Id., at 43. appeals for the sixth circuit. 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. They were further persuaded that these plans differed from other race-based programs this Court has considered because they are certainly more benign than laws that favor or disfavor one race, segregate by race, or create quotas for or against a racial group, Comfort, 418 F.3d, at 28 (Boudin, C.J., concurring), and they are far from the original evils at which the Fourteenth Amendment was addressed, id., at 29; 426 F.3d, at 1195 (Kozinski, J., concurring). 2001) (describing President Nixons lobbying for affirmative action plans, e.g., the Philadelphia Plan); White, Affirmative Actions Alamo: Gerald Ford Returns to Fight Once More for Michigan, Time, Aug. 23, 1999, p. 48 (reporting on President Fords support for affirmative action); Schuck, Affirmative Action: Past, Present, and Future, 20 Yale L. & Poly Rev. Finally, the plan created two new magnet schools, one each at the elementary and middle school levels. schoolId=1061&report 05908, p.9, n. 9. Pp. Educational Research 531, 550 (1994) (hereinafter Wells & Crain). As part of that burden it must establish, in detail, how decisions based on an individual students race are made in a challenged governmental program. of Ed., 402 U. S., at 46; Montgomery County Bd. 67759, p.11 (It is implicit in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U. S. 483, that color or race is a constitutionally impermissible standard for the assignment of school children to public schools. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 The history of the plans before us, their educational importance, their highly limited use of raceall these and moremake clear that the compelling interest here is stronger than in Grutter. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 637 (1943) (The Fourteenth Amendment protects the citizen against the State itself and all of its creaturesBoards of Education not excepted). See generally N. Thompson & C. Marr, Building for Learning: Seattle Public Schools Histories, 18622000 (2002). Sociological Rev. 1117. Brief for Petitioner at 3536. See, e.g., Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967) (marriage); New Orleans City Park Improvement Assn. at 958. Cf. 1314. The plurality does not seem confident as to the answer. 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. 2d 304. 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). To the contrary, there is every reason to believe that it represented part of an effort to implement the 1978 desegregation order. More recently, however, progress has stalled. in No. The first tiebreaker selects for admission students who have a sibling currently enrolled in the chosen school. This Court has previously done just the opposite, permitting a race-conscious remedy without any kind of court decree. By 1988, many white families had left the school district, and many Asian families had moved in. 05915, at 4, and it fails to explain the discrepancy. Law is not an exercise in mathematical logic. Argued December 4, 2006Decided June 28, 2007* Respondent school districts voluntarily adopted student assignment plans that rely on race to determine which schools certain children The plurality tries to draw a distinction by reference to the well-established conceptual difference between de jure segregation (segregation by state action) and de facto segregation (racial imbalance caused by other factors). 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. PDF U.S. Department of Justice U.S. Department of Education It is an interest in helping our children learn to work and play together with children of different racial backgrounds. See Hallinan 741742. Similarly, in Zaslawsky v. Bd. Although the matter was the subject of disagreement on the Court, see id., at 346347 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part); id., at 382383 (Rehnquist, C.J., dissenting); id., at 388392 (Kennedy, J., dissenting), the majority concluded that the law school did not count back from its applicant pool to arrive at the meaningful number it regarded as necessary to diversify its student body. We relied on the fact that this Court had not once but seven times, I think it is, pronounced in favor of the separate but equal doctrine. . 539 U.S., at 325, 123 S. Ct. 2325, 156 L. Ed. One schoolGarfieldis more or less in the center of Seattle. Guided by these principles, the Court concluded: [W]e cannot say that a law which authorizes or even requires the separation of the two races in public conveyances is unreasonable, or more obnoxious to the Fourteenth Amendment than the acts of Congress requiring separate schools for colored children in the District of Columbia. Id., at 550551. The Court should leave them to their work. Was it de facto? Although all governmental uses of race The same must be said for the controlling opinion in Grutter. The dissent attempts to marginalize the notion of a color-blind Constitution by consigning it to me and Members of todays plurality. By limiting the School Districts use of race, it will be more difficult for it to cure these defects. The parties and their amici debate which side is more faithful to the heritage of Brown, but the position of the plaintiffs in Brown was spelled out in their brief and could not have been clearer: [T]he Fourteenth Amendment prevents states from according differential treatment to American children on the basis of their color or race. Brief for Appellants in Nos. 