The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decisions in cases involving school districts in Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky, seem to indicate that the United States is moving away from diversity in its public schools. The Seattle case, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. Although no such distinction is apparent in the Fourteenth Amendment, the dissent would constitutionalize todays faddish social theories that embrace that distinction. 05915, p. 97. IV); 34 CFR 280.2, 280.4 (2006) (implementing regulations). Petitioner Parents Involved in Community Schools objected to Seattles most recent plan under the State and Federal Constitutions. The degree of heterogeneity within these districts is immediately apparent. The following notice, published in a Louisville newspaper in 1976, gives a sense of how the districts race-based busing plan operated in practice: Louisville Courier Journal, June 18, 1976 (reproduced in J. Wilkinson, From Brown to Bakke: The Supreme Court and School Integration 19541978, p. 176 (1979)). The Bible would be known in the legal community as the first Mr. Justice Harlans dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, 552 (1896). 6th ed. That policy was necessary because of numerous incidents of racial violence. Id., at 502; id., at 532534 (Thomas, J., dissenting). This Court has made many decisions of widespread effect; none would affect more people more directly in more fundamental interests and, in fact, cause more chaos in local government than a reversal of the decision in this case). Many parents, white and black alike, want their children to attend schools with children of different races. They were further persuaded that these plans differed from other race-based programs this Court has considered because they are certainly more benign than laws that favor or disfavor one race, segregate by race, or create quotas for or against a racial group, Comfort, 418 F.3d, at 28 (Boudin, C.J., concurring), and they are far from the original evils at which the Fourteenth Amendment was addressed, id., at 29; 426 F.3d, at 1195 (Kozinski, J., concurring). In the case Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. Our established strict scrutiny test for racial classifications, however, insists on detailed examination, both as to ends and as to means. Adarand, supra, at 236 (emphasis added). See Brief for Respondent at 13. Const., Amdt. B1, B5. They constitute but one part of plans that depend primarily upon other, nonracial elements. A non-profit group, Parents Involved in Community Schools, sued the District, arguing that the racial tiebreaker violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Washington state law. of Oral Arg. 16, 18. The plurality says that cases such as Swann and the others I have described all were decided before this Court definitively determined that all racial classifications . He also chastises Justice Breyer for saying that the Court silently overruled Grutter with this case and that the method that Breyer applies to this case is that of "the ends justify the means". Pp. Bd. in No. And it is a label that an individual is powerless to change. 2002). The dissent claims that the law requires application here of a standard of review that is not strict in the traditional sense of that word. Post, at 36. See Brief for Petitioner at 4647. Although the matter was the subject of disagreement on the Court, see id., at 346347 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part); id., at 382383 (Rehnquist, C.J., dissenting); id., at 388392 (Kennedy, J., dissenting), the majority concluded that the law school did not count back from its applicant pool to arrive at the meaningful number it regarded as necessary to diversify its student body. How do the remedial interests here differ in kind from those at issue in the voluntary desegregation efforts that Attorney General Kennedy many years ago described in his letter to the President? Brief for Respondents in No. Reg. It is not surprising to find a large number of different desegregation strategies in a sample with this much variation. Welch 23 (footnotes omitted). Mr. Korrell. Sometimes Members of this Court have disagreed about the degree of leniency that the Clause affords to programs designed to include. 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). Once Jefferson County achieved unitary status, it had remedied the constitutional wrong that allowed race-based assignments. Second, broad-range limits on voluntary school choice plans are less burdensome, and hence more narrowly tailored, see Grutter, supra, at 341, than other race-conscious restrictions this Court has previously approved. Neither school district has made any such specific findings. in No. 1 that the racial classifications used by school districts in Seattle and Louisville to create diverse schools were unconstitutional. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U. S. 717, 740741, and n.19 (1974). Finally, the dissent asserts a democratic element to the integration interest. . Justice Breyer questioned the utility "of looking simply to whether earlier school segregation was de jure or de facto in order to draw firm lines separating the constitutionally permissible from the constitutionally forbidden use of 'race-conscious' criteria. It also cited to Justice Powells opinion in Bakke, approving of the limited use of race-conscious criteria in a university-admissions affirmative action case. See post, at 5, 89, 18, 23. 618206(f)(1), as amended 2007 Ark. Today, the Court holds that state entities may not experiment with race-based means to achieve ends they deem socially desirable. 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. 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. Parents Involved . The Current Lawsuit, 2003 to the Present. To invalidate the plans under review is to threaten the promise of Brown. 