Ibid. 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. At the time, the districts public school population was approximately 30% black. See id., at 12, 2930. In 20002001, with the racial tiebreaker, it was 17.9 percent Asian-American, 13.3 percent African-American, 7 percent Latino, 58.4 percent Caucasian, and 3.4 percent Native-American. The plurality cannot avoid this simple fact. 2d 834 (WD Ky. 2004); McFarland v. Jefferson Cty. ); brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). This argument is unavailing; the groups members have children in all levels of the districts schools, and the complaint sought declaratory and injunctive relief on behalf of members whose elementary and middle school children may be denied admission to the high schools of their choice in the future. People Who Care v. Rockford Bd. Brief for Respondent at 1617. 2738, 168 L.Ed.2d 508 (2007), United States Supreme Court, case facts, key issues, and holdings and reasonings online today. The dissent asserts that racially balanced schools improve educational outcomes for black children. Each of these premises is, in my respectful view, incorrect. Cf. In Grutter, the number of minority students the school sought to admit was an undefined meaningful number necessary to achieve a genuinely diverse student body. Jefferson County estimates that the racial guidelines account for only 3 percent of assignments. Grutter, 539 U. S., at 348 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). [citation needed], The 414 split makes PICS somewhat similar to the 1978 Bakke case, which held that affirmative action was unconstitutional in the case directly before the Court. Achieving racially balanced school districts does not amount to a compelling government interest that satisfies strict scrutiny. 2, p. 59 ([I]t would be difficult indeed to find a case so favored by precedent as is the case for South Carolina here). It contends that race was used in a narrow way because the race tiebreaker determined the placement of only about ten percent of incoming high school students and was one of several factors under consideration. See, e.g., S. Carter, No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools 4950, 5356, 7173, 8184, 8788 (2001); A. Thernstrom & S. Thernstrom, No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning 4364 (2003); see also L. Izumi, They Have Overcome: High-Poverty, High-Performing Schools in California (2002) (chronicling exemplary achievement in predominantly Hispanic schools in California). The way Seattle classifies its students bears this out. And it is the pluralitys opinion, not this dissent that fails to ground the result it would reach in law. Ante, at 28. The School District, however, argues that the plan was narrowly tailored to achieve the compelling interests of promoting diversity, eliminating harms of racial isolation, and providing equal access to popular schools. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit originally reversed, 285 F. 3d 1236 (9th Cir. First, there is a historical and remedial element: an interest in setting right the consequences of prior conditions of segregation. The Court reasoned that the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause prohibited schools from voluntarily using racial classifications to achieve integration. I use the words may need here deliberately. 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? See Wygant v. Jackson Bd. See Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 244, 301 (2003) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting); Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peńa, 515 U. S. 200, 243 (1995) (Stevens, J., dissenting). (PDF) Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District Moreover, maintaining this federally mandated system of classification makes sense insofar as Seattles experience indicates that the relevant circumstances in respect to each of these different minority groups are roughly similar, e.g., in terms of residential patterns, and call for roughly similar responses. Opponents brought a lawsuit. The plurality's decision should not be read so broadly that it prevents the government from engaging in any race-conscious action. area/siso/disprof/2005/DP05all.pdf; Brief for Respond- While it acknowledges that racial classifications are used to make certain assignment decisions, it fails to make clear, for example, who makes the decisions; what if any oversight is employed; the precise circumstances in which an assignment decision will or will not be made on the basis of race; or how it is determined which of two similarly situated children will be subjected to a given race-based decision. Courts even began to tamp down on local, voluntary busing programs. Today, they are not); post, at 66 (predicting further litigation, aggravating race-related conflict). 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. Brief for Respondents in No. The argument ignores the dangers presented by individual classifications, dangers that are not as pressing when the same ends are achieved by more indirect means. This argument is unavailing. The notion that a democratic interest qualifies as a compelling interest (or constitutes a part of a compelling interest) is proposed for the first time in todays dissent and has little basis in the Constitution or our precedent, which has narrowly restricted the interests that qualify as compelling. Part IV (again joined only by a plurality of the Court) addressed Justice Breyer's dissent. See Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peńa, 515 U. S. 200, 240 (1995) (Thomas, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Held:The judgments are reversed, and the cases are remanded. The plurality should have remembered that historically only African-American students had been told where they could go to school. Seattle and Louisville are two such districts, and the histories of their present plans set forth typical school integration stories. 2002). Third, the manner in which the school boards developed these plans itself reflects narrow tailoring. Each plan was devised to overcome a history of segregated public schools. See Craig v. Boren, 429 U. S. 190, 211 (1976) (concurring opinion). . The Seattle School District has begun providing transportation to students who live more than 2.5 miles from their assigned high school. Brown v. Board of Education. Cf. As the Court explained, [t]he importance of this individualized consideration in the context of a race-conscious admissions program is paramount. Ibid. PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS v.SEATTLE SCHOOL DIST. NO. 1 Part II dismissed the respondent's attempts to argue that Parents Involved lacks standing. The U.S. Constitution in Article III 2 specifies the scope of matters on which the federal courts can issue decisions. 4 See generally Seattle School Dist. 