Because the school boards lack any further interest in remedying segregation, this element offers no support for the purported interest in integration.. 2005), online at http://www.seattleschools.org/area/facilties&nbhyph;plan/Choice/05&nbhyph; Most worked at unskilled jobs. Brief for Respondents in No. 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). The long history of their efforts reveals the complexities and difficulties they have faced); post, at 21 (emphasizing the importance of local circumstances and encouraging different localities to try different solutions to common problems and gravitate toward those that prove most successful or seem to them best to suit their individual needs (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)); post, at 48 (emphasizing the school districts 40-year history during which both school districts have tried numerous approaches to achieve more integrated schools); post, at 63 ([T]he histories of Louisville and Seattle reveal complex circumstances and a long tradition of conscientious efforts by local school boards). 1, 458 U. S. 457, 461466 (1982). How could such a plan be lawful the day before dissolution but then become unlawful the very next day? But the evidence supporting an educational interest in racially integrated schools is well established and strong enough to permit a democratically elected school board reasonably to determine that this interest is a compelling one. [Footnote 14]. But that distinction concerns what the Constitution requires school boards to do, not what it permits them to do. 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. More specifically, the Court stated that race could be used as a plus, but not in such a way that isolates the applicant from the pool of those being considered. And their history reveals school district goals whose remedial, educational, and democratic elements are inextricably intertwined each with the others. The districts here invoke the ultimate goal of those who filed Brown and subsequent cases to support their argument, but the argument of the plaintiff in Brown was that the Equal Protection Clause prevents states from according differential treatment to American children on the basis of their color or race, and that view prevailedthis Court ruled in its remedial opinion that Brown required school districts to achieve a system of determining admission to the public schools on a nonracial basis. Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294, 300301 (emphasis added). 1995). In the cases before us it is noteworthy that the number of students whose assignment depends on express racial classifications is limited. Is it conceivable that the Constitution, implemented through a court desegregation order, could permit (perhaps require) the district to make use of a race-conscious plan the day before the order was dissolved and then forbid the district to use the identical plan the day after? More broadly, however, allowing racial diversity or balance as a compelling state interest, even if confined to secondary education, calls into question the Equal. 05915, pp. Bd. Today, however, the Court restricts (and some Members would eliminate) that leeway. App. Cf. You're all set! Strict scrutiny is not strict in theory, but fatal in fact. . Bd. Crude measures of this sort threaten to reduce children to racial chits valued and traded according to one schools supply and anothers demand. in No. By recognizing racial diversity as a compelling state interest, the Supreme Court will give public school districts nationwide the ability to make decisions about whether or not to admit a student based on the isolated factor of his or her race. There is nothing technical or theoretical, post, at 30, about our approach to such dicta. 05908, p. 42. Project Renaissance again revised the boards racial guidelines. App. However, the dissenters argued that the Constitution permits such desegregation even though it does not require it. The student population of the school district is approximately 40% white, 60% non-white. Each plan embodies the results of local experience and community consultation. 2d 304 (quoting Bakke, supra, at 315, 98 S. Ct. 2733, 57 L. Ed. Narrow tailoring requires "serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives", Grutter, supra, at 339, 123 S. Ct. 2325, 156 L. Ed. We construe Brown as endorsing Mr. Justice Harlans classical statement in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, 539: Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens). 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. I have counted well over 100 state statutes that similarly employ racial classifications. That statement, to be sure, invites this response: A sense of stigma may already become the fate of those separated out by circumstances beyond their immediate control. Similarly, the Federal courts which have considered the issue . . It again cites the MSAP to show that ensuring equal access is a compelling interest. 1, supra, at 461; Seattle Public Schools Desegregation Planning Office, Proposed Alternative Desegregation Plans: Options for Eliminating Racial Imbalance by the 1979-80 School Year (Sept. 1977) (filed with the Court as Exh. 05908, at 276a. 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. of Cal. 