Segregation at the time of Brown gave way to expansive remedies that included busing, which in turn gave rise to fears of white flight and resegregation. Without explicitly resting on either of these strands of doctrine, the dissent repeatedly invokes the school districts supposed interests in remedying past segregation. As a threshold matter, we must assure ourselves of our jurisdiction. 05915, p. 48, but we are nonetheless obliged to ensure that it exists, Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U. S. 500, 514 (2006). 547 U. S. __ (2006). (For ease of exposition, I shall still use Louisville to refer to what is now the combined districts.) of Los Angeles, 458 U. S. 527, 535536 (1982) ([S]tate courts of California continue to have an obligation under state law to order segregated school districts to use voluntary desegregation techniques, whether or not there has been a finding of intentional segregation. Every 9th or 10th grader could apply to any high school in the system, and the high school would accept applicants according to set criteriaone of which consisted of the need to attain or remain in compliance with the plans racial guidelines. For the 20012002 school year, the deviation permitted from the desired racial composition was increased from 10 to 15 percent. The Washington Supreme Court ruled that the Seattle School Districts use of race was valid under the state constitution. To the contrary, Jefferson County in its briefing has explained how and when it employs these classifications only in terms so broad and imprecise that they cannot withstand strict scrutiny. In Seattle School Dist. This is a decision that the Court and the Nation will come to regret. To School Committee of Boston? Five Supreme Court justices rejected voluntary desegregation plans in Seattle and . In 1968 our mandatory jurisdiction was defined by the provision of the 1948 Judicial Code then codified at 28 U. S.C. 1257, see 62 Stat. in 05915, p. 20. Today, almost 50 years later, attitudes toward race in this Nation have changed dramatically. (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.) "It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much," Justice Breyer said of the Court's decision. The amicus briefs in the cases before us mirror this divergence of opinion. 394, 401403 (1994) (hereinafter Dawkins & Braddock); Wells & Crain, Perpetuation Theory and the Long-Term Effects of School Desegregation, 64 Rev. If we are to insist upon unanimity in the social science literature before finding a compelling interest, we might never find one. The principle that racial balancing is not permitted is one of substance, not semantics. 05908, at 276a. See also Quillian & Campbell 541. Agencies Regs. . 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. A similar reasoning could be applied in this case. In Seattle, for example, in more than 80% of all cases, that choice alone determines which high schools Seattles ninth graders will attend. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306 (2003); id., at 387388 (Kennedy, J., dissenting). It is no answer to say that these cases can be distinguished from Brown because Brown involved invidious racial classifications whereas the racial classifications here are benign. The Ninth Circuit dismissed fairly briefly the contention that PICS did not have a personal stake or suffer an actual injury, reasoning that it was satisfied because some of the parents had children who would reach high school age within the next several years. Chief Justice Roberts announced the judgment of the Court, and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II, IIIA, and IIIC, and an opinion with respect to Parts IIIB and IV, in which Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito join. 72); Brief for Respondents in No. Similarly, between 1968 and 1980, the number of black children attending schools that were more than 90% minority fell from 64% to 33% in the Nation (from 78% to 23% in the South), but that too reversed direction, rising by the year 2000 from 33% to 37% in the Nation (from 23% to 31% in the South). It pledged the use of other resources in order to encourage all schools to achieve an African-American enrollment equivalent to the average district-wide African-American enrollment at the schools respective elementary, middle or high school level. And the plan continued use of magnet schools. PDF SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES - Justia Law Seattle Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 05915, pp. The districts argue that other factors, such as student preferences, affect assignment decisions under their plans, but under each plan when race comes into play, it is decisive by itself. The plans here are more narrowly tailored than the law school admissions program there at issue. See Tr. Just as the school districts lack an interest in preventing resegregation, they also have no present interest in remedying past segregation. ), appeal dismd for want of a substantial federal question, 484 U. S. 804 (1987). In my view, this contextual approach to scrutiny is altogether fitting. Because attending Ingraham would have placed a burden on the family and would have limited the students ability to participate in after school activities of their choice, both parents elected to send their children to parochial high schools. A victory for PICS, on the other hand, will indicate that equal protection rights are applicable to citizens of all ages and affirm the notion that race can not be an exclusive criterion of classification. Petitioner Crystal Meredith challenges the districts decision to deny her son Joshua McDonald a requested transfer for his kindergarten enrollment. How does one tell when a racial classification is invidious? After discussing the democratic element, the dissent repeats its assertion that the social science evidence supporting that interest is