And it is for them to decide, to quote the pluralitys slogan, whether the best way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. Ante, at 4041. The constitutional problems with government race-based decisionmaking are not diminished in the slightest by the presence or absence of an intent to oppress any race or by the real or asserted well-meaning motives for the race-based decisionmaking. It again cites the MSAP to show that ensuring equal access is a compelling interest. The District contends that its plan used the narrowest possible means to achieve is educational goals. 05-908, was filed by a group of parents who had formed a nonprofit corporation to. 05915, at 38, 42 (indicating that decisions are based on the racial guidelines without further explanation); id., at 81 (setting forth the blanket mandate that [s]chools shall work cooperatively with each other and with central office to ensure that enrollment at all schools [in question] is within the racial guidelines annually and to encourage that the enrollment at all schools progresses toward the midpoint of the guidelines); id., at 43, 7677, 8183; McFarland v. Jefferson Cty. Id., at 499, 504; Wygant, supra, at 274 (plurality opinion); cf. On June 28, 2007, the United States Supreme Court, in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 294 F.3d 1085 (9th Cir. It is possible that schools will be able to extend these race-conscious programs to school sports teams, club memberships, classroom assignments, and so on. . As the district fails to account for the classification system it has chosen, despite what appears to be its ill fit, Seattle has not shown its plan to be narrowly tailored The present cases, unlike Fullilove but like our decision in Wygant, 476 U. S. 267, require us to ask whether the Board[s] actions[s] advanc[e] the public interest in educating children for the future, id., at 313 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (emphasis added). See Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U. S. 467, 494 (1992). See Swann, supra, at 2526; Missouri v. Jenkins, 515 U. S. 70, 116 (1995) (Thomas, J., concurring). Since certain schools often became oversubscribed when too many students chose them as their first choice, the District used a system of tiebreakers to decide which students would be admitted to the popular schools. 1, 127 S. Ct. 2738 (U.S. 2007) Brief Fact Summary. At that time the school district did not provide transportation from the childrens neighborhoods to Ingraham; the children would have had to take three public buses for a commute of two hours in each direction. This is a decision that the Court and the Nation will come to regret. 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. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. Some districts, such as Richmond, California, and Buffalo, New York, permitted only one-way transfers, in which only black students attending predominantly black schools were permitted to transfer to designated receiver schools. http://reportcard. As to tracking enrollments, performance and other statistics by race, tracking reveals the problem; it does not cure it. The plurality does not seem confident as to the answer. But that length is necessary. of New York v. Harris, 444 U. S. 130, 148149 (1979), the Court concluded that a federal statute required school districts receiving certain federal funds to remedy faculty segregation, even though in this Courts view the racial disparities in the affected schools were purely de facto and would not have been actionable under the Equal Protection Clause. Between 80% and 90% of all students received their first choice assignment; between 89% and 97% received their first or second choice assignment. See also ante, at 15 (opinion of Kennedy, J.). ([A]ll governmental action based on racea group classification long recognized as in most circumstances irrelevant and therefore prohibited, Hirabayashi [v. United States, 320 U. S. 81, 100 (1943)]should be subjected to detailed judicial inquiry to ensure that the personal right to equal protection of the laws has not been infringed (first emphasis in original); Metro Broadcasting, supra, at 636 ([O]ur Constitution protects each citizen as an individual, not as a member of a group (Kennedy, J., dissenting)); Bakke, supra, at 289 (opinion of Powell, J.) The districts have also failed to show that they considered methods other than explicit racial classifications to achieve their stated goals. That case involves the original Seattle Plan, a more heavily race-conscious predecessor of the very plan now before us. JCPS is the 26th largest school district in the United States. As I have explained elsewhere, the remedies this Court authorized lower courts to compel in early desegregation cases like Green and Swann were exceptional. Our cases recognized a fundamental difference between those school districts that had engaged in de jure segregation and those whose segregation was the result of other factors. 05908, p. 511. Third, the plans before us, subjected to rigorous judicial review, are supported by compelling state interests and are narrowly tailored to accomplish those goals. 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. 2528. 2002); Brief for Armor etal. 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. Cities that have implemented successful school desegregation plans have witnessed increased interracial contact and neighborhoods that tend to become less racially segregated. schoolId=1061&report remanded for further proceedings. [Footnote 27] Whatever else the Courts rejection of the segregationists arguments in Brown might have established, it certainly made clear that state and local governments cannot take from the Constitution a right to make decisions on the basis of race by adverse possession. Roberts cites to: Grutter, supra, at 327, 328, 334, 123 S. Ct. 2325, 156 L. Ed. McDonald v. Chicago 1, pp. Both districts sought greater racial integration for educational and democratic, as well as for remedial, reasons. When the actual racial breakdown is considered, enrolling students without regard to their race yields a substantially diverse student body under any definition of diversity. of Oral Arg. 2002). Although remedying the effects of past intentional discrimination is a compelling interest under the strict scrutiny test, see Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U. S. 467, 494, that interest is not involved here because the Seattle schools were never segregated by law nor subject to court-ordered desegregation, and the desegregation decree to which the Jefferson County schools were previously subject has been dissolved. . See also Juris. This interest, the Court said, can be achieved by considering the student overall, not just his or her race, and the contribution he or she can make to the schools diversity. It again redrew school assignment boundaries. In Board of Ed. That view understands the basic objective of those who wrote the Equal Protection Clause as forbidding practices that lead to racial exclusion. Arkansas, for example, provides by statute that [n]o student may transfer to a nonresident district where the percentage of enrollment for the students race exceeds that percentage in the students resident district. Ark. 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. 05908, pp. In keeping with his view that strict scrutiny should not apply, Justice Breyer repeatedly urges deference to local school boards on these issues. See Hampton v. Jefferson Cty. University of Texas v. Camenisch, 451 U. S. 390, 393 (1981).
PDF U.S. Department of Justice U.S. Department of Education Parents Involved commenced this suit in the Western District of Washington, alleging that Seattles use of race in assignments violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,[Footnote 4] Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,[Footnote 5] and the Washington Civil Rights Act. The principle that racial balancing is not permitted is one of substance, not semantics. 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. As McDaniel and Harris show, that is historically untrue. 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. Students are assigned to school based on the race makeup of each school, no less than 15%, no more than 50%. 539 U. S., at 324325 (internal quotation marks omitted). In making such a determination, we have deferred to state authorities only once, see Grutter, 539 U. S., at 328330, and that deference was prompted by factors uniquely relevant to higher education. 1 etal. At a press conference the day of the opinion, Attorney for the Plaintiff Teddy Gordon stated that he would, if necessary, seek legal measures to prevent the use of the current Student Assignment Plan for the 20072008 school year.
(PDF) Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District Yesterday, the plans under review were lawful. In particular, they emphasize that the children on whose high school admissions the case was originally based have since graduated high school, while the children of the other involved parents are not yet at the high school age. Synopsis of Rule of Law. In many such instances, the contentious force of legal challenges to these classifications, meritorious or not, would displace earlier calm. Id. For instance, a Texas appeals court in 1986 rejected a Fourteenth Amendment challenge to a voluntary integration plan by explaining: [T]he absence of a court order to desegregate does not mean that a school board cannot exceed minimum requirements in order to promote school integration. 2004). 1 (2007) represents the "end of the Brown era" because it a. confirmed the precedent that strict scrutiny should be applied in cases about racial discrimination. we mean the freedom of the slave race); Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303, 306 (1879) ([The Fourteenth Amendment] is one of a series of constitutional provisions having a common purpose; namely, securing to a race recently emancipated .