In that case, I stressed the importance of confining a remedy for past wrongdoing to the members of the injured class. A federal District Court dismissed the suit, upholding the tiebreaker. Although much depends on the outcome, the rationale of the Court is equally important in this case and to the future policy of public schools. 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). The highest white student population would have been 64 percent, which PICS contends still contains a significant portion of minority students. Compare Brief for Appellees in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1952, No. 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. App. in No. Thus, the programs are subject to the general rule that government race-based decisionmaking is unconstitutional. The Court's ruling in the "Parents Involved in Community Schools" v. "Seattle School District No. Similarly, of the 1,461 black students enrolled in the 12 senior high schools in Seattle, 1,151 (or 78.8%) attended 3 senior high schools, and 900 (61.6%) attended a single school, Garfield. 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. 1996). 2, pp. No. That is particularly true given that, when Swann was decided, this Court had not yet confirmed that strict scrutiny applies to racial classifications like those before us. We granted certiorari. These are not affirmative action plans, and hence individualized scrutiny is simply beside the point. Narrow tailoring requires serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives, Grutter, supra, 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. 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. At that time, about 20% or 12,000 of the districts students were black. Changes in the Percentage of White Students in Schools Attended by the Average Black Student by State, 19702003 (includes States with 5% or greater enrollment of black students in 1970 and 1980), % White Students in School Perhaps the best example is provided by our approval of the decision of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in 1967 upholding a state statute mandating racial integration in that States school system. ORAL ARGUMENT OF HARRY J.F. Compare ante, at 39 (It was not the inequality of the facilities but the fact of legally separating children on the basis of race on which the Court relied to find a constitutional violation in 1954), with Juris. Similarly, Jefferson County admits that its use of racial classifications has had a minimal effect, and claims only that its guidelines provide a firm definition of the goal of racially integrated schools, thereby providing administrators with authority to collaborate with principals and staff to maintain schools within the desired range. The first tiebreaker selects for admission students who have a sibling currently enrolled in the chosen school. 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. 17, 48 (1978). [29] The districts have also failed to show that they considered methods other than explicit racial classifications to achieve their stated goals. See 39 Ill. 2d, at 599600, 237 N.E. 2d, at 502 (Too, the United States Supreme Court on January 15, 1968, dismissed an appeal in School Committee of Boston v. Board of Education, (Mass. Richmond v. J. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time . Roberts cites Adarand, supra, at 227, 115 S. Ct. 2097, 132 L. Ed. The statistics cited in Appendix A to the dissent are not to the contrary. As the Court explains, 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. Ante, at 1516; see also Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae in No. Written by: Cecelia Sander & Breanne Atzert, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Seattle Public Schools Transportation Service Standards, Full History of Grutter v. Bollinger & Gratz v. Bollinger, Standard Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Affirmative Action, Parents Involved in Community Schools Website, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. It is not simply one factor weighed with others in reaching a decision, as in Grutter; it is the factor. Similarly, Jefferson Countys expert referred to the importance of having at least 20 percent minority group representation for the group to be visible enough to make a difference, and noted that small isolated minority groups in a school are not likely to have a strong effect on the overall school. App. There are again studies that offer contrary conclusions. Hampton, 102 F.Supp. Each plan is the product of a process that has sought to enhance student choice, while diminishing the need for mandatory busing. Until today, this Court understood the Constitution as affording the people, acting through their elected representatives, freedom to select the use of race-conscious criteria from among their available options. The context here is one of racial limits that seek, not to keep the races apart, but to bring them together. The two children were denied their first, second, and third choice schools, and consequently assigned to Ingraham High School. Id., at 39a. 3. The Seattle School district and Jefferson County district have applications that require a parent to state what the race of his or her child is. 05908, pp. Pp. 05915, at 159, 147. Section 7. The context here does not involve admission by merit; a childs academic, artistic, and athletic merits are not at all relevant to the childs placement. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U. S. 717, 740741, and n.19 (1974). ?). 05908, p.84a; Brief for Respondents in No. Is racial diversity a compelling interest that can justify the use of race in selecting students for admission to public high schools? More recently, however, progress has stalled. This fundamental principle goes back, in this context, to Brown itself. 