sufficiently strong to permit a school board to determine that this interest is compelling. Post, at 40. And the Court, using the very phrase that Justice Marshall had used to describe strict scrutinys application to any exclusionary use of racial criteria, sought to dispel the notion that strict scrutiny is as likely to condemn inclusive uses of race-conscious criteria as it is to invalidate exclusionary uses. As to tracking enrollments, performance and other statistics by race, tracking reveals the problem; it does not cure it. past cases have est. To remedy the wrong, school districts that had been segregated by law had no choice, whether under court supervision or pursuant to voluntary desegregation efforts, but to resort to extraordinary measures including individual student and teacher assignment to schools based on race. 2 1996 Memorandum 47, and Attachment 2; Hampton I, supra, at 768. 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. 2, pp. In Seattle, the parties settled after the school district pledged to undertake a desegregation plan. 1" (2007) and "Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education" (2007), the high court forbade those . Since then, no race-based remedial measures have been required in Louisville. Only then must the judge defer to a democratic majority. The segregationists in Brown argued that their racial classifications were benign, not invidious. Regardless of what Justice Breyers goals might be, this Court does not sit to create a society that includes all Americans or to solve the problems of troubled inner city schooling. Ibid. The Seattle School District allowed students to apply to any high school in the District. of Boston v. Board of Education, O.T. 1967, No. 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). B1, B5. On what legal ground can the majority rest its contrary view? The only support todays dissent can draw from Grutter must be found in its various separate opinions, not in the opinion filed for the Court. This, in turn, has consequences of its own. on writ of certiorari to the united states court of In Grutter, in contrast, the consideration of race was viewed as indispensable in more than tripling minority representation at the law school there at issue. The fact that the controlling opinion would make a school districts use of such criteria often unlawful (and the pluralitys colorblind view would make such use always unlawful) suggests that todays opinion will require setting aside the laws of several States and many local communities. Because of its importance, I shall repeat what this Court said about the matter in Swann. No. The Washington Supreme Court determined that the State Civil Rights Act bars only preferential treatment programs where race or gender is used by government to select a less qualified applicant over a more qualified applicant, and not [p]rograms which are racially neutral, such as the [districts] open choice plan. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist., No. Consequently, even though the issue was in some respect moot with respect to that petitioner, jurisdiction existed. Well, we want to have the schools that make up the percentage of students of the population). Brief for Respondents in No. Perhaps recognizing that reliance on Grutter cannot sustain their plans, both school districts assert additional interests, distinct from the interest upheld in Grutter, to justify their race-based assignments. After all, this Court has in many cases explicitly permitted districts to use target ratios based upon the districts underlying population. Section 4. 2d 750 (opinion of Powell, J. Instead, what was upheld in Grutter was consideration of a far broader array of qualifications and characteristics of which racial or ethnic origin is but a single though important element. 539 U. S., at 325 (quoting Bakke, supra, A non-profit group, Parents Involved in Community Schools (Parents), 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. First, Seattle claimed that none of the current members of Parents Involved can claim an imminent injury. siso/reports/anrep/altern/938.pdf. 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. | University of Virginia School of Law to reject the argument that a race-conscious plan is permissible only when there has been a judicial finding of de jure segregation. 610 F.2d, at 663664. First, the race-conscious criteria at issue only help set the outer bounds of broad ranges. And when de facto discrimination is at issue our tradition has been that the remedial rules are different. The District then petitioned for an en banc ruling by a panel of 11 Ninth Circuit judges. And I have explained how the plans before us are more narrowly tailored than those in Grutter. Statement in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1952, No. See Parents Involved VII, 426 F.3d, at 1166; McFarland II, 416 F.3d, at 514; Comfort v. Lynn School Comm., 418 F.3d 1, 13 (CA1 2005). But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. W. Bowen & D. Bok, The Shape of the River 118 (1998) (hereinafter Bowen & Bok). of Oral Arg. Indeed, the very school districts that once spurned integration now strive for it. See, e.g., Coleman, Desegregation of the Public Schools Bd. Moreover, these cases are not governed by Grutter v. How do the remedial interests here differ in kind from those at issue in the voluntary desegregation efforts that Attorney General Kennedy many years ago described in his letter to the President? 05908, at 7. 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? The Court was exceedingly careful in describing the interest furthered in Grutter as not an interest in simple ethnic diversity but rather a far broader array of qualifications and characteristics in which race was but a single element. 7045 and 7291 (WD Ky., July 30, 1975) (1975 Judgment and Findings).
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