Second, since this Courts decision in Brown, the law has consistently and unequivocally approved of both voluntary and compulsory race-conscious measures to combat segregated schools. Three years after that decision was handed down, the Governor of Arkansas ordered state militia to block the doors of a white schoolhouse so that black children could not enter. McDaniel concerned a Georgia school system that had been segregated by law. IV); 34 CFR 280.2, 280.4 (2006) (implementing regulations). 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 No. 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)). In 2001, after the decree had been dissolved, Jefferson County adopted the voluntary student assignment plan at issue in this case. The Supreme Court will now review that determination in light of its Equal Protection decisions in Grutter and Gratz and is asked to decide whether racial diversity in high schools is a compelling state interest. 394, 401403 (1994) (hereinafter Dawkins & Braddock); Wells & Crain, Perpetuation Theory and the Long-Term Effects of School Desegregation, 64 Rev. A 1987 Civil Rights Commission Study of 125 school districts in the Nation demonstrated the breadth and variety of desegregation plans: The [study] documents almost 300 desegregation plans that were implemented between 1961 and 1985. 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. Cities around the country are often segregated based on race with certain racial or ethnic groups concentrated in particular areas, possibly as a result of poverty or immigration. Without any detailed discussion of the operation of the plans, the students who are affected, or the districts failure to consider race-neutral alternatives, the dissent concludes that the districts have shown that these racial classifications are necessary to achieve the districts stated goals. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 In 1999, several parents brought a lawsuit in federal court attacking the plans use of racial guidelines at one of the districts magnet schools. If this interest justifies race-conscious measures today, then logically it will justify race-conscious measures forever. 264, 399400 (1821) (Marshall, C. Cf. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle (2007) In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled in Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger that race-based classifications, as used in affirmative-action policies, must be "narrowly tailored" to a "compelling government interest," like diversity. No. 05908, at 276a. in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1953, No. Brown v. Board of Education. See, e.g., Milliken, 433 U. S., at 280, n.14; Freeman, 503 U. S., at 495496 (Where resegregation is a product not of state action but of private choices, it does not have constitutional implications). [Footnote 7] Although Louisville once operated a segregated school system and was subject to a Federal District Courts desegregation decree, see ante, at 7; Hampton v. Jefferson Cty. of Jefferson Cty., Nos. With the racial tiebreaker in 20002001, total enrollment was 36.8 percent Asian-American, 32.2 percent African-American, 5.2 percent Latino, 25.1 percent Caucasian, and 0.7 percent Native-American. See also Letter from Robert F. Kennedy, Without the racial tiebreaker, the class would have been 39.6 percent Asian-American, 30.2 percent African-American, 8.3 percent Latino, 1.1 percent Native-American, and 20.8 percent Caucasian. The plurality does not seem confident as to the answer. of Los Angeles, 458 U. S. 527 (1982), post, at 24, in which a state referendum prohibiting a race-based assignment plan was challenged, is inappositein Crawford the Court again expressly reserved the question presented by these cases. The passage Justice Stevens quotes proves our point; all the quoted language says is that the school committee shall prepare a plan to eliminate the imbalance. Id., at 695, 227 N.E. 2d, at 731; see post, at 4, n. 5. Approximately half the districts public school enrollment was black; about half was white. 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). Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 Dawkins & Braddock 403. To the extent the objective is sufficient diversity so that students see fellow students as individuals rather than solely as members of a racial group, using means that treat students solely as members of a racial group is fundamentally at cross-purposes with that end. See also Brief for Appellees in Brown v. Board of Education, O.T. 1952, No. 5. This Court in Adarand added that such classifications are constitutional only if they are narrowly tailored measures that further compelling governmental interests. Ibid. In 2007, the United States Supreme Court struck down two local school board initiatives meant to reverse extreme racial segregation in public schools. Here, the context is one in which school districts seek to advance or to maintain racial integration in primary and secondary schools. As a result, it reverses course and reaches the wrong conclusion. Id. 2 App. The histories also indicate the complexity of the tasks and the practical difficulties that local school boards face when they seek to achieve greater racial integration. At issue were efforts for voluntary school desegregation and integration in Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky. App. The District asserts that it helped these schools