Ibid. Other amici dispute these findings. The District Court found that Jefferson County had asserted a compelling interest in maintaining racially diverse schools, and that the assignment plan was (in all relevant respects) narrowly tailored to serve that compelling interest. In the administration of public schools by the state and local authorities it is permissible to consider the racial makeup of schools and to adopt general policies to encourage a diverse student body, one aspect of which is its racial composition. Yet the Seattle public schools have not shown that they were ever segregated by law, and were not subject to court-ordered desegregation decrees. Preliminary Challenges, 1956 to 1969, Section 3. Third, the manner in which the school boards developed these plans itself reflects narrow tailoring. Each plan was devised to overcome a history of segregated public schools. 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. Any other approach would freeze the status quo that is the very target of all desegregation processes.). [Footnote 16]. 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. The Court explained that [c]ontext matters in applying strict scrutiny, and repeatedly noted that it was addressing the use of race in the context of higher education. Grutter, supra, at 327, 328, 334. See Brief of the States of New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, the District of Columbia, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondents at 11. The Seattle district, which has never operated legally segregated schools or been subject to court-ordered desegregation, classified children as white or nonwhite, and used the racial classifications as a tiebreaker to allocate slots in particular high schools. These plans classify individuals by race and allocate benefits and burdens on that basis; and as a result, they are to be subjected to strict scrutiny. For example, one study documented that black and white students in desegregated schools are less racially prejudiced than those in segregated schools, and that interracial contact in desegregated schools leads to an increase in interracial sociability and friendship. Hallinan 745. Governmental classifications that command people to march in different directions based on racial typologies can cause a new divisiveness. The plurality refers to no case in support of its demand. 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. The NAACPs First Legal Challenge and Seattles Response, 1969 to 1977. 05915, at 22. 6. . See, e.g., App. Justice Breyer also tries to downplay the impact of the racial assignments by stating that in Seattle students can decide voluntarily to transfer to a preferred district high school (without any consideration of race-conscious criteria). Post, at 46. Kennedy's opinion also emphasized the risks posed by allowing for the proliferation of mechanically imposed individual race classifications of its citizens. And if Seattle School Dist. It is no answer to say that these cases can be distinguished from Brown because Brown involved invidious racial classifications whereas the racial classifications here are benign. No. See also R. Fischer, The Segregation Struggle in Louisiana 186277, p. 51 (1974) (describing the use of race-conscious remedies); Harlan, Desegregation in New Orleans Public Schools During Reconstruction, 67 Am. http: //www.seattleschools.org/area/siso/disprof/2005/DP05 all.pdf. at 17. Justice Stevenss reliance on School Comm. So long as the plan is narrowly tailored, meaning that it uses the least restrictive means to obtain the benefits that flow from diversity and implements a plan that does not result in an impermissible quota, school districts can have some say in the racial make-up of their student body. In particular, they use race-conscious criteria only to mark the outer bounds of broad population-related ranges. In the Justice's 77-page written opinion he called the ruling a "radical" step away from established law that would take from communities a critical tool used for many years in the prevention of resegregation. School authorities have the primary responsibility for elucidating, assessing, and solving these problems; courts will have to consider whether the action of school authorities constitutes good faith implementation of the governing constitutional principles). As the Court recently reaffirmed, racial classifications are simply too pernicious to permit any but the most exact connection between justification and classification. Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 244, 270 (2003) (quoting Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U. S. 448, 537 (1980) (Stevens, J., dissenting); brackets omitted). It reported that most districts92 of them, in factadopted desegregation policies that combined two or more highly race-conscious strategies, for example, rezoning or pairing. Second, Seattle School Dist. Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U. S. 81, 100 (1943) ([R]acial discriminations are in most circumstances irrelevant and therefore prohibited). At most, those statistics show a national trend toward classroom racial imbalance. If those students were considered for a whole range of their talents and school needs with race as just one consideration, Grutter would have some application. In 2004, he ruled the same for the traditional schools, but allowed the regular public schools to use race as the admission requirement. Both Grutter and Gratz applied a strict scrutiny analysis and affirmed that achieving a diverse student body is a compelling state interest in higher education. Primary and secondary schools are where the education of this Nations children begins, where each of us begins to absorb those values we carry with us to the end of our days. 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. Family Law Center Abstract In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. See Wygant v. Jackson Bd. And it thereby required, for example, all fourth grade students from the previously black and previously white schools first to attend together what would now be a mixed fourth grade at one of the school buildings and then the next year to attend what would now be a mixed fifth grade at the other school building. of Oral Arg. A mixture? As Jefferson County explains, the racial guidelines have minimal impact in this process, because they mostly influence student assignment in subtle and indirect ways. Brief for Respondents in No. The en banc panel came to the opposite conclusion and upheld the tiebreaker. 2d 1267 (1996). Third, there is a democratic element: an interest in producing an educational environment that reflects the pluralistic society in which our children will live. It does have a duty to provide all children with equal opportunities. Four basic considerations have led me to this view. And what of the long history and moral vision that the Fourteenth Amendment itself embodies? And we have understood that the Constitution permits local communities to adopt desegregation plans even where it does not require them to do so. Brief for Petitioner at 3536. Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 920 (1995), and I shall subject the tailoring of their plans to rigorous judicial review. Grutter, 539 U. S., at 388 (Kennedy, J., dissenting). D (collecting citations of state and federal cases [w]hich [e]nunciate the [p]rinciple that [s]tate [l]aws [p]roviding for [r]acial [s]egregation in the [p]ublic [s]chools do not [c]onflict with the Fourteenth Amendment). of Ed. . In making an assignment to a particular high school, the district would give first preference to a student with a sibling already at the school. The District then petitioned for an en banc ruling by a panel of 11 Ninth Circuit judges. The segregationists in Brown embraced the arguments the Court endorsed in Plessy. 05908, at 910, 47; App. The Current Plan: Project Renaissance Modified, 1996 to 2003. ", 488 U.S., at 519, 109 S. Ct. 706, 102 L. Ed. in No. org/area/equityandrace/whiteprivilegeconference.xml. 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. Justice Breyers dissent also asserts that these cases are controlled by Grutter, claiming that the existence of a compelling interest in these cases follows a fortiori from Grutter, post, at 41, 6466, and accusing us of tacitly overruling that case, see post, at 6466. See Bustop, Inc. v. Los Angeles Bd. Id., at 162a163a. Moreover, giving some degree of weight to a local school boards knowledge, expertise, and concerns in these particular matters is not inconsistent with rigorous judicial scrutiny. That case involves the original Seattle Plan, a more heavily race-conscious predecessor of the very plan now before us. 67759, p.11 (It is implicit in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U. S. 483, that color or race is a constitutionally impermissible standard for the assignment of school children to public schools. After decades of vibrant life, they would all, under the pluralitys logic, be written out of the law. The plans initial busing requirements were extensive, involving the busing of 23,000 students and a transportation fleet that had to operate from early in the morning until late in the evening. For typical students, the plan meant busing for several years (several more years for typical black students than for typical white students). Justice Anthony Kennedy did not join the rest of the opinion by the Chief Justice, therefore, those parts of the opinion did not command a majority. App. But unlike the plurality, such a judge would also be aware that a legislature or school administrators, ultimately accountable to the electorate, could nonetheless properly conclude that a racial classification sometimes serves a purpose important enough to overcome the risks they mention, for example, helping to end racial isolation or to achieve a diverse student body in public schools. For decades now, these school boards have considered and adopted and revised assignment plans that sought to rely less upon race, to emphasize greater student choice, and to improve the conditions of all schools for all students, no matter the color of their skin, no matter where they happen to reside. For this purpose, administrators cataloged the racial makeup of each neighborhood housing block. 