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. The government bears the burden of justifying its use of individual racial classifications. The Court also found that the magnet programs available at the high school in question were not available at other high schools in the school district. [29] The districts have also failed to show that they considered methods other than explicit racial classifications to achieve their stated goals. The dissent elides this distinction between de jure and de facto segregation, casually intimates that Seattles school attendance patterns reflect illegal segregation, post, at 5, 18, 23,[Footnote 15] and fails to credit the judicial determinationunder the most rigorous standardthat Jefferson County had eliminated the vestiges of prior segregation. See, e.g., J. Wilkinson, From Brown to Bakke 11 (1979) (Everyone understands that Brown v. Board of Education helped deliver the Negro from over three centuries of legal bondage); Black, The Lawfulness of the Segregation Decisions, 69 Yale L.J. No distinction was made between various categories of non-whites; Asian-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and African-Americans were all treated solely as "non-white" for purposes of the tiebreaker. of Ed., 102 F.Supp. It is an interest in maintaining hard-won gains. in No. [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). Harvard Club of Washington, DC [Footnote 13]. Cf. Id. This Court recognized as much in its opinion, which stated that the school board had an affirmative duty to disestablish the dual school system. McDaniel, supra, at 41. 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. Neither school district has made any such specific findings. 05915, at 4, these ambiguities become all the more problematic in light of the contradictions and confusions that result. JEFFERSON COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION etal. [D]istinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality. Adarand, 515 U. S., at 214 (internal quotation marks omitted). 26401 (1948). 733 (1998). To do this as an educational policy is within the broad discretionary powers of school authorities. 402 U. S., at 16. Regardless of its name, however, the interest at stake possesses three essential elements. Most white families live north of the downtown area where four high schoolsBallard, Ingraham, Nathan Hale, and Rooseveltare located. 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. Opponents brought a lawsuit. 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. 250, 251 (1983) (similar in Arkansas); Bullock These interests combine remedial, educational, and democratic objectives. 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. Yet our tradition is to go beyond present achievements, however significant, and to recognize and confront the flaws and injustices that remain. 3313.98(B)(2)(b)(iii) (Lexis Supp. 05908, at 103a. See, e.g., Yonezawa, Wells, & Serna, Choosing Tracks: Freedom of Choice in Detracting Schools, 39 Am. 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. This Nation has a moral and ethical obligation to fulfill its historic commitment to creating an integrated society that ensures equal opportunity for all of its children. 05908, p. 7. 1 that the racial classifications used by school districts in Seattle and Louisville to create diverse schools were unconstitutional. See supra, at 12. ERIC - EJ779225 - The Public Schools and the Challenge of the Supreme This entire contention is tantamount to saying that the vindication and enjoyment of constitutional rights recognized by this Court as present and personal can be postponed whenever such postponement is claimed to be socially desirable). Resort to the record, including the parties Stipulation of Facts, further confuses the matter. 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). Percentage of Black Students in 90100 Percent Nonwhite and Majority Nonwhite Public Schools by Region, 19501954 to 2000, Fall Enrollment. 515 U. S., at 125 (Thomas, J., concurring). 1, pp. 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. 1, p.38 (Spring 2002); Mickelson, Subverting Swann: First- and Second-Generation Segregation in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, 38 Am. See, e.g., Brief for Appellants in Brown v. Board of Education, O.T. 1953, Nos. When formulating the plans under review, both districts drew upon their considerable experience with earlier plans, having revised their policies periodically in light of that experience. of Ed., 439 U. S. 1380, 1383 (1978). Before Brown, the most prominent example of an exemplary black school was Dunbar High School. Sch. Cf. 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. Protection jurisprudence of this Court and the notion of a color-blind Constitution that this country has aspired for. See Washington State Report 1, supra); Hanawalt 3638, 40; Siqueland 3, 184, Table 4. He is entitled of course to his own opinion as to which studies he finds convincingalthough it bears mention that even the author of some of Justice Thomas preferred studies has found some evidence linking integrated learning environments to increased academic achievement. And stubborn facts of history linger and persist. 503 U. S., at 495. Furthermore, it was only used in a limited number of schoolsthose that were both over subscribed and relatively unintegrated. 4. on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit. 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. This litigation was commenced in July 2000, and the record in the District Court was closed before assignments for the 20012002 school year were made. For example, where does the dissents principle stop? 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. Sociological Rev. Sixteen years into the plan, 14 of 19 middle and high schools remained almost totally white or almost totally black. Most are not. yrs= (showing that reading scores went up, not down, when Seattles race-based assignment program ended at Sealth High School, Ingraham High School, and Franklin High Schoolsome of the schools most affected by the plan). No. First, the race-conscious criteria at issue only help set the outer bounds of broad ranges. In doing so, the board created a new racial guideline, namely a floating range of 10% above and 10% below the countywide average for the different grade levels. The board simultaneously redrew district boundaries so that middle school students could attend the same school for three years and high school students for four years. 