by allowing students from the schools to attend other schools, furthering the goals of ending racial isolation and promoting equal access. The plan provoked considerable local opposition. See Johnson, supra, at 505 (We have insisted on strict scrutiny in every context, even for so-called benign racial classifications); Adarand, 515 U. S., at 227 (rejecting idea that benign racial classifications may be held to different standard); Croson, 488 U. S., at 500 (Racial classifications are suspect, and that means that simple legislative assurances of good intention cannot suffice). gent upon a particular racial mix. No. In the cases before us it is noteworthy that the number of students whose assignment depends on express racial classifications is limited. On the matter of stare decisis, I submit that the duration of the challenged practice, while it is persuasive, is not controlling. of Boston, the Illinois Supreme Court had issued an unpublished opinion holding unconstitutional a similar statute aimed at eliminating racial imbalance in public schools. Again, though, the school boards have no say in deciding whether an interest is compelling. In other words, it is not desegregation per se that improves achievement, but rather the learning advantages some desegregated schools provide. Id., at 744. When a court subjects governmental action to strict scrutiny, it cannot construe ambiguities in favor of the State. Although no such distinction is apparent in the Fourteenth Amendment, the dissent would constitutionalize todays faddish social theories that embrace that distinction. The plan that was the source of this litigation allowed students entering the ninth grade to rank the schools they wanted to attend. v. Swann, 402 U. S. 43, 4546 (1971). This is a fatal flaw under the Courts existing precedent. 2. at 958. See Part II, supra, at 2137. Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin. 2d, at 370. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265 (1978).) In fact, it contends that the District never seriously considered other race-neutral alternatives. Id., at 38a. Get Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. 05915, at 43 (Transfer applications can be denied because of lack of available space or, for students in grades other than Primary 1 (kindergarten), the racial guidelines in the Districts current student assignment plan); id., at 29 (The student assignment plan does not apply to . 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. Here, in contrast, the schools worked backward to achieve a particular type of racial balance, rather than working forward from some demonstration of the level of diversity that provides the purported benefits. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit originally reversed, 285 F. 3d 1236 (9th Cir. Perhaps for this reason, the dissent conflates the concepts of segregation and racial imbalance: If racial imbalance equates to segregation, then it must also be constitutionally acceptable to use racial balancing to remedy racial imbalance. Nonetheless, the Seattle Plan, due to its busing, provoked serious opposition within the State. The plurality is wrong to do so. certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit, No. 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. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School - Quizlet Because equal protection on the basis of race is at issue, the applicable standard of review to be applied in this case is strict scrutiny, as both parties agree, and as is well established in the Courts prior case law. I do not understand why this Courts cases, which rest the significance of a unitary finding in part upon the wisdom and desirability of returning schools to local control, should deprive those local officials of legal permission to use means they once found necessary to combat persisting injustices. Indeed, the very school districts that once spurned integration now strive for it. Dawkins & Braddock 401403; Wells & Crain 550. And the inquiry into less restrictive alternatives demanded by the narrow tailoring analysis requires in many cases a thorough understanding of how a plan works. This argument is unavailing. 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. 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). 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. Justice Thomas suggests that it will be easy to identify de jure segregation because [i]n most cases, there either will or will not have been a state constitutional amendment, state statute, local ordinance, or local administrative policy explicitly requiring separation of the races. Ante, at 6, n.4 (concurring opinion). as Amici Curiae 29. Bd. Cf. In fact, they are even more narrowly tailored than the Grutter plan, which withstood strict scrutiny. That determination typically will not be nearly as difficult as the dissent makes it seem. 4 See generally Seattle School Dist. The NAACPs Second Legal Challenge, 1977. First, Seattle claimed that none of the current members of Parents Involved can claim an imminent injury. Wygant, 476 U. S., at 283. in No. I shall not accept the school boards assurances on faith, cf. One will search Grutter in vain for similarly persuasive evidence of narrow tailoring as the school districts have presented here. Does the Constitution mandate this inefficient result? 