05908, p. 42. See, e.g., Regents of Univ. As to tracking enrollments, performance and other statistics by race, tracking reveals the problem; it does not cure it. The District Court also adopted a complex desegregation plan designed to achieve the orders targets. Notwithstanding these concerns, allocation of benefits and burdens through individual racial classifications was found sometimes permissible in the context of remedies for de jure wrong. "[25] Allowing racial balancing as a compelling end in itself would "effectively assur[e] that race will always be relevant in American life, and that the 'ultimate goal' of 'eliminating entirely from governmental decisionmaking such irrelevant factors as a human being's race' will never be achieved. See Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. The districts offer no evidence that the level of racial diversity necessary to achieve the asserted educational benefits happens to coincide with the racial demographics of the respective school districtsor rather the white/nonwhite or black/other balance of the districts, since that is the only diversity addressed by the plans. denied, 389 U. S. 847 (1967); Springfield School Comm. "[31] He goes on to explain that he is skeptical that school boards will always have such good intentions in their race-based decisionmaking, for, as Madison said, "if men were angels, no government would be necessary.". Public Schools, 416 F.3d 513 (2005); Memorandum from Stephen W. Daeschner, Superintendent, to the Board of Education, Jefferson Cty. The Current Plan, 1999 to the Present. Second, a school cannot remedy racial imbalance in the same way that it can remedy segregation. in No. Id., at 338, 123 S. Ct. 2325, 156 L. Ed. Parents of students denied assignment to particular schools under these plans solely because of their race brought suit, contending that allocating children to different public schools on the basis of race violated the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection. McDonald v. Chicago 17, 48 (1978). Courts are not alone in accepting as constitutionally valid the legal principle that Swann enunciatedi.e., that the government may voluntarily adopt race-conscious measures to improve conditions of race even when it is not under a constitutional obligation to do so. The school district met its percentage goals by assigning to the new mixed school an appropriate number of black housing blocks and white housing blocks. See Part V, supra, at 5763. Indeed, the very school districts that once spurned integration now strive for it. 2841. in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1953, No. Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S. 95, 109 (1983). (quoting Wygant v. Jackson Bd. Courts even began to tamp down on local, voluntary busing programs. See, e.g., Eisenberg v. Montgomery Cty. School districts can seek to reach Browns objective of equal educational opportunity. Justice Breyer speaks of bringing the races together (putting aside the purely black-and-white nature of the plans), as the justification for excluding individuals on the basis of their race. Post, at 22. While diversity may lend to a robust education, parents and students have their own opinions on what factors promote the best education possible. After preliminary rulings and an eventual victory for the plaintiffs in the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the District Court in July 1975 entered an order requiring desegregation. By limiting the School Districts use of race, it will be more difficult for it to cure these defects. in No. Pp. See generally R. Sears, A Utopian Experiment in Kentucky: Integration and Social Equality at Berea, 18661904 (1996) (describing federal funding, through the Freedmans Bureau, of race-conscious school integration programs). 17 (1981) (hereinafter Hanawalt); Taylor, The Civil Rights Movement in the American West: Black Protest in Seattle, 19601970, 80 J. Negro Hist. No. The fact that many such plans have used explicitly racial criteria suggests that such criteria have an important, sometimes necessary, role to play. of Ed., 402 U. S. 1, 16 (1971). To do this as an educational policy is within the broad discretionary powers of school authorities. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. And what has happened to Swann? 2005). See The Federalist No. Studies suggest that children taken from those schools and placed in integrated settings often show positive academic gains. Brief for Petitioner at 38. 05915, 416 F.3d 513, reversed and remanded. . 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. Public Schools, 197 F.3d 123, 133 (CA4 1999); Tuttle v. Arlington Cty. Is Seattle free on remand to say that its schools were de jure segregated, just as in 1956 a memo for the School Board admitted? The Department of Education has characterized this as a compelling interest in regulations and various other statements. History should teach greater humility. The same must be said for the controlling opinion in Grutter. 05-915 v. JEFFERSON COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION et al. [Footnote 1]. [Footnote 3]. The plurality's decision should not be read so broadly that it prevents the government from engaging in any race-conscious action. 2434. . b. explicitly overturned the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. The degree of heterogeneity within these districts is immediately apparent. 