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. See also Kennedy Report. Instead, it selectively relies on inapplicable precedent and even dicta while dismissing contrary holdings, alters and misapplies our well-established legal framework for assessing equal protection challenges to express racial classifications, and greatly exaggerates the consequences of todays decision. Id., at 29 ([I]n the period 19181923, Dunbar graduates earned fifteen degrees from Ivy League colleges, and ten degrees from Amherst, Williams, and Wesleyan). In upholding the admissions plan in Grutter, though, this Court relied upon considerations unique to institutions of higher education, noting that in light of the expansive freedoms of speech and thought associated with the university environment, universities occupy a special niche in our constitutional tradition. 539 U. S., at 329. . Another brief claims that school desegregation has a modest positive impact on the achievement of African-American students. App. It is an interest in teaching children to engage in the kind of cooperation among Americans of all races that is necessary to make a land of three hundred million people one Nation. The sweep of the mandate claimed by the district is contrary to our rulings that remedying past societal discrimination does not justify race-conscious government action. Written and curated by real attorneys at Quimbee. Comparing Court Cases including Seattle and Brown v.Board.docx It should escape no one that behind Justice Breyers veil of judicial modesty hides an inflated role for the Federal Judiciary. 2002). No. v. Swann, 402 U. S. 43, 4546 (1971). 1, pp. If the Court defers to the district, this will reaffirm local autonomy and give districts broad discretion to develop educational policy. The plans are tied to each districts specific racial demographics, rather than to any pedagogic concept of the level of diversity needed to obtain the asserted educational benefits. The plan was in effect from 19992002, for three school years. This the Constitution forbids. Ibid. Seattle and Louisville are two such districts, and the histories of their present plans set forth typical school integration stories. IV); 34 CFR 280.2, 280.4 (2006) (implementing regulations). At the conclusion of this review, the board adopted a new plan, called Project Renaissance, that emphasized student choice. After preliminary rulings and an eventual victory for the plaintiffs in the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the District Court in July 1975 entered an order requiring desegregation. It added magnet programs at two high schools. If the dissent were to say that college cases are simply not applicable to public school systems in kindergarten through high school, this would seem to me wrong, but at least an arguable distinction. This argument that different rules should govern racial classifications designed to include rather than exclude is not new; it has been repeatedly pressed in the past, see, e.g., Gratz, 539 U. S., at 282 (Breyer, J., concurring in judgment); id., at 301 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting); Adarand, supra, at 243 (Stevens, J., dissenting); Wygant, 476 U. S., at 316317 (Stevens, J., dissenting), and has been repeatedly rejected. tutional Provisions in the States Where Segregation in Education is Institutionalized). 1 1991 Memorandum 14, 711 (Stipulated Exh. 4, p.86 ([Y]ou cannot talk about this problem just in a vacuum in the manner of a law school discussion), with post, at 57 (The Founders meant the Constitution as a practical document). L.Rev. Reduction of an individual to an assigned racial identity for differential treatment is among the most pernicious actions our government can undertake. See also Ho v. San Francisco Unified School Dist., 147 F.3d 854, 865 (CA9 1998). At the same time, the plan provided that a previous black school would remain about 50% black, while a previous white school would remain about two-thirds white. Assertions of general societal discrimination are plainly insufficient. The school districts have not carried their heavy burden of showing that the interest they seek to achieve justifies the extreme means they have chosendiscriminating among individual students based on race by relying upon racial classifications in making school assignments. To begin with, Justice Breyer seeks to justify the plans at issue under our precedents recognizing the compelling interest in remedying past intentional discrimination. This is made for the. Even after Brown, some schools with predominantly black enrollments have achieved outstanding educational results. On the other hand, if the Court chooses not to give deference to the School District, school boards may lose some of their decision-making discretion, which could result in diminished community support. 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. These statements nowhere suggest that this freedom is limited to school districts where court-ordered desegregation measures are also in effect. Justia Annotations is a forum for attorneys to summarize, comment on, and analyze case law published on our site. If a school district has an interest in teaching racial understanding and cooperation, there is no logical reason why that interest should not extend to the composition of the teaching staff as well as the composition of the student body. [Footnote 10] There are good reasons not to apply a lesser standard to these cases. of Boston v. Board of Education, 389 U. S. 572 (1968) (per curiam) (dismissing for want of a federal question a challenge to a voluntary statewide integration plan using express racial criteria). It must be conceded its primary function in school cases was to delimit the powers of the Judiciary in the fashioning of remedies. 