05908, 426 F.3d 1162; No. 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. In challenging standing, Seattle also notes that it has ceased using the racial tiebreaker pending the outcome of this litigation. 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. Justice Breyers position comes down to a familiar claim: The end justifies the means. 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 . Yet, as explained, each has failed to provide the support necessary for that proposition. 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. 2d 1, 5 (1965); Jackson v. Pasadena City School Dist., 59 Cal. In Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954) (Brown I), we held that segregation deprived black children of equal educational opportunities regardless of whether school facilities and other tangible factors were equal, because government classification and separation on grounds of race themselves denoted inferiority. At some point, the discrete injury will be remedied, and the school district will be declared unitary. 32, Exh. As a result, it reverses course and reaches the wrong conclusion. The decision was a 5-4 split on the Court, with both sides claiming that their position was truest to the precedent set in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Brown v. Board of Education. of Ed. But that cost does not approach, in degree or in kind, the terrible harms of slavery, the resulting caste system, and 80 years of legal racial segregation. The Western District of Washington dismissed the suit, upholding the tiebreaker. The State Supreme Court wrote: Despite the initiatives undertaken by the defendants to alleviate the severe racial and ethnic disparities among school districts, and despite the fact that the defendants did not intend to create or maintain these disparities, the disparities that continue to burden the education of the plaintiffs infringe upon their fundamental state constitutional right to a substantially equal educational opportunity. Id., at 42, 678 A. Croson, supra, at 505; Wygant, supra, at 279, n.5 (plurality opinion). Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 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. [Footnote 6] But without a history of state-enforced racial separation, a school district has no affirmative legal obligation to take race-based remedial measures to eliminate segregation and its vestiges. After all, this Court has in many cases explicitly permitted districts to use target ratios based upon the districts underlying population. According to the schools most recent annual report, [a]cademic excellence is its primary goal. See African American Academy 2006 Annual Report, p.2, online at http://www.seattleschools.org/area/ 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. 2, App. See Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 476 U. S. 267, 274 (1986); Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U. S. 448, 507 (1980). The enduring hope is that race should not matter; the reality is that too often it does. 2d 1224 (2001); 426 F.3d 1162 (CA9 2005) (en banc) (Parents Involved VII). And to the extent the plurality opinion can be interpreted to foreclose consideration of these interests, I disagree with that reasoning. Nor does any precedent indicate, as the plurality suggests with respect to Louisville, ante, at 29, that remedial interests vanish the day after a federal court declares that a district is unitary. Of course, Louisville adopted those portions of the plan at issue here before a court declared Louisville unitary. Moreover, in Freeman, this Court pointed out that in one sense of the term, vestiges of past segregation by state decree do remain in our society and in our schools. The distinction ought not to be altogether disregarded, however, when we come to that most sensitive of all racial issues, an attempt by the government to treat whole classes of persons differently based on the governments systematic classification of each individual by race. However, racial imbalance without intentional state action to separate the races does not amount to segregation. See also Letter from Robert F. Kennedy, In 1977, the NAACP filed another legal complaint, this time with the federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfares Office for Civil Rights (OCR). And in light of those challenges, they have asked us not to take from their hands the instruments they have used to rid their schools of racial segregation, instruments that they believe are needed to overcome the problems of cities divided by race and poverty. 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. In fact, six of the Seattle high schools involved in this case were built by the 1920s; the other four were open by the early 1960s. These and related considerations convinced one Ninth Circuit judge in the Seattle case to apply a standard of constitutionality review that is less than strict, and to conclude that this Courts precedents do not require the contrary. See Beard v. Banks, 548 U. S. ___, ___ (2006) (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment) (noting that two were killed and hundreds were injured in race rioting subsequent to this Courts decision in Johnson). 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. In both cities, the school boards adopted plans designed to achieve integration by bringing about more racially diverse schools. For Swann is predicated upon a well-established legal view of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Jefferson County public schools were previously segregated by law and were subject to a desegregation decree entered in 1975. 7045 and 7291, (WD Ky., June 16, 1978), pp. 05908, at 30a. 2005) (" Parents IV"). In Seattle, the parties settled after the school district pledged to undertake a desegregation plan. 6. Furthermore, it is unclear whether increased interracial contact improves racial attitudes and relations. Garfield was the only oversubscribed school whose composition during the 19992000 school year was within the racial guidelines, although in previous years Garfields enrollment had been predominantly nonwhite, and the racial tiebreaker had been used to give preference to white students. See, e.g., post, at 1920. 4 Id., at 1516; Memorandum from Stephen W. Daeschner, Superintendent, to the Board of Education, Jefferson Cty. Neither of the programs before us today is compelled as a remedial measure, and no one makes such a claim. as Amici Curiae in No. 2006). Cf. While we do not suggest that greater use of race would be preferable, the minimal impact of the districts racial classifications on school enrollment casts doubt on the necessity of using racial classifications. in No. 1617. 