90a92a. The 2007 Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 458 U. S., at 472, n. 15. Even today, two of our wisest federal judges have rejected such a wooden reading of the Equal Protection Clause in the context of school integration. Regardless of the constitutional validity of such remediation, see Croson, supra, at 524525 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment), it does not apply here. At a particular school either whites or non-whites could be favored for admission depending on which race would bring the racial balance closer to the goal. Roberts provides the following string citation: Parents Involved in Cmty. See Parts IA and IB, supra, at 618. 2d 834 (WD Ky. 2004); McFarland v. Jefferson Cty. Seattle argues that Parents Involved lacks standing because none of its current members can claim an imminent injury. Cf. The student could then choose among those schools, indicating a first choice, and other choices the student found acceptable. See id., at 152 (opinion of Stewart, J.). No. 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 id., at 711. of Ed., 439 U. S. 1380, 1383 (1978) (opinion in chambers), making clear that he too believed that Swanns statement reflected settled law: While I have the gravest doubts that [a state supreme court] was required by the United States Constitution to take the [desegregation] action that it has taken in this case, I have very little doubt that it was permitted by that Constitution to take such action. (Emphasis in original.). No. The majority acknowledges that in prior cases this Court has recognized at least two interests as compelling: an interest in remedying the effects of past intentional discrimination, and an interest in diversity in higher education. Ante, at 12, 13. Thomas, J., filed a concurring opinion. 1011. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 637 (1943) (The Fourteenth Amendment protects the citizen against the State itself and all of its creaturesBoards of Education not excepted). Contrary to the dissents rhetoric, neither of these school districts is threatened with resegregation, and neither is constitutionally compelled or permitted to undertake race-based remediation. in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1952, No. 1, 458 U. S. 457, 461466 (1982). Consequently, regardless of the perceived negative effects of racial imbalance, I will not defer to legislative majorities where the Constitution forbids it. Numerous state and federal courts explicitly relied upon Swanns guidance for decades to follow. Furthermore, for a government unit to remedy past discrimination for which it was responsible, the Court has required it to demonstrate a strong basis in evidence for its conclusion that remedial action was necessary. Croson, 488 U. S., at 500 (quoting Wygant, supra, at 277 (plurality opinion)). If this interest justifies race-conscious measures today, then logically it will justify race-conscious measures forever. . The last half-century has witnessed great strides toward racial equality, but we have not yet realized the promise of Brown. Any use of race to distinguish one person from another threatens to stigmatize individuals and incite hostility. In the real world, it is regrettable to say, it cannot be a universal constitutional principle. 1977 (1961) (President Kennedy); Exec. Chief Justice Roberts announced the judgment of the Court, and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II, IIIA, and IIIC, and an opinion with respect to Parts IIIB and IV, in which Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito join. Approximately 34 percent of the districts 97,000 students are black; most of the remaining 66 percent are white. 458 U. S., at 472, n.15. of Ed., 395 U. S. 225, 232 (1969) (approving a lower court desegregation order that provided that the [school] board must move toward a goal under which in each school the ratio of white to Negro faculty members is substantially the same as it is throughout the system, and immediately requiring [t]he ratio of Negro to white teachers in each school to be equal to the ratio of Negro to white teachers in the system as a whole). different school zones are paired together and, as a result, all students at a certain grade level attend school in the same school building). 1 ET AL. As I have pointed out, supra, at 4, de facto resegregation is on the rise. Roberts cites Adarand, supra, at 227, 115 S. Ct. 2097, 132 L. Ed. 05915, at 37 (Each [Jefferson County] school has a designated geographic attendance area, which is called the resides area of the school[, and each] such school is the resides school for those students whose parents or guardians residence address is within the schools geographic attendance area); id., at 82 (All elementary students shall be assigned to the school which serves the area in which they reside); and Brief for Respondents in No. See post, at 79, 23. That determination typically will not be nearly as difficult as the dissent makes it seem. See also Quillian & Campbell 541. If the need for the racial classifications embraced by the school districts is unclear, even on the districts own terms, the costs are undeniable.

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