2d, at 844845, nn. Today, almost 50 years later, attitudes toward race in this Nation have changed dramatically. The idea that if race is the problem, race is the instrument with which to solve it cannot be accepted as an analytical leap forward. Cf. Jefferson County Public Schools operates the public school system in metropolitan Louisville, Kentucky. He adds that this confusion illustrates that Louisvilles assignment plan (or its explanation of it to this Court) is insufficiently precise in respect to who makes the decisions, oversight, the precise circumstances in which an assignment decision will be made; and which of two similarly situated children will be subjected to a given race-based decision. Ante, at 4. 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. Why may the authorities not recognize the problem in candid fashion and solve it altogether through resort to direct assignments based on student racial classifications? See Grutter, supra, at 393 (Kennedy, J., dissenting) (allowing consideration of race only if it does not become a predominant factor). The view that a more lenient standard than strict scrutiny should apply in the present context would not imply abandonment of judicial efforts carefully to determine the need for race-conscious criteria and the criterias tailoring in light of the need. See id., at 152 (opinion of Stewart, J.). See id., at 380 (The very analysis for dissolving desegregation decrees supports continued maintenance of a desegregated system as a compelling state interest). 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. 32 (2004); A Great Decision, Hindustan Times (New Dehli, May 20, 1954), p.5; USA Takes Positive Step, West African Pilot (Lagos, May 22, 1954), p. 2 (stating that Brown is an acknowledgment that the United States should set an example for all other nations by taking the lead in removing from its national life all signs and traces of racial intolerance, arrogance or discrimination). Without attempting in these cases to set forth all the interests a school district might assert, it suffices to note that our prior cases, in evaluating the use of racial classifications in the school context, have recognized two interests that qualify as compelling. See post, at 6566. The classification of applicants by race upheld in Grutter was only as part of a highly individualized, holistic review, 539 U. S., at 337. After he had enrolled and after the academic year had begun, he then applied to transfer to his preferred school after the kindergarten assignment deadline had passed, id., at 21, possibly causing school officials to treat his late request as an application to transfer to the first grade, in respect to which the guidelines apply. Indeed, the record before us suggests the contrary. But the solutions mandated by these school districts must themselves be lawful. [Footnote 14]. Yet, I have found no example or model that would permit this Court to say to Seattle and to Louisville: Here is an instance of a desegregation plan that is likely to achieve your objectives and also makes less use of race-conscious criteria than your plans. And, if the plurality cannot suggest such a modeland it cannotthen it seeks to impose a narrow tailoring requirement that in practice would never be met. The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. 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. of New Kent Cty., 391 U. S. 430, 441442 (1968). as Amici Curiae in No. As to tracking enrollments, performance and other statistics by race, tracking reveals the problem; it does not cure it. See Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294, 300 (1955) (Brown II) (At stake is the personal interest of the plaintiffs in admission to public schools on a nondiscriminatory basis (emphasis added)). 529, 532 (SC 1951))); Brief for Appellees in Briggs v. Elliott, O.T. 1952, No. 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.). 3, p.1617 (It is by such practical considerations based on experience rather than by theoretical inconsistencies that the question of equal protection is to be answered (quoting Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. New York, 336 U. S. 110 (1949))); Brief for Appellees on Reargument in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1953, No. Here, race becomes a factor only in a fraction of students non-merit-based assignmentsnot in large numbers of students merit-based applications. Because the school boards lack any further interest in remedying segregation, this element offers no support for the purported interest in integration.. 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. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265 (1978); Adarand, 515 U. S. 200. 05908, pp. De jure? 2434. In each city the school board modified its plan several times in light of, for example, hostility to busing, the threat of resegregation, and the desirability of introducing greater student choice. Observers claim that the Supreme Court's decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 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. . The lesson of history, see ante, at 39 (plurality opinion), is not that efforts to continue racial segregation are constitutionally indistinguishable from efforts to achieve racial integration. (We consider only the ninth grade since only students entering that class were subject to the tiebreaker, and because the plan was not in place long enough to change the composition of an entire school.)
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