1. Thus about 2,000 students out of a total district population of about 60,000 students were involved in one or the other transfer program. Narrow tailoring requires serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives, id., at 339, and yet in Seattle several alternative assignment plansmany of which would not have used express racial classificationswere rejected with little or no consideration. Post, at 41. You can explore additional available newsletters here. (citing Brief for Respondents, O.T. 1984, No. Context matters when reviewing race-based governmental action under the Equal Protection Clause. App. [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). Meredith brought suit in the Western District of Kentucky, alleging violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Other studies have found that both black and white students who attend integrated schools are more likely to work in desegregated companies after graduation than students who attended racially isolated schools. No. remanded for further proceedings. Ante, at 6; ante, at 1516 (opinion of the Court). As I explained in Grutter, only those measures the State must take to provide a bulwark against anarchy or to prevent violence and a governments effort to remedy past discrimination for which it is responsible constitute compelling interests. Thus, the opinions reasoning is long. Consequently, regardless of the perceived negative effects of racial imbalance, I will not defer to legislative majorities where the Constitution forbids it. Under no fair reading, though, can the majority opinion in Gratz be cited as authority to sustain the racial classifications under consideration here. Public Schools, 197 F.3d 123, 133 (CA4 1999); Tuttle v. Arlington Cty. The board opposed dissolution, arguing that the old dual system had left a demographic imbalance that prevent[ed] dissolution. In 2000, after reviewing the present plan, the District Court dissolved the 1975 order. Justice Breyers dissent next relies heavily on dicta from Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. With respect to avoiding racial isolation, Kennedy wrote, "A compelling interest exists in avoiding racial isolation, an interest that a school district, in its discretion and expertise, may choose to pursue. Pp. No. Executive and legislative branches, which for generations now have considered these types of policies and procedures, should be permitted to employ them with candor and with confidence that a constitutional violation does not occur whenever a decisionmaker considers the impact a given approach might have on students of different races. to achieve its own ends; and thus it fails to pass strict scrutiny. Ante, at 28. While the County had been under a desegregation order from 1975 to 2000, this order had been dissolved when a federal judge found that it had largely solved the problem of segregated schools. The Equal Protection Clause, ratified following the Civil War, has always distinguished in practice between state action that excludes and thereby subordinates racial minorities and state action that seeks to bring together people of all races. 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. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the District had a compelling state interest in achieving the benefits of racial diversity and that its plan was narrowly tailored. [Footnote 8]. Section 4. See, e.g., 20 U. S. C. 6311(b)(2)(C)(v) (No Child Left Behind Act); 1067 et seq. The board began to implement the Seattle Plan in 1978. And my view was the rallying cry for the lawyers who litigated Brown. 1725. ); internal quotation marks omitted). See Sheff v. ONeill, 238 Conn. 1, 678 A. To make race matter now so that it might not matter later may entrench the very prejudices we seek to overcome. The school boards widespread consultation, their experimentation with numerous other plans, indeed, the 40-year history that Part I sets forth, make clear that plans that are less explicitly race-based are unlikely to achieve the boards compelling objectives. To do so provides further reason to believe that the pluralitys approach is legally unsound. of Ed., Harris, and Bustop made one thing clear: significant as the difference between de jure and de facto segregation may be to the question of what a school district must do, that distinction is not germane to the question of what a school district may do. In an effort to achieve its desired racial balance in its popular high schools, the Seattle school How could the plurality adopt a constitutional standard that would hold unconstitutional large numbers of race-conscious integration plans adopted by numerous school boards over the past 50 years while remaining true to this Courts desegregation precedent? http://reportcard. Preliminary Challenges, 1956 to 1969. That decision not only expressed our appraisal of the merits of the appeal, but it constitutes a precedent that the Court overrules today. Before the merits of the case can be addressed, the Court first has to address the Districts jurisdictional challenge that no case or controversy exists within the Constitutional sense of those terms. Although all governmental uses of race 2d 158. Petitioners, an organization of Seattle parents (Parents Involved) and the mother of a Jefferson County student (Joshua), whose children were or could be assigned under the foregoing plans, filed these suits contending, inter alia, that allocating children to different public schools based solely on their race violates the Fourteenth Amendments equal protection guarantee. See, e.g., Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peńa, 515 U. S. 200, 243, 248, n.6 (1995) (Stevens, J., dissenting); Wygant v. Jackson Bd. See, e.g., Springfield School Comm. The last half-century has witnessed great strides toward racial equality, but we have not yet realized the promise of Brown. The point of the narrow tailoring analysis in which the Grutter Court engaged was to ensure that the use of racial classifications was indeed part of a broader assessment of diversity, and not simply an effort to achieve racial balance, which the Court explained would be patently unconstitutional. Id., at 330. J.) Consequently, the demographics of a neighborhood school would also be the consequence of those individual choices. This Court then held that the initiativewhich would have prevented the Seattle Plan from taking effectviolated the Fourteenth Amendment. 