Whats your understanding of when a school suffers from racial isolation? Data for the Seattle schools in the several years since this litigation was commenced further demonstrate the minimal role that the racial tiebreaker in fact played. Franklin was integration positive because its nonwhite enrollment the previous school year was greater than 69 percent; 89 more white students were assigned to Franklin by operation of the racial tiebreaker in the 20002001 school year than otherwise would have been. Government action dividing us by race is inherently suspect because such classifications promote notions of racial inferiority and lead to a politics of racial hostility, Croson, supra, at 493, reinforce the belief, held by too many for too much of our history, that individuals should be judged by the color of their skin, Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 657 (1993), and endorse race-based reasoning and the conception of a Nation divided into racial blocs, thus contributing to an escalation of racial hostility and conflict. Metro Broadcasting, 497 U. S., at 603 (OConnor, J., dissenting). 05915, Meredith, Custodial Parent and Next Friend of McDonald v. Jefferson County Bd. Our Nation from the inception has sought to preserve and expand the promise of liberty and equality on which it was founded. In his concurrence, Kennedy differed with the plurality because, he found, the goal of obtaining a diverse student body is a compelling state interest. More specifically, the Court stated that race could be used as a plus, but not in such a way that isolates the applicant from the pool of those being considered. 10 important Supreme Court cases about education In due course, the Washington Supreme Court, the Federal District Court, and the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (sitting en banc) rejected the challenge and found Seattles plan lawful. The districts have also failed to show that they considered methods other than explicit racial classifications to achieve their stated goals. Section 2. To use race in this way is not to set a forbidden quota. See id., at 335 (Properly understood, a quota is a program in which a certain fixed number or proportion of opportunities are reserved exclusively for certain minority groups (quoting Croson, 488 U. S., at 496)). See also Hanawalt 31; Pub. The Courts of Appeals below upheld the plans. App. Second, Seattle School Dist. See, e.g., Brief for Petitioners in Bolling v. Sharpe, O.T. 1952, No. The plurality cites in support those who argued in Brown against segregation, and Justice Thomas likens the approach that I have taken to that of segregations defenders. . Jefferson County fails to make clear to this Courteven in the limited respects implicated by Joshuas initial assignment and transfer denialwhether in fact it relies on racial classifications in a manner narrowly tailored to the interest in question, rather than in the far-reaching, inconsistent, and adhoc manner that a less forgiving reading of the record would suggest. of Ed. Approximately 34 percent of the districts 97,000 students are black; most of the remaining 66 percent are white. Brief for Respondent at 3334. 3, p.8 ([W]e take the unqualified position that the Fourteenth Amendment has totally stripped the state of power to make race and color the basis for governmental action); Tr. See generally N. Thompson & C. Marr, Building for Learning: Seattle Public Schools Histories, 18622000 (2002). Parents in Louisville, Kentucky and Seattle, Washington argued that those districts' school integration programs - each of which was voluntarily adopted by local school boards to promote racial integration - violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the Seattle case, the District Court granted the school district summary judgment, finding, inter alia, that its plan survived strict scrutiny on the federal constitutional claim because it was narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest. Remediation of past de jure segregation is a one-time process involving the redress of a discrete legal injury inflicted by an identified entity. Richmond v. J. PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS v.SEATTLE SCHOOL DIST. NO. 1 He adds that this confusion illustrates that Louisvilles assignment plan (or its explanation of it to this Court) is insufficiently precise in respect to who makes the decisions, oversight, the precise circumstances in which an assignment decision will be made; and which of two similarly situated children will be subjected to a given race-based decision. Ante, at 4. in No. Most of the dissents criticisms of todays result can be traced to its rejection of the color-blind Constitution. But the district vigorously defends the constitutionality of its race-based program, and nowhere suggests that if this litigation is resolved in its favor it will not resume using race to assign students. [31], The opinion came less than two months before the start of the regular school year in King County and less than three weeks before the start of year-round school in the District. Id., at 462. For example, at Franklin High School in Seattle, the racial tiebreaker was applied because nonwhite enrollment exceeded 69 percent, and resulted in an incoming ninth-grade class in 20002001 that was 30.3 percent Asian-American, 21.9 percent African-American, 6.8 percent Latino, 0.5 percent Native-American, and 40.5 percent Caucasian. And it used busing to transport the students to their new assignments. 