2 App. 1, 458 U. S. 457, 460 (1982). First, no casenot Adarand, Gratz, Grutter, or any otherhas ever held that the test of strict scrutiny means that all racial classificationsno matter whether they seek to include or excludemust in practice be treated the same. Meredith brought suit in the Western District of Kentucky, alleging violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT No. 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. 05908, at 7. Simply putting students together under the same roof does not necessarily mean that the students will learn together or even interact. See, e.g., Freeman, supra, at 494. 5, p.27 (Respondents ask this Court to upset a long established and well settled principle recognized by numerous state Legislatures, and Courts, both state and federal, over a long period of years); Tr. It is clear to us that focusing simply on demographic issues detracts from focusing on improving schools). But it explicitly cited Swanns statement that the Constitution permitted a local district to adopt such a plan. In a footnote the Justice added a personal mention of Justice Breyer: "Justice Breyer's good intentions, which I do not doubt, have the shelf life of Justice Breyer's tenure. 2004). See Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U. S. 467, 494 (1992). 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. By limiting the School Districts use of race, it will be more difficult for it to cure these defects. No. The District tried to give students their first choice, but when a school had more students applying for it than spots available, it used a series of tiebreakers to determine who received the spots. See Parts IA and IB, supra, at 618. 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. See App. [S]chool districts themselves retain a state-law obligation to take reasonably feasible steps to desegregate, and they remain free to adopt reassignment and busing plans to effectuate desegregation (emphasis added)); School Comm. The discrepancy identified is not some simple and straightforward error that touches only upon the peripheries of the districts use of individual racial classifications. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist - Quimbee Four of Seattle's high schools are located in the northBallard, Nathan Hale, Ingraham, and Rooseveltand five in the southRainier Beach, Cleveland, West Seattle, Chief Sealth, and Franklin. Seattle argues that Parents Involved lacks standing because none of its current members can claim an imminent injury. The districts also quote with approval an in-chambers opinion in which then-Justice Rehnquist made a suggestion to the same effect. 05908, pp. Id., at 38a, 103a. . Id., at 493494. When it comes to government race-based decisionmaking, the Constitution demands more. Now localities will have to cope with the difficult problems they face (including resegregation) deprived of one means they may find necessary. Space was available at Bloom, and intercluster transfers are allowed, but Joshuas transfer was nonetheless denied because, in the words of Jefferson County, [t]he transfer would have an adverse effect on desegregation compliance of Young. In my view the state-mandated racial classifications at issue, official labels proclaiming the race of all persons in a broad class of citizenselementary school students in one case, high school students in anotherare unconstitutional as the cases now come to us. See 539 U. S., at 320. 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. The plurality pays inadequate attention to this law, to past opinions rationales, their language, and the contexts in which they arise. Post, at 28 (citing Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. The dissent thus alters in fundamental ways not only the facts presented here but the established law. The plans in both Louisville and Seattle grow out of these earlier remedial efforts. While the school districts use various verbal formulations to describe the interest they seek to promoteracial diversity, avoidance of racial isolation, racial integrationthey offer no definition suggesting that their interest differs from racial balancing. 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. Many parents, white and black alike, want their children to attend schools with children of different races. 421, 424425 (History, too, tells us that segregation was imposed on one race by the other race; consent was not invited or required. PICS counters that, far from accomplishing these lofty goals, the Districts plan is simply making trivial changes in pigmentation diversity in just a few of the schools that are actually imbalanced. And individual racial classifications employed in this manner may be considered legitimate only if they are a last resort to achieve a compelling interest. [Footnote 30] See, e.g., Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. Justice Thomas goes on to call out the dissent for adopting segregationist reasoning advanced in Brown, particularly its insistence that the Court should defer to local school board knowledge, expertise, and judgment. The basic problem with the pluralitys technical dicta-based response lies in its overly theoretical approach to case law, an approach that emphasizes rigid distinctions between holdings and dicta in a way that serves to mask the radical nature of todays decision. A comparison of the test results of the 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). As becomes clearer when the districts plan is further considered, Jefferson County has explained how and when it employs these classifications only in terms so broad and imprecise that they cannot withstand strict scrutiny. And if this is a frustrating duality of the Equal Protection Clause it simply reflects the duality of our history and our attempts to promote freedom in a world that sometimes seems set against it. 2002). Mr. Korrell. See, e.g., Brief for Appellants in Brown v. Board of Education, O.T. 1953, Nos. Id., at 43. The Seattle Plan achieved the school integration that it sought. 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? Federal law also assumes that a similar target percentage will help avoid detrimental minority group isolation. See No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Title V, Part C, 115 Stat. The 50/50 hypothetical has no support in the record here; it is conjured from the imagination. Id., at 498. 