Broadcasting, 497 U. S., at 602 (OConnor, J., dissenting); internal quotation marks omitted). The dissents reliance on this interest is, therefore, inconsistent with Wygant. in Brown v. Board of Education, O.T. 1952, No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007) Plaintiff- Parents Involved in Community Schools (non-profit organization led by Kathleen Get started for FREE Continue After all, a number of school districts in the South that the Government or private plaintiffs challenged as segregated by law voluntarily desegregated their schools without a court orderjust as Seattle did. Racial imbalance is not segregation. It wrote that there was overwhelming evidence of the Boards good faith compliance with the desegregation Decree and its underlying purposes. It added that the Louisville School Board had treated the ideal of an integrated system as much more than a legal obligationthey consider it a positive, desirable policy and an essential element of any well-rounded public school education.. So, the argument proceeds, if race is the problem, then perhaps race is the solution. Again, however, the evidence supporting a democratic interest in racially integrated schools is firmly established and sufficiently strong to permit a school board to determine, as this Court has itself often found, that this interest is compelling. 417, 428429 287 N.E. 2d 438, 447448 (1972). 2. exemplifies the long-running disagreement over the meaning of racial discrimination under the Constitution. Indeed, remedial measures geared toward such broad and unrelated societal ills have no logical stopping point, ibid., and threaten to become ageless in their reach into the past, and timeless in their ability to affect the future, Wygant, supra, at 276 (plurality opinion). Without any detailed discussion of the operation of the plans, the students who are affected, or the districts failure to consider race-neutral alternatives, the dissent concludes that the districts have shown that these racial classifications are necessary to achieve the districts stated goals. 2434. The long history of their efforts reveals the complexities and difficulties they have faced. In Louisville, a federal district court found that school segregation reflected pre-Brown state laws separating the races. The Courts decision undermines other basic institutional principles as well. Stripped of the baseless and novel interests the dissent asserts on their behalf, the school boards cannot plausibly maintain that their plans further a compelling interest. different school zones are paired together and, as a result, all students at a certain grade level attend school in the same school building). Public Schools, 197 F.3d 123, 133 (CA4 1999); Tuttle v. Arlington Cty. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. No. summary.aspx?schoolId=1104&reportLevel=School&orgLinkId=1104&yrs=; Achieving racially balanced school districts does not amount to a compelling government interest that satisfies strict scrutiny. Race may be one component of that diversity, but other demographic factors, plus special talents and needs, should also be considered. There is no guarantee, however, that students of different races in the same school will actually spend time with one another. [Footnote 11] But see Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. FCC, 497 U. S. 547, 610 (1990) (We are a Nation not of black and white alone, but one teeming with divergent communities knitted together with various traditions and carried forth, above all, by individuals) (OConnor, J., dissenting). 05908, p. 511. Is it not the height of wisdom that the manner in which that shall be conducted should be left to those most immediately affected by it, and that the wishes of the parents, both white and colored, should be ascertained before their children are forced into what may be an unwelcome contact?). 377 F.3d at 958. 393, 407 (1857) ([T]hey [members of the negro African race] had no rights which the white man was bound to respect). This Court has recently reiterated, however, that all racial classifications [imposed by government] must be analyzed by a reviewing court under strict scrutiny. Johnson, 543 U. S., at 505 (quoting Adarand, 515 U. S., at 227; emphasis added by Johnson Court). Argued December 4, 2006Decided June 28, 2007* Respondent school districts voluntarily adopted student assignment plans that rely on race to determine which schools certain children The districts here invoke the ultimate goal of those who filed Brown and subsequent cases to support their argument, but the argument of the plaintiff in Brown was that the Equal Protection Clause prevents states from according differential treatment to American children on the basis of their color or race, and that view prevailedthis Court ruled in its remedial opinion that Brown required school districts to achieve a system of determining admission to the public schools on a nonracial basis. Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294, 300301 (emphasis added). If we are to insist upon unanimity in the social science literature before finding a compelling interest, we might never find one. in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1953, No. 4, p.86 ([Y]ou cannot talk about this problem just in a vacuum in the manner of a law school discussion), with post, at 57 (The Founders meant the Constitution as a practical document). It initially assigned each student to his or her neighborhood school, but it permitted each student freely to transfer between elementary schools within each cluster provided that the transferring student (a) was black if transferring from a predominantly black school to a predominantly white school, or (b) was white if transferring from a predominantly white school to a predominantly black school. 491 U.S. 524, 54142 (1989) (Scalia, concurring). 2429, and at oral argument, counsel for Louisville disavowed any claim that Louisvilles argument depend[ed] in any way on the prior de jure segregation, Tr. Accordingly, the school boards cannot satisfy strict scrutiny. No. Is it not a fact that the very strength and fiber of our federal system is local self-government in those matters for which local action is competent? And some have concluded that there are no demonstrable educational benefits. It is evident, however, that Justice Breyers brand of narrow tailoring is quite unlike anything found in our precedents. of Ed. 61, 39 Ill. 2d 593, 596598, 237 N.E. 2d 498, 500502 (1968), an Illinois decision, as evidence that state and federal courts had considered the matter settled and uncontroversial. Post, at 25. Ed. To this day, misconceptions abound about whether voluntary school desegregation is constitutionally permitted in the United States. Brief for Respondents in No. See Grutter, 539 U.S. at 328. At the time, the districts public school population was approximately 30% black. 1, 23 (1995); A. Siqueland, Without A Court Order: The Desegregation of Seattles Schools 10 (1981) (hereinafter Siqueland); D. Pieroth, Desegregating the Public Schools, Seattle, Washington, 19541968, p.6 (Dissertation Draft 1979) (hereinafter Pieroth). 2d 1267 (1996). . Second, "the interest in diversity in higher education", as upheld in, This page was last edited on 5 February 2023, at 17:43. Today, they are not); post, at 66 (predicting further litigation, aggravating race-related conflict). See Brief for Petitioner at 35. 17 (1981) (hereinafter Hanawalt); Taylor, The Civil Rights Movement in the American West: Black Protest in Seattle, 19601970, 80 J. Negro Hist. More broadly, however, allowing racial diversity or balance as a compelling state interest, even if confined to secondary education, calls into question the Equal. 2d 304. Indeed, in the context of school desegregation, this Court has repeatedly stressed the importance of acknowledging that local school boards better understand their own communities and have a better knowledge of what in practice will best meet the educational needs of their pupils.