3, p.5 ([I]t would be difficult to find from any field of law a legal principle more repeatedly and conclusively decided than the one sought to be raised by appellants); Brief for Appellees in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1953, No. For this purpose, administrators cataloged the racial makeup of each neighborhood housing block. In 1996, the school board adopted the present plan, which began in 1999. [D]istinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality. Adarand, 515 U. S., at 214 (internal quotation marks omitted). Not everyone welcomed this Courts decision in Brown. Hence, applying Grutters strict test, their lawfulness follows a fortiori. If this interest justifies race-conscious measures today, then logically it will justify race-conscious measures forever. Id., at 690, 72 P.3d, at 167. Parents Involved in Cmty. Indeed, in its brief Seattle simply assumes that the educational benefits track the racial breakdown of the district. [Footnote 8]. Of course, if the Seattle school board were truly committed to the notion that diversity leads directly to educational benefits, operating a school with such a high nonwhite enrollment would be a shocking dereliction of its duty to educate the students enrolled in that school. August 6, 2007 - Connecticut General Assembly See Hallinan, Diversity Effects on Student Outcomes: Social Science Evidence, 59 Ohio St. L.J. 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. As to tracking enrollments, performance and other statistics by race, tracking reveals the problem; it does not cure it. Cf. The plans before us base school assignment decisions on students race. Chief Justice Burger, on behalf of a unanimous Court in a case of exceptional importance, wrote: School authorities are traditionally charged with broad power 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. 05908. That, though, is not the case. in KentuckyThe Second Year After the Supreme Courts Decision, 25 J. Negro Educ. 05915, p. 97. The Constitution does not permit race-based government decisionmaking simply because a school district claims a remedial purpose and proceeds in good faith with arguably pure motives. "[11] But our precedent has recognized that de jure discrimination can be present even in the absence of racially explicit laws. Invoking our mandatory appellate jurisdiction,[Footnote 7] the Boston plaintiffs prosecuted an appeal in this Court. And in light of those challenges, they have asked us not to take from their hands the instruments they have used to rid their schools of racial segregation, instruments that they believe are needed to overcome the problems of cities divided by race and poverty. See The Federalist No. Similarly, Jefferson Countys use of racial classifications has only a minimal effect on the assignment of students. It is an interest in helping our children learn to work and play together with children of different racial backgrounds. As to allocating resources for special programs, Seattle and Louisville have both experimented with this; indeed, these programs are often referred to as magnet schools, but the limited desegregation effect of these efforts extends at most to those few schools to which additional resources are granted. See 426 F.3d 1162, 11931194 (2005) (Kozinski, J., concurring) (That a student is denied the school of his choice may be disappointing, but it carries no racial stigma and says nothing at all about that individuals aptitude or ability). Nonetheless, the Seattle Plan, due to its busing, provoked serious opposition within the State. See Barresi v. Browne, 226 Ga. 456, 456459, 175 S.E. 2d 649, 650651 (1970). [Footnote 3]. These cases consider the longstanding efforts of two local school boards to integrate their public schools. Post, at 28 (citing Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. at 958. See, e.g., Brief for Respondents in No. In briefing and argument before this Court, Seattle contends that its use of race helps to reduce racial concentration in schools and to ensure that racially concentrated housing patterns do not prevent nonwhite students from having access to the most desirable schools. Unlike todays decision, they were also entirely loyal to Brown. 