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. 05908, at 308a. [Footnote 15] Environmental reflection, though, is just another way to say racial balancing. Laws arise from a culture and vice versa. 1, 50 (2002) (describing President Carters support for affirmation action). Furthermore, it was only used in a limited number of schoolsthose that were both over subscribed and relatively unintegrated. 420, 433434 (1988). But the evidence supporting an educational interest in racially integrated schools is well established and strong enough to permit a democratically elected school board reasonably to determine that this interest is a compelling one. At most, those statistics show a national trend toward classroom racial imbalance. Doubtless, hundreds of letters like this went out from both school boards every year these race-based assignment plans were in operation. But if the plan was lawful when it was first adopted and if it was lawful the day before the District Court dissolved its order, how can the plurality now suggest that it became unlawful the following day? See, e.g., North Carolina Bd. In doing so, it consulted widely with parents and other members of the local community, using public presentations, public meetings, and various other methods to obtain the publics input. My view of the Constitution is Justice Harlans view in Plessy: Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, 559 (1896) (dissenting opinion). Any continued use of race must be justified on some other basis. to achieve its own ends; and thus it fails to pass strict scrutiny. As the districts demographics shift, so too will their definition of racial diversity. 1986) (citing Swann and North Carolina Bd. While the County had been under a desegregation order from 1975 to 2000, this order had been dissolved when a federal judge found that it had largely solved the problem of segregated schools. in No. 2, App. Roberts cites Adarand, supra, at 227, 115 S. Ct. 2097, 132 L. Ed. Will Louisville and all similar school districts have to return to systems like Louisvilles initial 1956 plan, which did not consider race at all? 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). As the foregoing demonstrates, racial balancing is sometimes a constitutionally permissible remedy for the discrete legal wrong of de jure segregation, and when directed to that end, racial balancing is an exception to the general rule that government race-based decisionmaking is unconstitutional. Jefferson County has failed to present any evidence that it considered alternatives, even though the district already claims that its goals are achieved primarily through means other than the racial classifications. Id., at 240 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (As far as the Constitution is concerned, it is irrelevant whether a governments racial classifications are drawn by those who wish to oppress a race or by those who have a sincere desire to help those thought to be disadvantaged). 2d 1, 5 (1965); Jackson v. Pasadena City School Dist., 59 Cal. It argues that it should not be force to walk the tightrope between violating the constitution by failing to integrate schools and violating the constitution by integrating schools. of Jefferson Cty., Nos. In his concurrence, Kennedy differed with the plurality because, he found, the goal of obtaining a diverse student body is a compelling state interest. The Amendment sought to bring into American society as full members those whom the Nation had previously held in slavery. The Ninth Circuit asked whether the Seattle school districts particular use of race in its admission process violated the state constitution. Simply because the school districts may seek a worthy goal does not mean they are free to discriminate on the basis of race to achieve it, or that their racial classifications should be subject to less exacting scrutiny. It does have a duty to provide all children with equal opportunities. in No. 3, p.1 ([T]he Court is asked to outlaw the fixed policies of the several States which are based on local social conditions well known to the respective legislatures); id., at 9 (For this purpose, Virginia history and present Virginia conditions are important); Tr. In 1958, black parents whose children attended Harrison Elementary School (with a black student population of over 75%) wrote the Seattle board, complaining that the boundaries for the Harrison Elementary School were not set in accordance with the long-established standards of the School District but were arbitrarily set with an end to excluding colored children from McGilvra School, which is adjacent to the Harrison school district.. Id. Justice Thomas suggests that it will be easy to identify de jure segregation because [i]n most cases, there either will or will not have been a state constitutional amendment, state statute, local ordinance, or local administrative policy explicitly requiring separation of the races. Ante, at 6, n.4 (concurring opinion). ), I shall adopt the first alternative. It is evident, however, that Justice Breyers brand of narrow tailoring is quite unlike anything found in our precedents. 