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The District first gave priority to students who had a sibling at the school. . 5455 (What is the great national and federal policy on this matter? Strict scrutiny applies to any government classification based on race. VI (1978) (prescribing percentage enrollment requirements for minority students); Siqueland 55 (discussing HEW definition of minority). . For the purpose of this section, racial imbalance shall be deemed to exist when the per cent of nonwhite students in any public school is in excess of fifty per cent of the total number of students in such school. 352 Mass., at 695, 227 N.E. 2d, at 731. in No. 45 (Dec. 19, 1991) (1991 Memorandum). 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. have recognized that voluntary programs of local school authorities designed to alleviate de facto segregation and racial imbalance in the schools are not constitutionally forbidden. Tometz v. Board of Ed., Waukegan School Dist. With the racial tiebreaker in 20002001, total enrollment was 36.8 percent Asian-American, 32.2 percent African-American, 5.2 percent Latino, 25.1 percent Caucasian, and 0.7 percent Native-American. 1 Hampton I, supra, at 757758, 762; Newburg Area Council, Inc. v. Board of Ed. The school districts in these cases have not carried the heavy burden of demonstrating that we should allow this once againeven for very different reasons. Contrary to what the dissent would have predicted, see post, at 3839, the children in Seattles African American Academy have shown gains when placed in a highly segregated environment. Individual schools will fall in and out of balance in the natural course, and the appropriate balance itself will shift with a school districts changing demographics. 2, pp. Thus, in respect to race-conscious desegregation measures that the Constitution permitted, but did not require (measures similar to those at issue here), this Court unanimously stated: School authorities are traditionally charged with broad power to formulate and implement educational policy and might well conclude, for example, that in order to prepare students to live in a pluralistic society each school should have a prescribed ratio of Negro to white students reflecting the proportion for the district as a whole. Lower state and federal courts had considered the matter settled and uncontroversial even before this Court decided Swann. At that time one high school, Garfield, was about two-thirds minority; eight high schools were virtually all white. There is also evidence that black students attending historically black colleges achieve better academic results than those attending predominantly white colleges. Furthermore, it was only used in a limited number of schoolsthose that were both over subscribed and relatively unintegrated. in No. The Seattle school district classifies children as white or nonwhite; the Jefferson County school district as black or other. In Seattle, this racial classification is used to allocate slots in oversubscribed high schools. Can we really be sure that the racial theories that motivated Dred Scott and Plessy are a relic of the past or that future theories will be nothing but beneficent and progressive? The districts have also failed to show that they considered methods other than explicit racial classifications to achieve their stated goals. The district concedes it denied his request under the guidelines, which is to say, on the basis of Joshuas race. Indeed, the record before us suggests the contrary. 2, App. "[31] He goes on to explain that he is skeptical that school boards will always have such good intentions in their race-based decisionmaking, for, as Madison said, "if men were angels, no government would be necessary.". Attorney General, to John F. Kennedy, President (Jan. 24, 1963) (hereinafter Kennedy Report), available at http://www.gilderlehrman.org/search/collection_pdfs/05/63/0/05630.pdf (all Internet materials as visited June 26, 2007, and available in Clerk of Courts case file) (reporting successful efforts by the Government to induce voluntary desegregation). The Jefferson County Board of Education fails to meet this threshold mandate when it concedes it denied Joshuas requested kindergarten transfer on the basis of his race under its guidelines, yet also maintains that the guidelines do not apply to kindergartners. The plurality says that cases such as Swann and the others I have described all were decided before this Court definitively determined that all racial classifications . It nonetheless employs the racial tiebreaker in an attempt to address the effects of racially identifiable housing patterns on school assignments. v. Barksdale, 348 F.2d 261, 266 (CA1 1965). See 39 Ill. 2d, at 599600, 237 N.E. 2d, at 502 (Too, the United States Supreme Court on January 15, 1968, dismissed an appeal in School Committee of Boston v. Board of Education, (Mass. See, e.g., Brief for Appellants in Brown v. Board of Education, O.T. 1953, Nos. Prior to Grutter, the courts of appeals rejected as unconstitutional attempts to implement race-based assignment planssuch