1. See Croson, 488 U. S., at 501 (The history of racial classifications in this country suggests that blind judicial deference to legislative or executive pronouncements of necessity has no place in equal protection analysis); West Virginia Bd. Order No. Id. When the government classifies an individual by race, it must first define what it means to be of a race. 2d 753, 756, and nn. Hence, I am not surprised that Justice Kennedy finds that, a district may consider it a compelling interest to achieve a diverse student population, including a racially diverse population. PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS v.SEATTLE SCHOOL DIST. NO. 1 The racial makeup of the school population amounted to 43% white, 24% black, and 23% Asian or Pacific Islander, with Hispanics and Native Americans making up the rest. "[26] An interest "linked to nothing other than proportional representation of various races . [Footnote 10]. Similarly, between 1968 and 1980, the number of black children attending schools that were more than 90% minority fell from 64% to 33% in the Nation (from 78% to 23% in the South), but that too reversed direction, rising by the year 2000 from 33% to 37% in the Nation (from 23% to 31% in the South). The propriety of preliminary relief and resolution of the merits are of course significantly different issues. In the 20002001 school year, for example, with the racial tiebreaker, the entering ninth grade class at Franklin High School had a 60% minority population; without the racial tiebreaker that same class at Franklin would have had an almost 80% minority population. 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. The fact that Seattle has ceased using the racial tiebreaker pending the outcome here is not dispositive, since the district vigorously defends its programs constitutionality, and nowhere suggests that it will not resume using race to assign students if it prevails. Light, New Evidence on School Desegregation v (1987) (hereinafter Welch) (prepared for the Commission on Civil Rights) (reviewing a sample of 125 school districts, constituting 20% of national public school enrollment, that had experimented with nearly 300 different plans over 18 years). And, as an aspiration, Justice Harlans axiom must command our assent. The Chief Justice delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II, IIIA, and IIIC, concluding: 1. in No. As the districts demographics shift, so too will their definition of racial diversity. Statement in School Comm. And federal courts would rightly hesitate to find unitary status if the consequences of the ruling were so dramatically disruptive. There is ample precedent in the decisions of this Court to uphold school segregation); Brief for Petitioners in Gebhart v. Belton, O.T. 1952, No. in No. The plurality is wrong to do so. Several of these cases were significantly more restrictive than Swann in respect to the degree of leniency the Fourteenth Amendment grants to programs designed to include people of all races. This will be weighed against the consequences of using race as an isolated factor in classifying students. Although we examine the plans under the same legal framework, the specifics of the two plans, and the circumstances 05908, pp. 294 F.3d 1085 (9th Cir. However, if the Court decides that Grutter and Gratz apply in the secondary education context, school districts will still be able to use race as a factor, but in a different way than it is used in the Seattle School Districts plan: race could only be used as a plus in the evaluation of the applicants potential to contribute to the overall diversity of the school. Compare ante, at 12 (opinion of the Court) ([T]he Seattle public schools have never shown that they were ever segregated by law (emphasis added)), with ante at 2930 (plurality opinion) (assuming the Seattle school district was never segregated by law, but seeming to concede that a school district with de jure segregation need not be subject to a court order to be allowed to engage in race-based remedial measures). First, the histories of Louisville and Seattle reveal complex circumstances and a long tradition of conscientious efforts by local school boards to resist racial segregation in public schools. This view is informed by dissents in our previous cases and the concurrences of two Court of Appeals judges. They resemble other plans, promulgated by hundreds of local school boards, which have attempted a variety of desegregation methods that have evolved over time in light of experience. It was then more faithful to Brown and more respectful of our precedent than it is today. of Oral Arg. PDF No. 11-345 In the Supreme Court of the United States - SCOTUSblog Rather, they apply the strict scrutiny test in a manner that is fatal in fact only to racial classifications that harmfully exclude; they apply the test in a manner that is not fatal in fact to racial classifications that seek to include. The latter approach would be informed by Grutter, though of course the criteria relevant to student placement would differ based on the age of the students, the needs of the parents, and the role of the schools. In respect to elementary schools, the plan first drew a neighborhood line around each elementary school, and it then drew a second line around groups of elementary schools (called clusters). Also, the racial tiebreaker has not been employed in Seattle school district since 2002, first due to injunctions and subsequently by the choice of the school district. As early as Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967), this Court made clear that government action that rest[s] solely upon distinctions drawn according to race had to be subjected to the most rigid scrutiny. Id., at 11 (quoting Korematsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214, 216 (1944)); see also McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U. S. 184, 196 (1964) (requiring a statute drawing a racial classification to be necessary, and not merely rationally related, to accomplishment of a permissible state policy); id., at 197 (Harlan, J., concurring) (The necessity test should be equally applicable in a case involving state racial discrimination). Compare Brief for Kansas on Reargument in Brown v. Board of Education, O.T. 1953, No. At most, those statistics show a national trend toward classroom racial imbalance. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306 (2003); id., at 387388 (Kennedy, J., dissenting). While diversity may lend to a robust education, parents and students have their own opinions on what factors promote the best education possible. 1 L. Kohn, Priority Shift: The Fate of Mandatory Busing for School Desegregation in Seattle and the Nation 2730, 32 (Mar. Without the racial tiebreaker, the class would have been 39.6 percent Asian-American, 30.2 percent African-American, 8.3 percent Latino, 1.1 percent Native-American, and 20.8 percent Caucasian. Some studies have even found that a deterioration in racial attitudes seems to result from racial mixing in schools. Given that state law had previously required the school board to maintain a dual school system, the county was obligated to take measures to remedy its prior de jure segregation. Id., at 39a40a. To Seattle School Dist. area/siso/disprof/2005/DP05all.pdf; Brief for Respond- Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District This interest was critically dependent upon features unique to higher education: the expansive freedoms of speech and thought associated with the university environment, the special niche in our constitutional tradition occupied by universities, and [t]he freedom of a university to make its own judgments as to education[,] includ[ing] the selection of its student body. Id., at 329 (internal quotation marks omitted). The issue here is whether the constitution permits, rather than prohibits, voluntary State action aimed toward reducing and eventually eliminating de facto school segregation. Strict scrutiny is not strict in theory, but fatal in fact. . [Footnote 3] If it is still necessary to select students for the school after using the racial tiebreaker, the next tiebreaker is the geographic proximity of the school to the students residence. 3, p.17 (The Court is dealing with thousands of local school districts and schools. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit originally reversed, 285 F. 3d 1236 (9th Cir. They are based upon numerous sources, which for ease of exposition I have cataloged, along with their corresponding citations, at Appendix B, infra. Croson, supra, at 505; Wygant, supra, at 279, n.5 (plurality opinion). But with reference to schools, the effect of the legal wrong proved most difficult to correct. See, e.g., North Carolina Bd. In 1956, two years after Brown made clear that Kentucky could no longer require racial segregation by law, the Louisville Board of Education created a geography-based student assignment plan designed to help achieve school integration. The rights established are personal rights). Pp. To do so provides further reason to believe that the pluralitys approach is legally unsound. However, the actual hard-won gain in these cases is the elimination of the vestiges of the system of state-enforced racial separation that once existed in Louisville. 1 of King County, Washington, and the Office for Civil Rights, United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare 2 (June 9, 1978); see also 45 CFR 80.7(c) (2006). of Ed., 476 U. S. 267, 274 (1986), the plurality noted: This Court never has held that societal discrimination alone is sufficient to justify a racial classification. And as I explained above, the school districts have no remedial interest in pursuing these programs. See 539 U. S., at 320. . In Grutter, the number of minority students the school sought to admit was an undefined meaningful number necessary to achieve a genuinely diverse student body, 539 U. S., at 316, 335336, and the Court concluded that the law school did not count back from its applicant pool to arrive at that number, id., at 335336. Certainly if the constitutionality of the stark use of race in these cases were as established as the dissent would have it, there would have been no need for the extensive analysis undertaken in Grutter. At the other extreme, Santa Clara, California had a relatively even racial distribution prior to its 1979 desegregation plan. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Electoral district lines are facially race neutral so a more searching inquiry is necessary before strict scrutiny can be found applicable in redistricting cases than in cases of classifications based explicitly on race (quoting Adarand, 515 U. S., at 213)). We granted certiorari. See n.16, infra. 05908, p. 42. The dissent finds that the school districts have identified a compelling interest in increasing diversity, including for the purpose of avoiding racial isolation. Because the school boards lack any further interest in remedying segregation, this element offers no support for the purported interest in integration.. 693, 227 N.E.2d 729. 