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. See 539 U. S., at 320. But the Seattle schools had never been segregated by law; and the Kentucky schools, though previously segregated by law, had their desegregation decree dissolved by a District Court in 2000 on the finding the school district had "eliminated the vestiges associated with the former policy of segregation and its pernicious effects". (b)The plurality opinion is too dismissive of governments legitimate interest in ensuring that all people have equal opportunity regardless of their race. 539 U. S., at 351352, 353. Moreover, these cases are not governed by Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306, 328, in which the Court held that, for strict scrutiny purposes, a government interest in student body diversity in the context of higher education is compelling. What about historically black colleges, which have established traditions and programs that might disproportionately appeal to one race or another? 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. Without it, some schools such as Cleveland and Ranier would have remained substantially dominated by minorities, while minority students were denied the opportunity to attend the popular schools outside their neighborhoods. in No. For Brown held out a promise. Id., at 483487. 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. Louisvilles plan was created and initially adopted when a compulsory district court order was in place. Seattles racial tiebreaker results, in the end, only in shifting a small number of students between schools. Independent School Dist., 719 S.W. 2d 350, 352353 (Tex. The District contends that these requirements are not met in this case. Compare post, at 3, 2228, with Brief for Respondents in No. See Brief for Respondents in No. In 2007, the United States Supreme Court struck down two local school board initiatives meant to reverse extreme racial segregation in public schools. of Ed., 439 U. S. 1380, 1383 (1978), and by the host of state court decisions cited by Justice Breyer, see post, 2527,[Footnote 8] were fully consistent with that disposition. See, e.g., Coleman, Desegregation of the Public Schools The term racial imbalance refers to a ratio between nonwhite and other students in public schools which is sharply out of balance with the racial composition of the society in which nonwhite children study, serve and work. See App. in No. If Gratz is to be the measure, the racial classification systems here are a fortiori invalid. 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. Thus, more nonwhite students (107, 27, and 82, respectively) who selected one of these three schools as a top choice received placement at the school than would have been the case had race not been considered, and proximity been the next tiebreaker. In this Courts finest hour, Brown v. Board of Education challenged this history and helped to change it. 05915, at 46. If a school has reached the extremes of the racial guidelines, a student whose race would contribute to the schools racial imbalance will not be assigned there. In doing so, the plurality parts company from this Courts prior cases, and it takes from local government the longstanding legal right to use race-conscious criteria for inclusive purposes in limited ways. Two of the plaintiffs in this case had children who were entering high school in the fall of 2000. How do the educational and civic interests differ in kind from those that underlie and justify the racial diversity that the law school sought in Grutter, where this Court found a compelling interest? Justice Breyer nonetheless relies on the good intentions and motives of the school districts, stating that he has found no case that repudiated this constitutional asymmetry between that which seeks to exclude and that which seeks to include members of minority races. Post, at 29 (emphasis in original). PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY 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. ospi. There has been considerable interest in this case, as demonstrated by the extraordinary number (approximately sixty) of amicus briefs filed in the case. The dissents reliance on this Courts precedents to justify the explicit, sweeping, classwide racial classifications at issue here is a misreading of our authorities that, it appears to me, tends to undermine well-accepted principles needed to guard our freedom. 26. 05-908, at 38a-39a, 45a. Is it not the height of wisdom that the manner in which that shall be conducted should be left to those most immediately affected by it, and that the wishes of the parents, both white and colored, should be ascertained before their children are forced into what may be an unwelcome contact?). At the same time, it is urged that these laws are valid as a matter of constitutionally permissible social experimentation by the States. 3, p.37 (Yet a holding that school segregation by race violates the Constitution will result in upheaval in all of those places not now subject to Federal judicial scrutiny. We granted certiorari, and now reverse. The School District relies on Grutter in describing the educational benefits of a diverse student body as (1) instilling the civic virtue of cross-racial understanding; (2) creating better-informed citizens by exposing students to a wide range of viewpoints; and (3) enabling students to achieve more success. 663, 664 (1962) (same); W. Vaughn, Schools for All: The Blacks and Public Education in the South, 18651877, pp. The fact that state and local governments had been discriminating on the basis of race for a long time was irrelevant to the Brown Court. In support, the dissent unquestioningly cites certain social science research to support propositions that are hotly disputed among social scientists. L. 95561, Tit. Indeed, in its more recent opinions, the Court recognized that the fundamental purpose of strict scrutiny review is to take relevant differences between fundamentally different situations . See Hallinan 741742. The statement was not a technical holding in the case. No. See, e.g., Armor & Rossell, Desegregation and Resegregation in the Public Schools, in Beyond the Color Line: New Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America 239, 251 (A. Thernstrom & S. Thernstrom eds. See Education Commission of the States, Open Enrollment: 50-State Report (2007), online at http://mb2.ecs.org/reports/Report.aspx?id=268. & Rodgers, Coercion to Compliance: Southern School Districts and School Desegregation Guidelines, 38 J. This Courts opinion in McDaniel v. Barresi, 402 U. S. 39 (1971), fits comfortably within this framework. 3941, 8283. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 56061 (1992). Parents in Louisville, Kentucky and Seattle, Washington argued that those districts' school integration programs - each of which was voluntarily adopted by local school boards to promote racial integration - violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 929; that provision was repealed in 1988, see 102 Stat. Middle and high school students are designated a single resides school and assigned to that school unless it is at the extremes of the racial guidelines. Seattle undertook its integration efforts in response to the filing of a federal lawsuit and as a result of its settlement of a segregation complaint filed with the federal OCR. The histories I have set forth describe the extensive and ongoing efforts of two school districts to bring about greater racial integration of their public schools.
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