as the plans at issue herein primary and secondary schools. in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1952, No. . To Harris? in No. Here, the context is one in which school districts seek to advance or to maintain racial integration in primary and secondary schools. Accordingly, these plans are simply one more variation on the government race-based decisionmaking we have consistently held must be subjected to strict scrutiny. Rather, this Court must assess independently the nature of the interest asserted and the evidence to support it in order to determine whether it qualifies as compelling under our precedents. The lesson of history, see ante, at 39 (plurality opinion), is not that efforts to continue racial segregation are constitutionally indistinguishable from efforts to achieve racial integration. Source: Modified from E. Frankenberg, C. Lee, & G. Orfield, A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Court-Imposed Guidelines and Busing, 1972 to 1991. Of these, 209 were assigned to a school that was one of their choices, 87 of whom were assigned to the same school to which they would have been assigned without the racial tiebreaker. No. When the 1965 plan was designed for Harford County, Maryland, the district was 92 percent white. The NAACPs Second Legal Challenge, 1977. The latter approach would be informed by Grutter, though of course the criteria relevant to student placement would differ based on the age of the students, the needs of the parents, and the role of the schools. See Education Commission of the States, Open Enrollment: 50-State Report (2007), online at http://mb2.ecs.org/reports/Report.aspx?id=268. To Crawford? At the time of Brown, v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954), Georgias Constitution required that [s]eparate schools shall be provided for the white and colored races. Ga. Id., at 464. Context matters when reviewing race-based governmental action under the Equal Protection Clause. Seattle provides three forward-lookingas opposed to remedialjustifications for its race-based assignment plan. 1, 458 U. S. 457, 472, n. 15 (1982). Some districts, such as Richmond, California, and Buffalo, New York, permitted only one-way transfers, in which only black students attending predominantly black schools were permitted to transfer to designated receiver schools. Public Schools, 416 F.3d 513, 514 (2005) (McFarland II). See Appendix A, infra. What the dissent fails to understand, however, is that the color-blind Constitution does not bar the government from taking measures to remedy past state-sponsored discriminationindeed, it requires that such measures be taken in certain circumstances. The upshot is that the cases to which the plurality refers, though all applying strict scrutiny, do not treat exclusive and inclusive uses the same. Nor could the school districts have accomplished their desired aims (e.g., avoiding forced busing, countering white flight, maintaining racial diversity) by other means. Second, in Croson, the Court appeared willing to authorize a government unit to remedy past discrimination for which it was responsible. See supra, at 4648. 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. In support of the argument that reducing racial isolation is a compelling interest, the District points to the U.S. Department of Educations Magnet School Assistance Program (MSAP). v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265 (1978); Adarand, 515 U. S. 200. Post, at 41. In contrast, Seattles website formerly described emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology as a form of cultural racism, and currently states that the district has no intention to hold onto unsuccessful concepts such as [a] colorblind mentality. Harrell, School Web Site Removed: Examples of Racism Sparked Controversy, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 2, 2006, pp. Both sought to achieve these objectives while preserving their commitment to other educational goals, e.g., districtwide commitment to high quality public schools, increased pupil assignment to neighborhood schools, diminished use of busing, greater student choice, reduced risk of white flight, and so forth. 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). In respect to elementary schools, the plan first drew a neighborhood line around each elementary school, and it then drew a second line around groups of elementary schools (called clusters). Justice Stevenss reliance on School Comm. . Synopsis of Rule of Law. 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. These plans are unconstitutional. Reply Brief for Petitioner in No. In addition, Meredith sought damages in her complaint, which is sufficient to preserve our ability to consider the question. At most, those statistics show a national trend toward classroom racial imbalance. Connecticut law requires each school district to submit racial group population figures to the State Board of Education. Another Connecticut regulation provides that [a]ny school in which the Proportion for the School falls outside of a range from 25 percentage points less to 25 percentage points more than the Comparable Proportion for the School District, shall be determined to be racially imbalanced. Conn. The petitioner in the Louisville case received a letter from the school board informing her that her kindergartener would not be allowed to attend the school of petitioners choosing because of the childs race. Source: G. Orfield & C. Lee, Racial Transformation and the Changing Nature of Segregation 18 (Table 8) (Jan. 2006), (Civil Rights Project), online at http://www.civilrightspro Justice Anthony Kennedy did not join parts of the opinion of Chief Justice Roberts. 