2d 304. In such cases, race-based remedial measures are sometimes required. Because Louisville could use race-based measures only as a remedy for past de jure segregation, it is not incoherent, post, at 56, to say that race-based decisionmaking was allowed to Louisville one daywhile it was still remedyingand forbidden to it the nextwhen remediation was finished. 3 Planning and Evaluation Dept., Seattle Public Schools, The Plan Adopted by the Seattle School Board to Desegregate Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Grade Pupils in the Garfield, Lincoln, and Roosevelt High School Districts by September, 1971, pp. 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). [Footnote 6] But without a history of state-enforced racial separation, a school district has no affirmative legal obligation to take race-based remedial measures to eliminate segregation and its vestiges. [D]istinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality. Adarand, 515 U. S., at 214 (internal quotation marks omitted). first today in 05-908, Parents Involved in Community Schools versus Seattle School District Number 1. The schools base their numbers in demographics, therefore making this goal a means to achieve a numerical quota to achieve racial balancing. Where that is so, the judge would carefully examine the programs details to determine whether the use of race-conscious criteria is proportionate to the important ends it serves. See id., at 519 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). As McDaniel and Harris show, that is historically untrue. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306 (2003); id., at 387388 (Kennedy, J., dissenting). Ante, at 1718 (opinion of Kennedy, J.). This will surely, however, restrict school districts efforts to achieve diversity and the benefits that arguably come with it. 539 U.S. at 316. parents involved in community schools v seattle 2007 quizlet The district assigns students to nonmagnet schools in one of two ways: Parents of kindergartners, first-graders, and students new to the district may submit an application indicating a first and second choice among the schools within their cluster; students who do not submit such an application are assigned within the cluster by the district. Unless we believe that the Constitution enforces one legal standard for the South and another for the North, this Court should grant Seattle the permission it granted Clarke County, Georgia. at 315 (opinion of Powell, J. Neither school district has made any such specific findings. Adarand, 515 U. S., at 227; Grutter, 539 U. S., at 326; Johnson v. California, 543 U. S. 499, 505 (2005) (We have insisted on strict scrutiny in every context, even for so-called benign racial classifications). This cannot be justified in the name of the Equal Protection Clause. 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. 1 Hampton v. Jefferson Cty., Bd. Post, at 2829. 6, 39 Ill. 2d 593, 597598, 237 N.E. 2d 498, 501 (1968) (citations omitted) (citing decisions from the high courts of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, California, New York, and Connecticut, and from the Courts of Appeals for the First, Second, Fourth, and Sixth Circuits). And the inquiry into less restrictive alternatives demanded by the narrow tailoring analysis requires in many cases a thorough understanding of how a plan works. How could such a plan be lawful the day before dissolution but then become unlawful the very next day? It used explicitly racial criteria in making these assignments (i.e., it deliberately assigned to the new middle schools black students, not white students, from the black schools and white students, not black students, from the white schools). 1 is premised upon the constitutionality of the original Seattle Plan, it is equally premised upon the constitutionality of the present plan, for the present plan is the Seattle Plan, modified only insofar as it places even less emphasis on race-conscious elements than its predecessors. Adarand, supra, at 227. Some of the concurrence consists of social science citations and statistics showing that black students can succeed in majority black schools such as HBCUs. For one thing, consider the effect of the pluralitys views on the parties before us and on similar school districts throughout the Nation. For the 20012002 school year, the deviation permitted from the desired racial composition was increased from 10 to 15 percent. Both districts sought greater racial integration for educational and democratic, as well as for remedial, reasons. Brief in Opposition in No. See Gratz, supra, at 301 (Ginsburg, J., joined by Souter, J., dissenting); Adarand, supra, at 242249 (Stevens, J., joined by Ginsburg, J., dissenting); 426 F.3d, at 11931194 (Kozinski, J., concurring). The opinion of the Court and Justice Breyers dissenting opinion (hereinafter dissent) describe in detail the history of integration efforts in Louisville and Seattle. What other numbers are the boards to use as a starting point? Our ruling on the merits simply stated that the appeal was dismissed for want of a substantial federal question. School Comm. The Chief Justice finally concludes his opinion by answering some of the issues raised by Justice Stephen Breyer in his dissent. A. I dont have a definition for that); id., at 228a229a (I dont think weve ever sat down and said, Define racially concentrated school exactly on point in quantitative terms. I dont think weve ever had that conversation); Tr. v. Brinkman, 433 U. S. 406, 413 (1977); Dayton Bd. Petitioner Parents Involved in Community Schools (Parents Involved) is a nonprofit corporation comprising the parents of children who have been or may be denied assignment to their chosen high school in the district because of their race. I also join Parts IIIA and IIIC for reasons provided below. To do this as an educational policy is within the broad discretionary powers of school authorities. 