1995). See Grutter, 539 U.S. at 328. See post, at 37. Justice Kennedys second concern is directly related to the merits of Seattles plan: Why does Seattles plan group Asian-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Native-Americans, and African-Americans together, treating all as similar minorities? 2d 304: "[The law school's] policy makes clear there are many possible bases for diversity admissions, and provides examples of admittees who have lived or traveled widely abroad, are fluent in several languages, have overcome personal adversity and family hardship, have exceptional records of extensive community service, and have had successful careers in other fields." The conclusions he has set forth in Part IIIA of the Courts opinion are correct, in my view, because the compelling interests implicated in the cases before us are distinct from the interests the Court has recognized in remedying the effects of past intentional discrimination and in increasing diversity in higher education. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 05915, at 5 (There are no selection criteria for admission to [an elementary school students] resides school, except attainment of the appropriate age and completion of the previous grade), with App. Resort to the record, including the parties Stipulation of Facts, further confuses the matter. Subsequent to the District Courts dissolution of the desegregation order (in 2000) the board simply continued to implement its 1996 plan as modified to reflect the courts magnet school determination. ORAL ARGUMENT OF HARRY J.F. Card, online at http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/summary.aspx?schoolId= See ante, at 1112 (Thomas, J., concurring); ante, at 3, 17 (opinion of Kennedy, J.). In Board of Ed. Ante, at 67. See Brief Amicus Curiae of the Black Womens Lawyers Association of Greater Chicago, Inc. in Support of Respondents at 16. Order No. See Appendix A, infra. Even if current social theories favor classroom racial engineering as necessary to solve the problems at hand, post, at 21, the Constitution enshrines principles independent of social theories. Accord, post, at 48 ([L]ocal 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); post, at 66 ([W]hat of respect for democratic local decisionmaking by States and school boards?); ibid. For the 20002001 school year, five of these schools were oversubscribedBallard, Nathan Hale, Roosevelt, Garfield, and Franklinso much so that 82 percent of incoming ninth graders ranked one of these schools as their first choice. Classifying and assigning schoolchildren according to a binary conception of race is an extreme approach in light of our precedents and our Nations history of using race in public schools, and requires more than such an amorphous end to justify it. The OCR and the school board entered into a formal settlement agreement. The plurality, by contrast, does not acknowledge that the school districts have identified a compelling interest here. Nothing but an interest in classroom aesthetics and a hypersensitivity to elite sensibilities justifies the school districts racial balancing programs. Here Roberts provides the following string citation: quoting Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244, 270, 123 S. Ct. 2411, 156 L. Ed. See Tr. Connecticut law requires each school district to submit racial group population figures to the State Board of Education. But under the Seattle plan, a school with 50 percent Asian-American students and 50 percent white students but no African-American, Native-American, or Latino students would qualify as balanced, while a school with 30 percent Asian-American, 25 percent African-American, 25 percent Latino, and 20 percent white students would not. The Chief Justice delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II, IIIA, and IIIC, concluding: 1. 05915, 416 F.3d 513, reversed and remanded. Diversity, depending on its meaning and definition, is a compelling educational goal a school district may pursue. 3941, 8283. ), appeal dismd for want of a substantial federal question, 484 U. S. 804 (1987). Even supposing it mattered to the constitutional analysis, the race-based student assignment programs before us are not as benign as the dissent believes. See ante, at 31-32, n.16. This sometimes leads to a disparity in resources and academic achievement between school districts. And, in any event, the histories of Seattle and Louisville make clear that this distinctionbetween court-ordered and voluntary desegregationseeks a line that sensibly cannot be drawn. See Johnson v. California, 543 U. S. 499, 505506 (2005); ante, at 11. In Louisville, a federal court entered a remedial decree. 26. With this explanation I concur in the judgment of the Court. are classified as "Other". The dissent finds that the school districts have identified a compelling interest in increasing diversity, including for the purpose of avoiding racial isolation. The Seattle Plan: Mandatory Busing, 1978 to 1988. Written and curated by real attorneys at Quimbee. As well, because the racial tiebreaker is only used when more students apply to a certain school than there are spots, schools such as Ranier and Clevelandwhich have only ten percent of white students and are not popular choices remain racially imbalanced. Seattle Public Schools Transportation Service Standards. For the purpose of this section, racial imbalance shall be deemed to exist when the per cent of nonwhite students in any public school is in excess of fifty per cent of the total number of students in such school. 