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. To invalidate the plans under review is to threaten the promise of Brown. It is not surprising to find a large number of different desegregation strategies in a sample with this much variation. Welch 23 (footnotes omitted). Like the dissent, the segregationists repeatedly cautioned the Court to consider practicalities and not to embrace too theoretical a view of the Fourteenth Amendment. No. Lacking a cognizable interest in remediation, neither of these plans can survive strict scrutiny because neither plan serves a genuinely compelling state interest. siso/reports/anrep/altern/938.pdf. 1.9 In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 05908, at 299a301a; Affidavit of Kathleen Brose Pursuant to this Courts Rule 32.3 (Lodging of Petitioner Parents Involved), and the complaint sought declaratory and injunctive relief on behalf of Parents Involved members whose elementary and middle school children may be denied admission to the high schools of their choice when they apply for those schools in the future, App. That necessary implication of the pluralitys position strikes the 13th chime of the clock. Both school districts voluntarily used individualized racial classifications to achieve diversity and/or to avoid racial isolation through student assignment. [Footnote 30] See, e.g., Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. That, though, is not the case. To McDaniel? 1986). Jefferson County operated under this decree until 2000, when the District Court dissolved the decree after finding that the district had achieved unitary status by eliminating [t]o the greatest extent practicable the vestiges of its prior policy of segregation. This working backward to achieve a particular type of racial balance, rather than working forward from some demonstration of the level of diversity that provides the purported benefits, is a fatal flaw under our existing precedent. At Ballard, in 20052006when no class at the school was subject to the racial tiebreakerthe student body was 14.2 percent Asian-American, 9 percent African-American, 11.7 percent Latino, 62.3 percent Caucasian, and 2.8 percent Native-American. As the district fails to account for the classification system it has chosen, despite what appears to be its ill fit, Seattle has not shown its plan to be narrowly tailored In 2004, he ruled the same for the traditional schools, but allowed the regular public schools to use race as the admission requirement. in No. But, as a judge, I do know that the Constitution does not authorize judges to dictate solutions to these problems. [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. Sociological Rev., No. 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, If that is so, then all of Seattles earlier (even more race-conscious) plans must also have been unconstitutional. of Ed. And even if the determination is difficult, it is one the dissent acknowledges must be made to determine what remedies school districts are required to adopt. Hist. 1995). Federal authorities had claimedas the NAACP and the OCR did in Seattlethat Clarke County schools were segregated in law, not just in fact. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007), also known as the PICS case, is a United States Supreme Court case which found it unconstitutional for a school district to use race as a factor in assigning students to schools in order to bring its racial composition in line with the composition of the district as a whole, unless it was remedying a prior history of de jure segregation. The Seattle Plan: Mandatory Busing, 1978 to 1988. Grutter recognized a compelling interest in a law schools attainment of a diverse student body. 3, p. 76 (The question is a practical one for them to solve; it is not subject to solution in the theoretical realm of abstract principles); Tr. 1", Learn how and when to remove this template message, Guidance on the Voluntary Use of Race to Achieve Diversity and Avoid Racial Isolation in Elementary and Secondary Schools, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, McFarland v. Jefferson County Public Schools, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, "PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS V. SEATTLE: THE END OF RACE BASED SCHOOL POPULATIONS", "Schools Are More Segregated Today Than During the Late 1960s", "PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS v.SEATTLE SCHOOL DIST. of Ed., Harris, and Bustop made one thing clear: significant as the difference between de jure and de facto segregation may be to the question of what a school district must do, that distinction is not germane to the question of what a school district may do. 