4, pp. Yet the school district does not explain how, in the context of its diverse student population, a blunt distinction between white and non-white furthers these goals. It also determined that the actual case or controversy requirement was met despite the School Districts discontinuation of the use of race in high school admissions. 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. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. The Court need not resolve the parties dispute over whether racial diversity in schools has a marked impact on test scores and other objective yardsticks or achieves intangible socialization benefits because it is clear that the racial classifications at issue are not narrowly tailored to the asserted goal. The dissents permissive strict scrutiny (which bears more than a passing resemblance to rational-basis review) could invite widespread governmental deployment of racial classifications. Parents Involved . The issue here is whether the constitution permits, rather than prohibits, voluntary State action aimed toward reducing and eventually eliminating de facto school segregation. See also Freeman, supra, at 495496; Dowell, 498 U. S., at 248; Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U. S. 717, 746 (1974). Level=School&orgLinkId=1061&yrs=; http://reportcard. Specifically, Kennedy finds that the districts could have achieved the same goal through less racially charged means. The reason for this omission is clear enough, since the case did not involve any voluntary means adopted by a school district. Or is it that a prior federal court had not adjudicated the matter? See supra, at 4648. Id. 2. United States v. Fordice, 505 U. S. 717, 745 (1992) (Thomas, J., concurring). Jefferson County accordingly does not rely upon an interest in remedying the effects of past intentional discrimination in defending its present use of race in assigning students. And some have concluded that there are no demonstrable educational benefits. A Connecticut statute states that its student choice program will seek to preserve racial and ethnic balance. Conn. Gen. Stat. Pp. See Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 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. 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. See Juris. have recognized that voluntary programs of local school authorities designed to alleviate de facto segregation and racial imbalance in the schools are not constitutionally forbidden. Tometz v. Board of Ed., Waukegan School Dist. See, e.g., Freeman, supra, at 494. That is why the Equal Protection Clause outlaws invidious discrimination, but does not similarly forbid all use of race-conscious criteria. Finally, I recognize that the Court seeks to distinguish Grutter from these cases by claiming that Grutter arose in the context of higher education. Ante, at 16. But to this the replication must be: Even so, measures other than differential treatment based on racial typing of individuals first must be exhausted. Johnson v. California, 543 U. S. 499, 505506 (2005); Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306, 326 (2003); Adarand, supra, at 224. Before Brown, the most prominent example of an exemplary black school was Dunbar High School. The President of the United States dispatched the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, and federal troops were needed to enforce a desegregation decree. If this interest justifies race-conscious measures today, then logically it will justify race-conscious measures forever. As to tracking enrollments, performance and other statistics by race, tracking reveals the problem; it does not cure it. 1, 2, and 4 and for Respondents in No. 1, 426 F.3d 1162 (9th Cir. 23 (OCR, Apr. In challenging standing, Seattle also notes that it has ceased using the racial tiebreaker pending the outcome of this litigation. 1, 149 Wash. 2d 660, 72 P.3d 151 (2003); 137 F.Supp. Outside the school context, this Courts cases reflect the fact that racial mixing does not always lead to harmony and understanding. 1806, 20 U. S.C. 7231 et seq. See post, at 37. There is no guarantee, however, that students of different races in the same school will actually spend time with one another. 1. See also, e.g., Offerman v. Nitkowski, 378 F.2d 22, 24 (CA2 1967); Deal v. Cincinnati Bd. By 1984, after several schools had fallen out of compliance with the orders racial percentages due to shifting demographics in the community, the school board revised its desegregation plan. 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. . [Footnote 8]. The district assigns students to nonmagnet schools in one of two ways: Parents of kindergartners, first-graders, and students new to the district may submit an application indicating a first and second choice among the schools within their cluster; students who do not submit such an application are assigned within the cluster by the district. Brief for Petitioner at 3943. See also C. Sumner, Equality Before the Law: Unconstitutionality of Separate Colored Schools in Massachusetts, in 2 The Works of Charles Sumner 327, 371 (1849) (The law contemplates not only that all be taught, but that all shall be taught together). 1 App. The importance of these differences is clear once one compares the present circumstances with other cases where one or more of these negative features are present. in No. Since Grutter explicitly stated that seeking to maintain a specific percentage of minority students in the student body was patently unconstitutional, PICS contends that the Districts plan is also ipso facto unconstitutional. In Jefferson County, by contrast, the district seeks black enrollment of no less than 15 or more than 50 percent, a range designed to be equally above and below Black student enrollment systemwide, McFarlandI, 330 F.Supp. Parents of students denied assignment to particular schools under these plans solely because of their race and brought suit, arguing that allocating children to different public schools on the basis of race violated the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection. 