402 U. S., at 16. in No. 7045 and 7291 (WD Ky., July 30, 1975) (1975 Judgment and Findings). 05915, at 38 (Decisions to assign students to schools within each cluster are based on available space within the [elementary] schools and the racial guidelines in the Districts current student assignment plan); id., at 82 (acknowledging that a student may not be assigned to his or her resides school if it has reached the extremes of the racial guidelines). The dissent acknowledges that the two-sentence discussion in Swann was pure dicta, post, at 22, but nonetheless asserts that it demonstrates a basic principle of constitutional law that provides authoritative legal guidance. Post, at 22, 30. See N. St. John, School Desegregation Outcomes for Children 6768 (1975) (A glance at [the data] shows that for either race positive findings are less common than negative findings); Stephan, The Effects of School Desegregation: An Evaluation 30 Years After Brown, in Advances in Applied Social Psychology 183186 (M. Saks & L. Saxe eds. 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. 7. In Brown, this Court held that the governments segregation of schoolchildren by race violates the Constitutions promise of equal protection. See ante, at 1112, 3132, n.16, 3435 (citing Adarand, supra, at 227; Johnson v. California, 543 U. S. 499, 505 (2005); Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306, 326 (2003)). . See post, at 3435. In each city the school board modified its plan several times in light of, for example, hostility to busing, the threat of resegregation, and the desirability of introducing greater student choice. It again cites the MSAP to show that ensuring equal access is a compelling interest. In making an assignment to a particular high school, the district would give first preference to a student with a sibling already at the school. Most of the dissents criticisms of todays result can be traced to its rejection of the color-blind Constitution. App. In the pages following the ones the dissent cites, the author of that article remarks that the main reason white and minority students perform better academically in majority white schools is likely that these schools provide greater opportunities to learn. . 45 (Dec. 19, 1991) (1991 Memorandum). After all, a number of school districts in the South that the Government or private plaintiffs challenged as segregated by law voluntarily desegregated their schools without a court orderjust as Seattle did. of Ed., 402 U. S. 1, 6 (1971); see also Monroe v. Board of Commrs of Jackson, 391 U. S. 450, 452 (1968). The dissent avoids reaching that conclusion by unquestioningly accepting the assertions of selected social scientists while completely ignoring the fact that those assertions are the subject of fervent debate. Sometimes a court refers to it as an interest in achieving racial diversity. Other times a court, like the plurality here, refers to it as an interest in racial balancing. I have used more general terms to signify that interest, describing it, for example, as an interest in promoting or preserving greater racial integration of public schools. [14], Neither school could plead this compelling interest, because "[w]e have emphasized that the harm being remedied by mandatory desegregation plans is the harm that is traceable to segregation, and that 'the Constitution is not violated by racial imbalance in the schools, without more. The dissent emphasizes local control, see post, at 4849, the unique history of school desegregation, see post, at 2, and the fact that these plans make less use of race than prior plans, see post, at 57, but these factors seem more rhetorical than integral to the analytical structure of the opinion. Compare Eisenberg, 197 F.3d, at 133, with Comfort, 418 F.3d, at 13. 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). 1, No. The Seattle School District has begun providing transportation to students who live more than 2.5 miles from their assigned high school. Seattle and Louisville are two such districts, and the histories of their present plans set forth typical school integration stories. 67759, at 9 (Unlike the Massachusetts Court, the Illinois Supreme Court has recently held its law to eliminate racial imbalance unconstitutional on the ground that it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment); ibid., n.1. Such deference is fundamentally at odds with our equal protection jurisprudence. Without attempting in these cases to set forth all the interests a school district might assert, it suffices to note that our prior cases, in evaluating the use of racial classifications in the school context, have recognized two interests that qualify as compelling. Extending Grutter to this context would require us to cut that holding loose from its theoretical moorings. If one examines the context more specifically, one finds that the districts plans reflect efforts to overcome a history of segregation, embody the results of broad experience and community consultation, seek to expand student choice while reducing the need for mandatory busing, and use race-conscious criteria in highly limited ways that diminish the use of race compared to preceding integration efforts. That decision not only expressed our appraisal of the merits of the appeal, but it constitutes a precedent that the Court overrules today. Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Todays opinion reveals that the plurality would rewrite this Courts prior jurisprudence, at least in practical application, transforming the strict scrutiny test into a rule that is fatal in fact across the board. Seattles racial tiebreaker results, in the end, only in shifting a small number of students between schools. ject.harvard.edu/research/deseg/Racial_Transformation.pdf. Given that state law had previously required the school board to maintain a dual school system, the county was obligated to take measures to remedy its prior de jure segregation. Revisited: Desegregation to Resegregation, 52 J. Negro Educ. The validity of our concern that racial balancing has no logical stopping point, Croson, supra, at 498 (quoting Wygant, supra, at 275 (plurality opinion); internal quotation marks omitted); see also Grutter, supra, at 343, is demonstrated here by the degree to which the districts tie their racial guidelines to their demographics. parents involved in community schools v seattle 2007 quizlet aspx? See, e.g., Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peńa, 515 U. S. 200, 243, 248, n.6 (1995) (Stevens, J., dissenting); Wygant v. Jackson Bd. The dissents persistent refusal to accept this distinctionits insistence on viewing the racial classifications here as if they were just like the ones in McDaniel, devised to overcome a history of segregated public schools, post, at 47explains its inability to understand why the remedial justification for racial classifications cannot decide these cases. The highest white student population would have been 64 percent, which PICS contends still contains a significant portion of minority students. Today, the Court holds that state entities may not experiment with race-based means to achieve ends they deem socially desirable. Bd. Indeed, the very school districts that once spurned integration now strive for it. The dissents characterization of Swann as recognizing that the Equal Protection Clause permits local school boards to use race-conscious criteria to achieve positive race-related goals isat besta dubious inference. 1, 2, 4, 18 (1978 Memo & Order). Grutter, 539 U. S., at 348 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). But Tometz addressed a challenge to a statute requiring race-consciousness in drawing school attendance boundariesan issue well beyond the scope of the question presented in these cases. [Footnote 14]. Both, he explains, cannot be true. Accepting racial balancing as a compelling state interest would justify the imposition of racial proportionality throughout American society, contrary to our repeated recognition that [a]t the heart of the Constitutions guarantee of equal protection lies the simple command that the Government must treat citizens as individuals, not as simply components of a racial, religious, sexual or national class. Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 911 (1995) (quoting Metro Broadcasting, 497 U. S., at 602 (OConnor, J., dissenting); internal quotation marks omitted). Id., at 335336. The district retained a racial tiebreaker for oversubscribed schools, which takes effect only if the schools minority or majority enrollment falls outside of a 30% range centered on the minority/majority population ratio within the district. Compare ante, at 39 (It was not the inequality of the facilities but the fact of legally separating children on the basis of race on which the Court relied to find a constitutional violation in 1954), with Juris. of Oral Arg. Third, the plans before us, subjected to rigorous judicial review, are supported by compelling state interests and are narrowly tailored to accomplish those goals. The plan forbade transfers, however, if the transfer would lead to a school population outside the guideline range, i.e., if it would create a school where fewer than 15% or more than 50% of the students were black. If a parent identifies more than one race on the form, [t]he application will not be accepted and, if necessary, the enrollment service person taking the application will indicate one box. App. 377 F.3d at 959. "[5], According to Kennedy, "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." This is by way of preface to my respectful submission that parts of the opinion by The Chief Justice imply an all-too-unyielding insistence that race cannot be a factor in instances when, in my view, it may be taken into account. They further contend that the children who have yet to reach high school age fail to fulfill the first requirement because their potential injury is not imminent; they have not even applied yet and consequently any injury to them is purely hypothetical at this point.
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