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. 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). [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). Id., at 39a40a. Even when it comes to race, the plans here employ only a limited notion of diversity, viewing race exclusively in white/nonwhite terms in Seattle and black/other terms in Jefferson County. [Footnote 24], The similarities between the dissents arguments and the segregationists arguments do not stop there. And the Court repeated this same statement in Grutter. The distinctions between de jure and de facto segregation extended to the remedies available to governmental units in addition to the courts. See Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U. S. 1 (1958). Due to a variety of factorssome influenced by government, some notneighborhoods in our communities do not reflect the diversity of our Nation as a whole. Cf. See Hallinan & Williams, Interracial Friendship Choices in Secondary Schools, 54 Am. If there were doubts before Swann was decided, they did not survive this Courts decision. See supra, at 3745. 1986) (upholding rezoning plan under rational-basis review). Neither of the parties has arguednor could theythat race-based student assignment is necessary to provide a bulwark against anarchy or to prevent violence. Transfers may be requested for any number of reasons, and may be denied because of lack of available space or on the basis of the racial guidelines. The dissent appears to pin its interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause to current societal practice and expectations, deference to local officials, likely practical consequences, and reliance on previous statements from this and other courts. The plurality does not seem confident as to the answer. App. Primary Documents: (Slip Opinion) December 4, 2006, Argued June 28, 2007, * Decided SYLLABUS: Respondent school districts voluntarily adopted student assignment plans that rely on race to determine which schools certain children may attend. He also wrote about the unsettled debate concerning whether racial balance or diversity has a positive effect on educational outcomes. 05908, at 7. 1996); see also T. Sowell, Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study 141165 (2004). . The group also asserted an interest in not being forced to compete in a race-based system that might prejudice its members children, an actionable form of injury under the Equal Protection Clause, see, e.g., Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peńa, 515 U. S. 200, 211. Pp. 2d 358, 360 (2000). [32], Plurality opinion by Chief Justice Roberts. In challenging standing, Seattle also notes that it has ceased using the racial tiebreaker pending the outcome of this litigation. 89. 05908, at 38a. No. These arguments are inimical to the Constitution and to this Courts precedents. In the Justice's 77-page written opinion he called the ruling a "radical" step away from established law that would take from communities a critical tool used for many years in the prevention of resegregation. It gave second preference to a student whose race differed from a race that was over-represented at the school (i.e., a race that accounted for a higher percentage of the school population than of the total district population). Government action dividing us by race is inherently suspect because such classifications promote notions of racial inferiority and lead to a politics of racial hostility, Croson, supra, at 493, reinforce the belief, held by too many for too much of our history, that individuals should be judged by the color of their skin, Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 657 (1993), and endorse race-based reasoning and the conception of a Nation divided into racial blocs, thus contributing to an escalation of racial hostility and conflict. Metro Broadcasting, 497 U. S., at 603 (OConnor, J., dissenting). In part for those reasons, the Court has never permitted outright racial balancing solely for the purpose of achieving a particular racial balance. of Ed., 72 F.Supp. Arkansas, for example, provides by statute that [n]o student may transfer to a nonresident district where the percentage of enrollment for the students race exceeds that percentage in the students resident district. Ark. This conclusion is divorced from any evaluation of the actual impact of the plans at issue in these casesother than to note that the plans often have no effect. Post, at 46. (b)Despite the districts assertion that they employed individual racial classifications in a way necessary to achieve their stated ends, the minimal effect these classifications have on student assignments suggests that other means would be effective. of Ed., 402 U. S. 1, 16 (1971) (emphasis added). The Court deferred to local authorities in making its determination, noting that in inquiring into reasonableness there must necessarily be a large discretion on the part of the legislature. Ibid. 1. Seattles racial tiebreaker results, in the end, only in shifting a small number of students between schools. 