Tex. To McDaniel? 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. We take the Grutter Court at its word. 1, a consolidated 2007 ruling that resolved both cases, the Court ultimately struck down the school plans at issue, holding that they violated the . The Court explained that [c]ontext matters in applying strict scrutiny, and repeatedly noted that it was addressing the use of race in the context of higher education. Grutter, supra, at 327, 328, 334. These decisions illustrate well how lower courts understood and followed Swanns enunciation of the relevant legal principle. The school boards widespread consultation, their experimentation with numerous other plans, indeed, the 40-year history that Part I sets forth, make clear that plans that are less explicitly race-based are unlikely to achieve the boards compelling objectives. 1, 458 U. S. 457, 460 (1982). See ante, at 1820. There is no ambiguity in that statement. 3. In both cities plaintiffs filed lawsuits claiming unconstitutional segregation. . The Washington Supreme Court issued its decision on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, the seminal cases which addressed the constitutionality of using race in college and law school admissions at the University of Michigan. Regardless of its name, however, the interest at stake possesses three essential elements. Eighty-four students were assigned to schools that they did not list as a choice, but 29 of those students would have been assigned to their respective school without the racial tiebreaker, and 3 were able to attend one of the oversubscribed schools due to waitlist and capacity adjustments. Pp. The district has identified its purposes as follows: (1) to promote the educational benefits of diverse school enrollments; (2) to reduce the potentially harmful effects of racial isolation by allowing students the opportunity to opt out of racially isolated schools; and (3) to make sure that racially segregated housing patterns did not prevent non-white students from having equitable access to the most popular over-subscribed schools. Id., at 19. App. No one here disputes that Louisvilles segregation was de jure. 3 Seattle School Dist. Regardless, the plurality cannot object that the constitutional defect is the individualized use of race and simultaneously object that not enough account of individuals race has been taken. Notwithstanding these concerns, allocation of benefits and burdens through individual racial classifications was found sometimes permissible in the context of remedies for de jure wrong. Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Regardless of the merit of Grutter, the compelling interest recognized in that case cannot support these plans. School boards may pursue the goal of bringing together students of diverse backgrounds and races through other means, including strategic site selection of new schools; drawing attendance zones with general recognition of the demographics of neighborhoods; allocating resources for special programs; recruiting students and faculty in a targeted fashion; and tracking enrollments, performance, and other statistics by race. Unlike the dissenters, I am unwilling to delegate my constitutional responsibilities to local school boards and allow them to experiment with race-based decisionmaking on the assumption that their intentions will forever remain as good as Justice Breyers. . id., at 390 (Kennedy, J., dissenting) (expressing concern about narrow fluctuation band[s]). The entire gist of the analysis in Grutter was that the admissions program at issue there focused on each applicant as an individual, and not simply as a member of a particular racial group. 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?). 2 Memorandum of Agreement between Seattle School District No. Further research has shown that the desegregation of schools can help bring adult communities together by reducing segregated housing. Grutter, supra, at 326; see also Part IIA, infra. That is a gamble I am unwilling to take, and it is one the Constitution does not allow. Indeed, the consequences of the approach the Court takes today are serious. 2002). For the next decade, annual program transfers remained at approximately this level. As a result, students who had ranked a school as a second, third, or lower choice sometimes received a spot at the school over those who had ranked it as their first choice. ), I shall adopt the first alternative. Second, in Croson, the Court appeared willing to authorize a government unit to remedy past discrimination for which it was responsible. The Court need not resolve the parties dispute over whether racial diversity in schools has a marked impact on test scores and other objective yardsticks or achieves intangible socialization benefits because it is clear that the racial classifications at issue are not narrowly tailored to the asserted goal. [Footnote 19] See ibid. 5 (Jan. 2003), online at http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/reseg03/AreWeLosingtheDream.pdf (Frankenberg, Lee, & Orfield) (using U. S. Dept. Upon realizing that the litigation would not be resolved in time for assignment decisions for the 20022003 school year, the Ninth Circuit withdrew its opinion, 294 F.3d 1084 (2002) (Parents Involved III), vacated the injunction, and, pursuant to Wash. Rev. Swann addresses only a possible state objective; it says nothing of the permissible meansrace conscious or otherwisethat a school district might employ to achieve that objective. 