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%. But that distinction concerns what the Constitution requires school boards to do, not what it permits them to do. See N. St. John, School Desegregation Outcomes for Children 6768 (1975) (A glance at [the data] shows that for either race positive findings are less common than negative findings); Stephan, The Effects of School Desegregation: An Evaluation 30 Years After Brown, in Advances in Applied Social Psychology 183186 (M. Saks & L. Saxe eds. In each case, the school district relies upon an individual students race in assigning that student to a particular school, so that the racial balance at the school falls within a predetermined range based on the racial composition of the school district as a whole. 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. Thus, only by ignoring Grutters reasoning can the dissent claim that recognizing a compelling interest in these cases is an a fortiori application of Grutter. At the time, however, Young Elementary was 46.8 percent black. 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. In 1958, black parents whose children attended Harrison Elementary School (with a black student population of over 75%) wrote the Seattle board, complaining that the boundaries for the Harrison Elementary School were not set in accordance with the long-established standards of the School District but were arbitrarily set with an end to excluding colored children from McGilvra School, which is adjacent to the Harrison school district.. It is hard to understand how a plan that could allow these results can be viewed as being concerned with achieving enrollment that is broadly diverse, Grutter, supra, at 329. 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. If that is so, then all of Seattles earlier (even more race-conscious) plans must also have been unconstitutional. 10925, 26 Fed. Individual schools will fall in and out of balance in the natural course, and the appropriate balance itself will shift with a school districts changing demographics. Jefferson County Public Schools operates the public school system in metropolitan Louisville, Kentucky. See, e.g., D. Armor, Forced Justice (1995). Therefore, it took the unusual step of certifying a question for the Washington Supreme Court to answer before it decided the appeal. Although we examine the plans under the same legal framework, the specifics of the two plans, and the circumstances What do the racial classifications do in these cases, if not determine admission to a public school on a racial basis? 1996) (Perhaps desegregation does not have a single effect, positive or negative, on the academic achievement of African American students, but rather some strategies help, some hurt, and still others make no difference whatsoever. v. Barksdale, 348 F.2d 261, 266 (CA1 1965). As the districts demographics shift, so too will their definition of racial diversity. Id., at 464. To say, however, that we must ratify the racial classifications here at issue based on the majority opinions in Gratz and Grutter is, with all respect, simply baffling. In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle (2007), the United States Supreme Court found that the school district was using race in an unconstitutional manner in its assignment plan. of Ed. However, Roberts considers that this interest is not compelling and that the use of race for this goal is not narrowly tailored, it is instead used for racial balancing, which is unconstitutional. We simply do not understand how Justice Breyer can maintain that classifying every schoolchild as black or white, and using that classification as a determinative factor in assigning children to achieve pure racial balance, can be regarded as less burdensome, and hence more narrowly tailored than the consideration of race in Grutter, post, at 47, when the Court in Grutter stated that [t]he importance of individualized consideration in the program was paramount, and consideration of race was one factor in a highly individualized, holistic review. 539 U. S., at 337. If we are to insist upon unanimity in the social science literature before finding a compelling interest, we might never find one. 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. See also Parents Involved VII, 426 F.3d, at 1222 (Bea, J., dissenting) (The way to end racial discrimination is to stop discriminating by race). Bustop, addressing in the context of an emergency injunction application a busing plan imposed by the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, is similarly unavailing. Moreover, Parents Involved also asserted an interest in not being forced to compete for seats at certain high schools in a system that uses race as a deciding factor in many of its admissions decisions. Ibid. If so, its interpretation threatens to produce divisiveness among minority groups that is incompatible with the basic objectives of the Fourteenth Amendment. Few black residents lived outside the central section of the city. Furthermore, it would leave our equal-protection jurisprudence at the mercy of elected government officials evaluating the evanescent views of a handful of social scientists. 