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. Because racial imbalance is not inevitably linked to unconstitutional segregation, it is not unconstitutional in and of itself. 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. 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. Under our Constitution the individual, child or adult, can find his own identity, can define her own persona, without state intervention that classifies on the basis of his race or the color of her skin. 1, supra, at 461; Hanawalt 40. [29] The districts have also failed to show that they considered methods other than explicit racial classifications to achieve their stated goals. 05908, pp. Before Brown, the most prominent example of an exemplary black school was Dunbar High School. 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). Held:The judgments are reversed, and the cases are remanded. 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. The plurality cites in support those who argued in Brown against segregation, and Justice Thomas likens the approach that I have taken to that of segregations defenders. This approach is just as wrong today as it was a half-century ago. Evidence that race is a good proxy for other factors that might be correlated with educational benefits does not support a compelling interest in the use of race to achieve academic results. It sought one law, one Nation, one people, not simply as a matter of legal principle but in terms of how we actually live. . Diversity, depending on its meaning and definition, is a compelling educational goal a school district may pursue. 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. See Brief of the Asian American Legal Foundation as Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioners at 5. The President of the United States dispatched the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, and federal troops were needed to enforce a desegregation decree. The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. Cf. 1 C. Schmid & W. McVey, Growth and Distribution of Minority Races in Seattle, Washington, 3, 79 (1964); F. Hanawalt & R. Williams, The History of Desegregation in Seattle Public Schools, 19541981, pp. Brief for Petitioner at 79. in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1952, No. The findings should define the scope of any injury [and] the necessary remedy, id., at 505, and must be more than inherently unmeasurable claims of past wrongs, id., at 506. 2d 1224 (2001); 426 F.3d 1162 (CA9 2005) (en banc) (Parents Involved VII). 05908, p.8; see also id., at 9 ([T]here is no evidence that diversity in the K12 classroom positively affects student achievement). These statements nowhere suggest that this freedom is limited to school districts where court-ordered desegregation measures are also in effect. certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit, No. 294 F.3d 1084 (9th Cir. Another brief claims that school desegregation has a modest positive impact on the achievement of African-American students. App. See Adarand Constructors, Inc., 515 U. S., at 237 ([S]trict scrutiny in this context is [not] strict in theory, but fatal in fact (quoting Fullilove, 448 U. S., at 519 (Marshall, J., concurring in judgment))). Unlike de jure segregation, there is no ultimate remedy for racial imbalance. May a school district that is not racially segregated and that normally permits a student to attend any high school of her choosing deny a child admission to her chosen school solely because of her race in an effort to achieve a desired racial balance in particular schools, or does such racial balancing violated the. However, Roberts considers that this interest is not compelling and that the use of race for this goal is not narrowly tailored, it is instead used for racial balancing, which is unconstitutional. Properly analyzed, though, these plans do not fall within either existing category of permissible race-based remediation. The Court quoted the articulation of diversity from Justice Powells opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265 (1978), noting that it is not an interest in simple ethnic diversity, in which a specified percentage of the student body is in effect guaranteed to be members of selected ethnic groups, that can justify the use of race. Grutter, supra, at 324325 (citing and quoting Bakke, supra, at 314315 (opinion of Powell, J. Student Choice and Project Renaissance, 1991 to 1996. Magnet and Traditional are exempt from this ratio per the 2000 and 2003 Court Order. Thus, the dissent argues that [e]ach plan embodies the results of local experience and community consultation. Post, at 47. . It added that the fact that a law treats [a person] unequally because of his or her race . With respect to avoiding racial isolation, Kennedy wrote, "A compelling interest exists in avoiding racial isolation, an interest that a school district, in its discretion and expertise, may choose to pursue.