Supreme Court Rules on Racial Factors in School Enrollment

On Thursday, June 27, 2007, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, rejected integration plans in Louisville, KY and Seattle, WA school districts stating that the plans violated constitutional guarantees of equal protection.

Federal appeals courts had upheld both plans after some parents sued. The Bush administration took the parents’ side, arguing that racial diversity is a noble goal but can be sought only through race-neutral means. The Louisville case grew out of complaints from several parents whose children were not allowed to attend the schools of their choice. The Seattle school district said it used race as one among many factors and relied on it only at the end of a lengthy process in allocating students among the city's high schools. Seattle suspended its program after parents sued.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., who delivered the opinion of the Court stated, “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Justices Antontin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito, Jr. also concurred in part.
Justice Kennedy stated, in a separate concurring opinion, that while he agreed with the decision, he disagreed with that reasoning and that race may be a component of school plans designed to achieve diversity. “A district may consider it a compelling interest to achieve a diverse student population,” Kennedy said, "[r]ace may be one component of that diversity.”
Justice Stephen Breyer, in a dissent joined by Justices David Hackett Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said Roberts’ opinion undermined the promise of integrated schools that the court laid out 53 years ago in its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Justice John Paul Stevens filed a separate dissent and called the Chief Justice's reliance on Brown to rule against integration “a cruel irony.”
Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court's only black member, wrote a separate opinion endorsing the ruling and taking issue with the dissenters' view of the Brown case. “What was wrong in 1954 cannot be right today,” Thomas said. “The plans before us base school assignment decisions on students' race. Because ‘our Constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,’ such race-based decision making is unconstitutional.”
“The last half century has witnessed great strides toward racial equality, but we have not yet realized the promise of Brown. To invalidate the plans under review is to threaten the promise of Brown.” Breyer stated in his dissent. “This is a decision that the Court and the Nation will come to regret.”
Resources:
Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, et al., located at http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-908.pdf
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/06/28/supreme
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SCOTUS_SCHOOLS_RACE?SITE=LABAT&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-06-28-10-41-05
Author: TRW