05908, at 286a. McFarland v. Jefferson Cty. [4] However, the Court struck down both school districts' assignment plans, finding that the plans were not sufficiently "narrowly tailored", a legal term that suggests that the means or method being employed (in this case, a student assignment plan based on individualized racial classifications) is closely and narrowly tied to the ends (the stated goals of achieving diversity and/or avoiding racial isolation). Fourteen of the districts nineteen non-vocational middle and high schools were close to totally black or totally white. 539 U.S. at 316. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 Likewise, a district may consider it a compelling interest to achieve a diverse student population. Section 3. This Court has recognized that the public interests at stake in such cases are compelling. We have approved of narrowly tailored plans that are no less race-conscious than the plans before us. Both parents appealed the Districts placement but were unable to have their children reassigned. In order to satisfy this searching standard of review, the school districts must demonstrate that the use of individual racial classifications in the assignment plans here under review is narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest. Preliminary Challenges, 1956 to 1969. See id., at 12, 2930. The plan then drew new geographical school assignment zones designed to satisfy these guidelines; the district could reassign students if particular schools failed to meet the guidelines and was required to do so if a school repeatedly missed these targets. Ibid. Even if these measures were appropriate as remedies in the face of widespread resistance to Browns mandate, they are not forever insulated from constitutional scrutiny. Kennedy, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. See post, at 6972. In "Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. No. Bd. It is not surprising to find a large number of different desegregation strategies in a sample with this much variation. Welch 23 (footnotes omitted). The District contends that these requirements are not met in this case. The District asserts that it helped these schools by allowing students from the schools to attend other schools, furthering the goals of ending racial isolation and promoting equal access. See Brief of the Asian American Legal Foundation as Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioners at 5. See ante, at 1725. Statements after the decision Finally, what of the hope and promise of Brown? See, e.g., Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303 (1880); Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356 (1886); Brown, 347 U. S. 483; Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967); Regents of Univ. See also Brief for Appellees in Brown v. Board of Education, O.T. 1952, No. of Boston v. Board of Education, 352 Mass. See post, at 29. Seattle Schools Transportation. This sentence reminds me of Anatole Frances observation: [T]he majestic equality of the la[w], forbid[s] rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.[Footnote 1] The Chief Justice fails to note that it was only black schoolchildren who were so ordered; indeed, the history books do not tell stories of white children struggling to attend black schools. See also Grutter, supra, at 326 ([G]overnmental action based on racea group classification long recognized as in most circumstances irrelevant and therefore prohibitedshould be subjected to detailed judicial inquiry (internal quotation marks and emphasis omitted)). App. of Oral Arg. This past June, a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court declared integration plans in Louisville and Seattle unconstitutional because of their focus on race as one factor in assigning students to schools. PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS, PETITIONER. It then created a mixed student body by assigning to those schools students who would otherwise attend predominantly white, or predominantly black, schools elsewhere. 05915, at 82. The practice can lead to corrosive discourse, where race serves not as an element of our diverse heritage but instead as a bargaining chip in the political process. As of 2002, almost 2.4 million students, or over 5% of all public school enrollment, attended schools with a white population of less than 1%. Justice Kennedy asserts that the dissent must "brush aside two concepts of central importance" to uphold the racial classification in the case. Federal authorities had claimedas the NAACP and the OCR did in Seattlethat Clarke County schools were segregated in law, not just in fact. This Court recognized as much in its opinion, which stated that the school board had an affirmative duty to disestablish the dual school system. McDaniel, supra, at 41. 05915, at 38 (Decisions to assign students to schools within each cluster are based on available space within the [elementary] schools and the racial guidelines in the Districts current student assignment plan); id., at 82 (acknowledging that a student may not be assigned to his or her resides school if it has reached the extremes of the racial guidelines).
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