Brief for Respondents 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). [Footnote 27] Whatever else the Courts rejection of the segregationists arguments in Brown might have established, it certainly made clear that state and local governments cannot take from the Constitution a right to make decisions on the basis of race by adverse possession. 539 U.S., at 325, 123 S. Ct. 2325, 156 L. Ed. The Supreme Court will be forced to closely examine the social and education benefits that, as the District argues, come from racial and ethnic diversity in secondary education. 1996); see also T. Sowell, Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study 141165 (2004). 294 F.3d 1085 (9th Cir. Accord, post, at 61 (At a minimum, the pluralitys views would threaten a surge of race-based litigation. 2005). v. Seattle Sch. Id. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court expressly stated: The racial imbalance act requires the school committee of every municipality annually to submit statistics showing the percentage of nonwhite pupils in all public schools and in each school. 23 (OCR, Apr. 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. The issue here is whether the constitution permits, rather than prohibits, voluntary State action aimed toward reducing and eventually eliminating de facto school segregation. In light of the evident risk of a return to school systems that are in fact (though not in law) resegregated, many school districts have felt a need to maintain or to extend their integration efforts. The plan then drew new geographical school assignment zones designed to satisfy these guidelines; the district could reassign students if particular schools failed to meet the guidelines and was required to do so if a school repeatedly missed these targets. Id., at 43. ; Grutter, supra, at 329330; Freeman, 503 U. S., at 494. Adarand, 515 U. S., at 228229. Fourteen of the districts nineteen non-vocational middle and high schools were close to totally black or totally white. Approximately 307 student assignments were affected by the racial tiebreaker in 20002001; the district was able to track the enrollment status of 293 of these students. of Ed., 476 U. S. 267, 320 (1986) (Stevens, J., dissenting), in turn quoting Fullilove, 448 U. S., at 547 (Stevens, J., dissenting); brackets and citation omitted). It is convinced that the happiness, the progress and the welfare of these children is best promoted in segregated schools); Brief for Appellees on Reargument in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1953, No. And it expanded the transfer opportunities available to elementary and middle school pupils. Percentage of Black Students in 90100 Percent Nonwhite and Majority Nonwhite Public Schools by Region, 19501954 to 2000, Fall Enrollment. of New Kent Cty., 391 U. S. 430, 441442 (1968). There has been considerable interest in this case, as demonstrated by the extraordinary number (approximately sixty) of amicus briefs filed in the case. The new policy added an explicitly racial criterion: If a place exists in a school, then, irrespective of other transfer criteria, a white student may transfer to a predominantly black school, and a black student may transfer to a predominantly white school. As McDaniel and Harris show, that is historically untrue. 733, 741742 (1998) (hereinafter Hallinan). This Court has made many decisions of widespread effect; none would affect more people more directly in more fundamental interests and, in fact, cause more chaos in local government than a reversal of the decision in this case). The reason is obvious: In Seattle, where the overall student population is 41% white, permitting 85% white enrollment at a single school would make it much more likely that other schools would have very few white students, whereas in Jefferson County, with a 60% white enrollment, one school with 85% white students would be less likely to skew enrollments elsewhere. As to allocating resources for special programs, Seattle and Louisville have both experimented with this; indeed, these programs are often referred to as magnet schools, but the limited desegregation effect of these efforts extends at most to those few schools to which additional resources are granted. But I am quite comfortable in the company I keep. in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1952, No. The U.S. Constitution in Article III 2 specifies the scope of matters on which the federal courts can issue decisions. McFarland I, 330 F.Supp. How does one tell when a racial classification is invidious? Rather, it must explain to the courts and to the Nation why it would abandon guidance set forth many years before, guidance that countless others have built upon over time, and which the law has continuously embodied. In the Seattle case, the school district has gone further in describing the methods and criteria used to determine assignment decisions based on individual racial classifications, but it has nevertheless failed to explain why, in a district composed of a diversity of races, with only a minority of the students classified as white, it has employed the crude racial categories of white and non-white as the basis for its assignment decisions. 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? 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. 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, e.g., Schofield, Review of Research on School Desegregations Impact on Elementary and Secondary School Students, in Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education 597, 606607 (J. See ante, at 3941 (plurality opinion) (comparing Jim Crow segregation to Seattle and Louisvilles integration polices); ante, at 2832 (Thomas, J., concurring). . See 377 F.3d 949, 10051006 (CA9 2004) (Parents Involved VI) (Graber, J., dissenting). Second, the distinction between de jure segregation (caused by school systems) and de facto segregation (caused, e.g., by housing patterns or generalized societal discrimination) is meaningless in the present context, thereby dooming the pluralitys endeavor to find support for its views in that distinction. 2002). It was the promise of true racial equalitynot as a matter of fine words on paper, but as a matter of everyday life in the Nations cities and schools. Our cases recognized a fundamental difference between those school districts that had engaged in de jure segregation and those whose segregation was the result of other factors. These effects not only reinforce the prior gains of integrated primary and secondary education; they also foresee a time when there is less need to use race-conscious criteria. 1 of King Cty., Washington, and the OCR (June 9, 1978) (filed with the Court as Exh. Pp. 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. Moreover, giving some degree of weight to a local school boards knowledge, expertise, and concerns in these particular matters is not inconsistent with rigorous judicial scrutiny. Rather, the Court has insisted upon some showing of prior discrimination by the governmental unit involved before allowing limited use of racial classifications in order to remedy such discrimination. The Courts decision in Croson, supra, reinforced the difference between the remedies available to redress de facto and de jure discrimination: To accept [a] claim that past societal discrimination alone can serve as the basis for rigid racial preferences would be to open the door to competing claims for remedial relief for every disadvantaged group. The Jefferson County plan, however, is based on a goal of replicating at each school an African-American enrollment equivalent to the average district-wide African-American enrollment. Id., at 81. 