2, pp. Get Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. Adarand, 515 U. S., at 227; Grutter, 539 U. S., at 326; Johnson v. California, 543 U. S. 499, 505 (2005) (We have insisted on strict scrutiny in every context, even for so-called benign racial classifications). Because this Court has authorized and required race-based remedial measures to address de jure segregation, it is important to define segregation clearly and to distinguish it from racial imbalance. Code 2.60.020 (2006), certified the state-law question to the Washington Supreme Court, 294 F.3d 1085, 1087 (2002) (Parents Involved IV). of Ed., 439 U. S. 1380, 1383 (1978), and by the host of state court decisions cited by Justice Breyer, see post, 2527,[Footnote 8] were fully consistent with that disposition. The judgments of the Courts of Appeals for the Sixth and Ninth Circuits are reversed, and the cases are of Oral Arg. ents in No. 6, 11 (on file with the University of Washington Library); see generally Siqueland 1215; Hanawalt 1820. Transfer plans, for example, allowed students to shift from a school in which they were in the racial majority to a school in which they would be in a racial minority. Justice Thomas recoils at the suggestion that black students can only learn if they are sitting next to white students. In 1972, civil rights groups and parents, claiming unconstitutional segregation, sued the Louisville Board of Education in federal court. In 1973 a federal court found that Jefferson County had maintained a segregated school system, Newburg Area Council, Inc. v. Board of Ed. 1991). of Oral Arg. Numerical racial balance in a district's schools is far from a compelling interest, and in fact it is not even a legitimate purpose. Get free summaries of new US Supreme Court opinions delivered to your inbox! Id., at 162a163a. In Seattle, the parties settled after the school district pledged to undertake a desegregation plan. 2d 304 (quoting Bakke, supra, at 315, 98 S. Ct. 2733, 57 L. Ed. Source: C. Clotfelter, After Brown: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation 56 (2004) (Table 2.1). 05908, at 103a (describing application of racial tiebreaker based on current white percentage of 41 percent and current minority percentage of 59 percent (emphasis added)). Both the District Court and the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected Merediths challenge and held the unmodified aspects of the plan constitutional. The Western District of Washington dismissed the suit, upholding the tiebreaker. Hist. The districts also quote with approval an in-chambers opinion in which then-Justice Rehnquist made a suggestion to the same effect. The amicus briefs in the cases before us mirror this divergence of opinion. The dissents proposed testwhether sufficient social science evidence supports a government units conclusion that the interest it asserts is compellingcalls to mind the rational-basis standard of review the dissent purports not to apply, post, at 36-37. For Thomas, this means that no discrimination on the basis of race is permitted by the Constitution, even for a so-called "benign" purpose (Thomas rejected the notion that there could be a purely benign purpose in his concurrence in Adarand because the benignity or malignity of race-based discrimination turns on "whose ox is being gored" or is "in the eye of the beholder"). [Footnote 5] Rejecting arguments comparable to those that the plurality accepts today,[Footnote 6] that court noted: It would be the height of irony if the racial imbalance act, enacted as it was with the laudable purpose of achieving equal educational opportunities, should, by prescribing school pupil allocations based on race, founder on unsuspected shoals in the Fourteenth Amendment. Id., at 698, 227 N.E. 2d, at 733 (footnote omitted). As to recruiting faculty on the basis of race, both cities have tried, but only as one part of a broader program. Student Choice and Project Renaissance, 1991 to 1996. in No. Regardless, the plurality cannot object that the constitutional defect is the individualized use of race and simultaneously object that not enough account of individuals race has been taken. After Grutter, however, the two Courts of Appeals in these cases, and one other, found that race-based assignments were permissible at the elementary and secondary level, largely in reliance on that case. 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. I fear the consequences of doing so for the law, for the schools, for the democratic process, and for Americas efforts to create, out of its diversity, one Nation. State laws or administrative policies, directed toward the reduction and eventual elimination of de facto segregation of children in the schools and racial imbalance, have been approved by every high State court which has considered the issue. PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS v. SEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. Reply Brief for Petitioner in No. 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. See Brief for Petitioner at 2526. [Footnote 17] One researcher has stated that the reviews of desegregation and intergroup relations were unable to come to any conclusion about what the probable effects of desegregation were [;] virtually all of the reviewers determined that few, if any, firm conclusions about the impact of desegregation on intergroup relations could be drawn. Schofield, School Desegregation and Intergroup Relations: A Review of the Literature, in 17 Review of Research in Education 356 (G. Grant ed. Section 1. The parties and their amici dispute whether racial diversity in schools in fact has a marked impact on test scores and other objective yardsticks or achieves intangible socialization benefits. 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.
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