137 F.Supp. Pitts, 503 U. S. 467 , 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. The upshot is that myriad school districts operating in myriad circumstances have devised myriad plans, often with race-conscious elements, all for the sake of eradicating earlier school segregation, bringing about integration, or preventing retrogression. The Courts decision in that case was a grievous error it took far too long to overrule. And second, Kennedy faults the dissent for ignoring the "presumptive invalidity of a State's use of racial classifications to differentiate its treatment of individuals.". More broadly, however, allowing racial diversity or balance as a compelling state interest, even if confined to secondary education, calls into question the Equal. parents involved in community schools v seattle 2007 quizlet Even in the context of mandatory desegregation, we have stressed that racial proportionality is not required, see Milliken, 433 U. S., at 280, n. 14 ([A desegregation] order contemplating the substantive constitutional right [to a] particular degree of racial balance or mixing is infirm as a matter of law (internal quotation marks omitted)); Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. To do this as an educational policy is within the broad discretionary powers of school authorities. 402 U. S., at 16. Any continued use of race must be justified on some other basis. 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. Ante, at 1718. 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. Supporting the school boards, one amicus has assured us that both early desegregation research and recent statistical and econometric analyses indicate that there are positive effects on minority student achievement scores arising from diverse school settings. Brief for American Educational Research Association as Amicus Curiae 10. 05915, at 38. You can explore additional available newsletters here. 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. [Footnote 1] The plan allows incoming ninth graders to choose from among any of the districts high schools, ranking however many schools they wish in order of preference. The District then petitioned for an en banc ruling by a panel of 11 Ninth Circuit judges. The Chief Justice rejects the conclusion that the racial classifications at issue here should be viewed differently than others, because they do not impose burdens on one race alone and do not stigmatize or exclude. See Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peńa, 515 U. S. 200, 240 (1995) (Thomas, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Indeed, the race-conscious ranges at issue in these cases often have no effect, either because the particular school is not oversubscribed in the year in question, or because the racial makeup of the school falls within the broad range, or because the student is a transfer applicant or has a sibling at the school. ); brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). Is it not a fact that the very strength and fiber of our federal system is local self-government in those matters for which local action is competent? The dissents permissive strict scrutiny (which bears more than a passing resemblance to rational-basis review) could invite widespread governmental deployment of racial classifications. The Court has allowed school districts to remedy their prior de jure segregation by classifying individual students based on their race. [Footnote 14] 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 beings race will never be achieved. Croson, supra, at 495 (plurality opinion of OConnor, J.) School authorities are traditionally given broad discretionary powers to formulate and implement educational policy and may properly decide to ensure to their students the value of an integrated school experience. Citizens for Better Ed. Three of the oversubscribed schools were integration positive because the schools white enrollment the previous school year was greater than 51 percentBallard, Nathan Hale, and Roosevelt. 420, 433434 (1988). Justice Stevenss reliance on School Comm. Although no such distinction is apparent in the Fourteenth Amendment, the dissent would constitutionalize todays faddish social theories that embrace that distinction. 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. Seattles plan, by contrast, relies upon a mechanical formula that has denied hundreds of students their preferred schools on the basis of three rigid criteria: placement of siblings, distance from schools, and race. (quoting Wygant v. Jackson Bd. 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. See App. If one examines the context more specifically, one finds that the districts plans reflect efforts to overcome a history of segregation, embody the results of broad experience and community consultation, seek to expand student choice while reducing the need for mandatory busing, and use race-conscious criteria in highly limited ways that diminish the use of race compared to preceding integration efforts. See Research, Evaluation and Assessment, Student Information Serv- It gave second preference to a student whose race differed from a race that was over-represented at the school (i.e., a race that accounted for a higher percentage of the school population than of the total district population). Compton, California, on the other hand, became over 99 percent black in the 1980s, while Buffalo, New York had a virtual 5050 split between white and minority students prior to its 1977 plan. Segregation, 1945 to 1956. The plan that was the source of this litigation allowed students entering the ninth grade to rank the schools they wanted to attend. Justia makes no guarantees or warranties that the annotations are accurate or reflect the current state of law, and no annotation is intended to be, nor should it be construed as, legal advice. "[5], According to Kennedy, "The cases here were argued upon the assumption, and come to us on the premise, that the discrimination in question did not result from de jure actions." 1.9 In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 05908, pp. No. But the principle of inherent equality that underlies and infuses our Constitution required the disestablishment of de jure segregation. 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. [I]ntegration, we are told, has three essential elements. Ibid. in No. Like the dissent, the segregationists repeatedly cautioned the Court to consider practicalities and not to embrace too theoretical a view of the Fourteenth Amendment. 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. Racial balancing is not transformed from patently unconstitutional to a compelling state interest simply by relabeling it racial diversity. While the school districts use various verbal formulations to describe the interest they seek to promoteracial diversity, avoidance of racial isolation, racial integrationthey offer no definition of the interest that suggests it differs from racial balance.