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. See, e.g., Eisenberg v. Montgomery Cty. The Constitution is not that malleable. The system that was upheld in Grutter considered a number of other factors to assure diversity of not only race but also socioeconomic status, skills, and so forth. First, in an open choice district like that in Seattle, using race as an isolated factor for admission may deny some students the opportunity to attend the school of their choice, thereby burdening those families affected. ospi.k12. Students are assigned to school based on the race makeup of each school, no less than 15%, no more than 50%. The Ninth Circuit below stated that it share[d] in the hope expressed in Grutter that in 25 years racial preferences would no longer be necessary to further the interest identified in that case. Cf. See Brief for Respondents in No. There, too, the distinction serves as a limit on the exercise of a power that reaches to the very verge of constitutional authority. See also Parents Involved VII, 426 F.3d, at 1222 (Bea, J., dissenting) (The way to end racial discrimination is to stop discriminating by race). That, too, strongly supports the lawfulness of their methods. Id. 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.). If we look at cases decided during the interim between Brown and Adarand, we can see how a rigid adherence to tiers of scrutiny obscures Browns clear message. It consequently held unconstitutional the use of race-based targets to govern admission to magnet schools. This case was brought by a non-profit organization, Parents Involved in Community Schools (PICS), representing parents of students in the Seattle School District (District) who objected to the school districts use of race as a tiebreaker for admission to schools as violating the Equal Protection Clause. These other meanse.g., where to construct new schools, how to allocate resources among schools, and which academic offerings to provide to attract students to certain schoolsimplicate different considerations than the explicit racial classifications at issue in these cases, and we express no opinion on their validitynot even in dicta. In these cases, the fact that the number of students whose assignment depends on express racial classifications is small suggests that the schools could have achieved their stated ends through different means, including the facially race-neutral means set forth above or, if necessary, a more nuanced, individual evaluation of school needs and student characteristics that might include race as a component. State laws or administrative policies, directed toward the reduction and eventual elimination of de facto segregation of children in the schools and racial imbalance, have been approved by every high State court which has considered the issue. The Jefferson County, Ky., district was subject to a desegregation decree until 2000, when the District Court dissolved the decree after finding that the district had eliminated the vestiges of prior segregation to the greatest extent practicable. Opinions differed. In doing so, it sought to deemphasize the use of racial criteria and to increase the likelihood that a student would receive an assignment at his first or second choice high school.
PDF Affirmative Action and Diversity in Public Education: Legal Developments 2002), but then withdrew its opinion, finding that the appeal turned on an unsettled question of state law which the state courts would best be able to answer in the first instance.
(PDF) Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District See, e.g., Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U. S. 467, 495 (1992). of Ed., 402 U. S. 1, 16 (1971). Compare ante, at 12 (opinion of the Court) ([T]he Seattle public schools have never shown that they were ever segregated by law (emphasis added)), with ante at 2930 (plurality opinion) (assuming the Seattle school district was never segregated by law, but seeming to concede that a school district with de jure segregation need not be subject to a court order to be allowed to engage in race-based remedial measures). 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.
Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School - CaseBriefs 1819 (The truth of the matter is that this is an attempt to place local mores and customs above the high equalitarian principles of our Government as set forth in our Constitution and particularly the Fourteenth Amendment. The classification of applicants by race upheld in Grutter was only as part of a highly individualized, holistic review, 539 U. S., at 337. The cost of busing, the harm that members of all racial communities feared that the Seattle Plan caused, the desire to attract white families back to the public schools, and the interest in providing greater school choice led the board to abandon busing and to substitute a new student assignment policy that resembles the plan now before us. Dist. A non-profit group, Parents Involved in Community Schools, 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. See also Freeman, supra, at 495496; Dowell, 498 U. S., at 248; Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U. S. 717, 746 (1974). 05908, pp. And my view was the rallying cry for the lawyers who litigated Brown. At least one of the academic articles the dissent cites to support this proposition fails to establish a causal connection between the supposed educational gains realized by black students and racial mixing. in No. But Louisville should be able to answer the relevant questions on remand. 3, p.17 (The Court is dealing with thousands of local school districts and schools. 2d 854 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part [*2761] and concurring in judgment), "Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. The way Seattle classifies its students bears this out. Changes in the Percentage of White Students in Schools Attended by the Average Black Student by State, 19702003 (includes States with 5% or greater enrollment of black students in 1970 and 1980), % White Students in School Given this tenuous relationship between forced racial mixing and improved educational results for black children, the dissent cannot plausibly maintain that an educational element supports the integration interest, let alone makes it compelling. Given our case law and the paucity of evidence supporting the dissents belief that these plans improve race relations, no democratic element can support the integration interest. Although racial imbalance can result from de jure segregation, it does not necessarily, and the further we get from the era of state-sponsored racial separation, the less likely it is that racial imbalance has a traceable connection to any prior segregation. For the next decade, annual program transfers remained at approximately this level. And to the extent the plurality opinion can be interpreted to foreclose consideration of these interests, I disagree with that reasoning. In over one-third of the assignments affected by the racial tiebreaker, then, the use of race in the end made no difference, and the district could identify only 52 students who were ultimately affected adversely by the racial tiebreaker in that it resulted in assignment to a school they had not listed as a preference and to which they would not otherwise have been assigned. Code Ann. 1986). In 2004, he ruled the same for the traditional schools, but allowed the regular public schools to use race as the admission requirement. Properly analyzed, though, these plans do not fall within either existing category of permissible race-based remediation. 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). 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.