The Seattle School District allowed students to apply to any high school in the District. of Jefferson Cty., 489 F.2d 925 (CA6 1973), vacated and remanded, 418 U. S. 918 (1974), reinstated with modifications, 510 F.2d 1358 (CA6 1974) (per curiam); Judgment and Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law in Newburg Area Council, Inc. v. Board of Ed., of Jefferson Cty., Nos. Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S. 95, 109 (1983). The District argues that its use of race in high school admissions serves three compelling government interests: (1) the educational benefits of a diverse student body; (2) the reduction of racial isolation and de facto segregation; and (3) providing equality of opportunity to all students. PICS cites Supreme Court jurisprudence for the proposition that there is no compelling government interest in adjusting general societal discrimination. See, e.g., Columbus Bd. In administering public schools, it is permissible to consider the schools racial makeup and adopt general policies to encourage a diverse student body, one aspect of which is its racial composition. http: //www.seattleschools.org/area/siso/disprof/2005/DP05 all.pdf. What do the racial classifications at issue here do, if not accord differential treatment on the basis of race? In Seattle, the district seeks white enrollment of between 31 and 51 percent (within 10 percent of the district white average of 41 percent), and nonwhite enrollment of between 49 and 69 percent (within 10 percent of the district minority average of 59 percent). Add to the inconclusive social science the fact of black achievement in racially isolated environments. Rev. Just prior to the plans implementation, for example, 4 of Seattles 11 high schools were imbalanced, i.e., almost exclusively black or almost exclusively white. By 1979, only two were out of balance. By 1980 only Cleveland remained out of balance (as the board defined it) and that by a mere two students. Jefferson County fails to make clear to this Courteven in the limited respects implicated by Joshuas initial assignment and transfer denialwhether in fact it relies on racial classifications in a manner narrowly tailored to the interest in question, rather than in the far-reaching, inconsistent, and adhoc manner that a less forgiving reading of the record would suggest. However, some students still must take public transportation. In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle (2007), the United States Supreme Court found that the school district was using race in an unconstitutional manner in its assignment plan. 529, 532 (SC 1951))); Brief for Appellees in Briggs v. Elliott, O.T. 1952, No. One can attempt to identify a construction of Jefferson Countys student assignment plan that, at least as a logical matter, complies with these competing propositions; but this does not remedy the underlying problem. v. Barksdale, 348 F.2d 261, 266 (CA1 1965). 2841. Contrary to the dissents arguments, resegregation is not occurring in Seattle or Louisville; these school boards have no present interest in remedying past segregation; and these race-based student-assignment programs do not serve any compelling state interest. 7045 and 7291, (WD Ky., June 16, 1978), pp. This distinction is critically important in the context of education. 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. Opinions differed. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). 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). I cannot endorse that conclusion. And contexts differ dramatically one from the other. 05908, at 137a139a. On appeal, a three-judge panel the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, but upon en banc rehearing the court affirmed the lower court decision. As the Court explained in Rice v. Cayetano, 528 U. S. 495, 517 (2000), [o]ne of the principal reasons race is treated as a forbidden classification is that it demeans the dignity and worth of a person to be judged by ancestry instead of by his or her own merit and essential qualities.. of City School Dist. It is not simply one factor weighed with others in reaching a decision, as in Grutter; it is the factor. PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY In briefing and argument before this Court, Seattle contends that its use of race helps to reduce racial concentration in schools and to ensure that racially concentrated housing patterns do not prevent nonwhite students from having access to the most desirable schools. Segregation in the South grew up and is kept going because and only because the white race has wanted it that wayan incontrovertible fact which itself hardly consorts with equality). 2d 834 (WD Ky. 2004); McFarland v. Jefferson Cty. This Court has also held that school districts may be required by federal statute to undertake race-conscious desegregation efforts even when there is no likelihood that de jure segregation can be shown. Therefore, if governments may constitutionally use racial balancing to achieve these aspirational ends in schools, they may use racial balancing to achieve similar goals at every levelfrom state-sponsored 4H clubs, see Bazemore v. Friday, 478 U. S. 385, 388390 (1986) (Brennan, J., concurring), to the state civil service. To do this as an educational policy is within the broad discretionary powers of school authorities. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. (For ease of exposition, I shall still use Louisville to refer to what is now the combined districts.) Roberts cites to: Grutter, supra, at 327, 328, 334, 123 S. Ct. 2325, 156 L. Ed. [Footnote 2] If an oversubscribed school is not within 10 percentage points of the districts overall white/nonwhite racial balance, it is what the district calls integration positive, and the district employs a tiebreaker that selects for assignment students whose race will serve to bring the school into balance. Id., at 38a. 1, supra. Regardless of the merit of Grutter, the compelling interest recognized in that case cannot support these plans. When determining where to place a child or where to transfer a child both school districts use race as the qualifying factor on where to send the child. 05908, at 284a. 693, 227 N.E. 2d 729 (1967), appeal dismd, 389 U. S. 572 (1968) (per curiam), post, at 35, is inapposite for the same reason that many of the cases cited by Justice Breyer are inapposite; the case involved a Massachusetts law that required school districts to avoid racial imbalance in schools but did not specify how to achieve this goaland certainly did not require express racial classifications as the means to do so. of Boston. Id. In this respect, Swann was not a sharp or unexpected departure from prior rulings; it reflected a consensus that had already emerged among state and lower federal courts. Furthermore, it is unclear whether increased interracial contact improves racial attitudes and relations. The dissent makes much of the supposed difficulty of determining whether prior segregation was de jure or de facto. Section 4. Under Supreme Court jurisprudence, to prove there was no jurisdiction under Article III 2, the School District had to prove that they would not reinstate the policy. 2, pp. Pp. Here Roberts provides the following string citation: Here, Roberts provides the following string cite: Id., at 337, 123 S. Ct. 2325, 156 L. Ed. See ante, at 3436. Also, the racial tiebreaker has not been employed in Seattle school district since 2002, first due to injunctions and subsequently by the choice of the school district. Id., at 276, 280 (OConnor, J., concurring). [29] The districts have also failed to show that they considered methods other than explicit racial classifications to achieve their stated goals. 05908, at 303a. . Cf. No. were race-neutral) does not indicate the decline in black achieve- At the elementary school level, based on his or her address, each student is designated a resides school to which students within a specific geographic area are assigned; elementary resides schools are grouped into clusters in order to facilitate integration. App. See generally R. Sears, A Utopian Experiment in Kentucky: Integration and Social Equality at Berea, 18661904 (1996) (describing federal funding, through the Freedmans Bureau, of race-conscious school integration programs). A panel of the Ninth Circuit then again reversed the District Court, this time ruling on the federal constitutional question. in No. All this is true enough in the contexts in which these statements were madegovernment contracting, voting districts, allocation of broadcast licenses, and electing state officersbut when it comes to using race to assign children to schools, history will be heard. of Ed. [1][2] Chief Justice Roberts wrote in his plurality opinion that The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.[1] Some have credited this decision as contributing to schools resegregating in the United States, and it's been noted that American schools are more racially segregated now than in the late 1960s.[3]. Public Schools, 330 F.Supp. 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. "[5] He went on to say, "What the government is not permitted to do, absent a showing of necessity not made here, is to classify every student on the basis of race and to assign each of them to schools based on that classification. Seattle and Louisville are two such districts, and the histories of their present plans set forth typical school integration stories. The distinction between government and private action, furthermore, can be amorphous both as a historical matter and as a matter of present-day finding of fact. The districts have also failed to show they considered methods other than explicit racial classifications to achieve their stated goals. For instance, students who attend Franklin and Ballard will receive metro passes rather than bus service. It is an interest in helping our children learn to work and play together with children of different racial backgrounds. The plans here are not tailored to achieving a degree of diversity necessary to realize the asserted educational benefits; instead the plans are tailored, in the words of Seattles Manager of Enrollment Planning, Technical Support, and Demographics, to the goal established by the school board of attain-ing a level of diversity within the schools that approximates the districts overall demographics. App. Such reservations and preliminary analyses of course did not decide the merits of this questionas evidenced by the disagreement among the lower courts on this issue. But that distinction concerns what the Constitution requires school boards to do, not what it permits them to do. wa. 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. 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.
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