4, 1984) (1984 Memorandum); Memorandum from Donald W. Ingwerson, Superintendent, to the Board of Education, Jefferson County Public School District, pp. It sought one law, one Nation, one people, not simply as a matter of legal principle but in terms of how we actually live. No one contends that Seattle has established or that Louisville has reestablished a dual school system that separates students on the basis of race. 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. Unless we believe that the Constitution enforces one legal standard for the South and another for the North, this Court should grant Seattle the permission it granted Clarke County, Georgia. However, while this is an important potential consequence, it is also important to note that its relevance is dependent upon the Courts reasons for deeming racial diversity a compelling state interest, should it choose to do so. The Ninth Circuit asked whether the Seattle school districts particular use of race in its admission process violated the state constitution. See post, at 29. It is not simply one factor weighed with others in reaching a decision, as in Grutter; it is the factor. The question was originally brought up by the Ninth Circuit independently of the parties (377 F.3d 949 at 958) and the School District has now adopted that argument as its own before the Court. Compare Wessmann v. Gittens, 160 F.3d 790, 809810 (CA1 1998) (Boudin, J., concurring), with Comfort, 418 F. 3d, at 2829 (Boudin, C.J., concurring). When it comes to government race-based decisionmaking, the Constitution demands more. The majority acknowledges that in prior cases this Court has recognized at least two interests as compelling: an interest in remedying the effects of past intentional discrimination, and an interest in diversity in higher education. Ante, at 12, 13. of Plainfield, Union Cty., 45 N.J. (citing Armor & Rossell, Desegregation and Resegregation in the Public Schools, in Beyond the Color Line 239 (A. Thernstrom & S. Thernstrom eds. To School Committee of Boston? See, e.g., id., at 111. 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. From Swann to Grutter, this Courts decisions have emphasized this distinction, recognizing that the fate of race relations in this country depends upon unity among our children, for unless our children begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will ever learn to live together. Milliken, 418 U. S., at 783 (Marshall, J., dissenting). When questioned about the close timing, Gordon stated that all the District had to do was "push a button" to change things over to a plan compliant with the Court's ruling. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. 663, 664 (1962) (same); W. Vaughn, Schools for All: The Blacks and Public Education in the South, 18651877, pp. Despite the dissents repeated intimation of a remedial purpose, neither of the programs in question qualifies as a permissible race-based remedial measure. One schoolGarfieldis more or less in the center of Seattle. In 1956, two years after Brown made clear that Kentucky could no longer require racial segregation by law, the Louisville Board of Education created a geography-based student assignment plan designed to help achieve school integration. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard . Yesterday, the plans under review were lawful. 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). 2005). area/siso/disprof/2005/DP05all.pdf; Brief for Respond- Nothing in the opinion approves use of racial classifications as the means to address the imbalance. 1 ET AL. The Current Lawsuit, 2003 to the Present. Instead of accommodating different good-faith visions of our country and our Constitution, todays holding upsets settled expectations, creates legal uncertainty, and threatens to produce considerable further litigation, aggravating race-related conflict. And to the extent the plurality opinion can be interpreted to foreclose consideration of these interests, I disagree with that reasoning. In fact, the defining feature of both plans is greater emphasis upon student choice. ([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.) 1, 149 Wash. 2d 660, 689690, 663, 72 P.3d 151, 166, 153 (2003) (en banc) (Parents Involved V). tion of the races); id., at App. Id. 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). 7276 (Feb. 1989); see also Clotfelter, Interracial Contact in High School Extracurricular Activities, 34 Urban Rev., No. See post, at 2829. of New Kent Cty., 391 U. S. 430, 435436 (1968). in No. The Constitution abhors classifications based on race, not only because those classifications can harm favored races or are based on illegitimate motives, but also because every time the government places citizens on racial registers and makes race relevant to the provision of burdens or benefits, it demeans us all. Grutter, supra, at 353 (opinion of Thomas, J.). I wholly concur in The Chief Justices opinion. Nothing in the extensive history of desegregation efforts over the past 50 years gives the districts, or this Court, any reason to believe that another method is possible to accomplish these goals. See Powell 35. 6, 11 (on file with the University of Washington Library); see generally Siqueland 1215; Hanawalt 1820. Post, at 2829. 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. It applied that label to 26 schools, including 4 high schoolsCleveland (72.8% minority), Franklin (76.6% minority), Garfield (78.4% minority), and Rainier Beach (58.9% minority). In this Courts finest hour, Brown v. Board of Education challenged this history and helped to change it. 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). None of these elements is compelling. There the Court sustained a system that, it found, was flexible enough to take into account all pertinent elements of diversity, 539 U. S., at 341 (internal quotation marks omitted), and considered race as only one factor among many, id., at 340.