352 Mass., at 695, 227 N.E. 2d, at 731. on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit. Twenty-one elementary schools were between roughly 90% and 100% white. . It was not the inequality of the facilities but the fact of legally separating children based on race on which the Court relied to find a constitutional violation in that case. Jefferson County also argues that it would be incongruous to hold that what was constitutionally required of it one dayrace-based assignments pursuant to the desegregation decreecan be constitutionally prohibited the next. App. A further 16% were assigned to a school they had not listed. And stubborn facts of history linger and persist. 503 U. S., at 495. Are they to draw numbers out of thin air? Jefferson County has articulated a similar goal, phrasing its interest in terms of educating its students in a racially integrated environment. App. The histories also make clear the futility of looking simply to whether earlier school segregation was de jure or de facto in order to draw firm lines separating the constitutionally permissible from the constitutionally forbidden use of race-conscious criteria. The Court reasoned that the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause prohibited schools from voluntarily using racial classifications to achieve integration. Likewise, a district may consider it a compelling interest to achieve a diverse student population. Thus, the programs are subject to the general rule that government race-based decisionmaking is unconstitutional. [6] All of the dissenting Justices acknowledged that "the Constitution does not impose a duty to desegregate upon districts" if they have not practiced racial discrimination. 4 Memorandum Opinion and Order in Haycraft v. Board of Ed. 05908, at 7. Ante, at 1718. 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). Whether or not the Court chooses to afford similar deference to public secondary schools will shape the control school districts have over their own policies. Id. Public School Dist., p.2 (Aug. 6, 1996) (1996 Memorandum). 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). Kennedy's opinion also emphasized the risks posed by allowing for the proliferation of mechanically imposed individual race classifications of its citizens. The plan paired (or triaded) imbalanced black schools with imbalanced white schools. 11-345 In the Supreme Court of the United States ABIGAIL NOEL FISHER, PETITIONER . 539 U. S., at 316, 335336. 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 448 U. S., at 539. If the Court defers to the district, this will reaffirm local autonomy and give districts broad discretion to develop educational policy. Justice Breyer makes much of the fact that in 1978 Seattle settled an NAACP complaint alleging illegal segregation with the federal Office for Civil Rights (OCR). See 539 U. S., at 320. At the same time, it is urged that these laws are valid as a matter of constitutionally permissible social experimentation by the States. 2d 750 (opinion of Powell, J. This refers back to a time when public schools were highly segregated, often as a result of legal or administrative policies that facilitated racial segregation in public schools. The dissent refers repeatedly and reverently to integration. However, outside of the context of remediation for past de jure segregation, integration is simply racial balancing. (explaining that the Constitution grants local school districts a significant degree of leeway). in No. Jefferson County has failed to present any evidence that it considered alternatives, even though the district already claims that its goals are achieved primarily through means other than the racial classifications. In Seattle School Dist. 44, p.6 (200304 Jefferson County Public Schools Elementary Student Assignment Application, Section B) (Assignment is made to a school for Primary 1 (Kindergarten) through Grade Five as long as racial guidelines are maintained. Even apart from Grutter, five Members of this Court agree that avoiding racial isolation and achiev[ing] a diverse student population remain today compelling interests. Fifty-three of the 125 studied districts used transfers as a component of their plans. It used explicitly racial criteria in making these assignments (i.e., it deliberately assigned to the new middle schools black students, not white students, from the black schools and white students, not black students, from the white schools). 1, 458 U. S. 457, 461466 (1982). 05915, pp. Id. The upshot is that the cases to which the plurality refers, though all applying strict scrutiny, do not treat exclusive and inclusive uses the same. It was not long ago that people of different races drank from separate fountains, rode on separate buses, and studied in separate schools. The districts past and current plans are not unique. of Springfield v. Board of Ed., 362 Mass. PICS contends that while in Grutter the Court recognized diversity in a holistic sense as a compelling interest, it specifically held that mere racial diversity is not a compelling government interest. The minimal effect these classifications have on student assignments, however, suggests that other means would be effective. As a result, it reverses course and reaches the wrong conclusion. And even if the determination is difficult, it is one the dissent acknowledges must be made to determine what remedies school districts are required to adopt. First, Kennedy harshly faults the dissent for consciously ignoring the difference between de jure and de facto segregation. Both districts sought greater racial integration for educational and democratic, as well as for remedial, reasons. As these programs demonstrate, every time the government uses racial criteria to bring the races together, post, at 29, someone gets excluded, and the person excluded suffers an injury solely because of his or her race. In a searing dissent to the sharply divided 5-4 decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. On the other hand race-conscious measures that do not rely on differential treatment based on individual classifications present these problems to a lesser degree. In 1999, several parents brought a lawsuit in federal court attacking the plans use of racial guidelines at one of the districts magnet schools. Pp.