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. See Education Commission of the States, Open Enrollment: 50-State Report (2007), online at http://mb2.ecs.org/reports/Report.aspx?id=268. Seattle operates a K8 African-American Academy, which has a nonwhite enrollment of 99%. of Ed. 149 through 154 (Dec. 8, 2003). I shall apply the version of strict scrutiny that those cases embody. Which of the following statements offers the most accurate comparison between this case and the decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)? Although we examine the plans under the same legal framework, the specifics of the two plans, and the circumstances 2830 (cataloging state laws requiring separa- ices Office, District Summaries 19992005, available at Governmental classifications that command people to march in different directions based on racial typologies can cause a new divisiveness. App. Elementary schools in central Seattle were between 60% and 80% black; Garfield, the central district high school, was more than 50% minority; schools outside the central and southeastern sections of Seattle were virtually all white. [Footnote 9] The Sixth Circuit affirmed in a per curiam opinion relying upon the reasoning of the District Court, concluding that a written opinion would serve no useful purpose. McFarland v. Jefferson Cty. It applied that label to 26 schools, including 4 high schoolsCleveland (72.8% minority), Franklin (76.6% minority), Garfield (78.4% minority), and Rainier Beach (58.9% minority). In particular, they use race-conscious criteria only to mark the outer bounds of broad population-related ranges. denied, 389 U. S. 847 (1967); Springfield School Comm. The wide variety of different integration plans that school districts use throughout the Nation suggests that the problem of racial segregation in schools, including de facto segregation, is difficult to solve. By this term, I mean the school districts interest in eliminating school-by-school racial isolation and increasing the degree to which racial mixture characterizes each of the districts schools and each individual students public school experience. How does one tell when a racial classification is invidious? to reject the argument that a race-conscious plan is permissible only when there has been a judicial finding of de jure segregation. 610 F.2d, at 663664. The plurality refers to no case in support of its demand. 547 U. S. __ (2006). Each locality is free to tailor local programs to local needs. Seattle Schools Transportation. Pp. While diversity may lend to a robust education, parents and students have their own opinions on what factors promote the best education possible. A compelling interest exists in avoiding racial isolation, an interest that a school district, in its discretion and expertise, may choose to pursue. 05915, p. 10; see also App. There is no rule that the same level of scrutiny should apply to all racial classifications, especially when some classifications exclude people from participation, while others are designed to include them. That plan, which took effect before 1996, is the very plan that in all relevant respects is in effect now and is the subject of the present challenge. The District, however, argues that its consideration of race is to further the compelling state interest of achieving the beneficial effects of racial diversity. Justice Kennedy sets forth two additional concerns related to narrow tailoring. In respect to Louisville, he says first that officials stated (1) that kindergarten assignments are not subject to the race-conscious guidelines, and (2) that the child at issue here was denied permission to attend the kindergarten he wanted because of those guidelines. A federal District Court dismissed the suit, upholding the tiebreaker. of Ed. Order No. The point of the narrow tailoring analysis in which the Grutter Court engaged was to ensure that the use of racial classifications was indeed part of a broader assessment of diversity, and not simply an effort to achieve racial balance, which the Court explained would be patently unconstitutional. Id., at 330. This approach is just as wrong today as it was a half-century ago. The boards work in communities where demographic patterns change, where they must meet traditional learning goals, where they must attract and retain effective teachers, where they should (and will) take account of parents views and maintain their commitment to public school education, where they must adapt to court intervention, where they must encourage voluntary student and parent actionwhere they will find that their own good faith, their knowledge, and their understanding of local circumstances are always necessary but often insufficient to solve the problems at hand. 1*, How are the Equal Protection rights of public high school students affected by the jurisprudence of. 3, p.1617 (It is by such practical considerations based on experience rather than by theoretical inconsistencies that the question of equal protection is to be answered (quoting Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. New York, 336 U. S. 110 (1949))); Brief for Appellees on Reargument in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1953, No. 2d 358, 360 (2000). in No. Are they to draw numbers out of thin air? The Department of Education has characterized this as a compelling interest in regulations and various other statements. See post, at 3435. And it adjusted its alphabet-based system for grouping and busing students. of Oral Arg. 1996) (Perhaps desegregation does not have a single effect, positive or negative, on the academic achievement of African American students, but rather some strategies help, some hurt, and still others make no difference whatsoever. Id. Post, at 22. In an increasingly plural society, exposure to other points of view promotes understanding and cohesiveness. At the same time it adopted an open transfer policy under which approximately 3,000 of Louisvilles 46,000 students applied for transfer. Rather, race-based government decisionmaking is categorically prohibited unless narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest. . See ibid. As to what is permitted, nothing in our equal protection law suggests that a State may right only those wrongs that it committed. See also, e.g., Offerman v. Nitkowski, 378 F.2d 22, 24 (CA2 1967); Deal v. Cincinnati Bd. of Oklahoma City Public Schools v. Dowell, 498 U. S. 237, 249250 (1991); Green v. School 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. The plurality could validly claim that no court ever found that Seattle schools were segregated in law. That is why the Equal Protection Clause outlaws invidious discrimination, but does not similarly forbid all use of race-conscious criteria. Parents Involved VII, supra, at 1166. More broadly, however, allowing racial diversity or balance as a compelling state interest, even if confined to secondary education, calls into question the Equal. Yesterday, school boards had available to them a full range of means to combat segregated schools. Indeed, if there is no such plan, or if such plans are purely imagined, it is understandable why, as the plurality notes, ante, at 27, Seattle school officials concentrated on diminishing the racial component of their districts plan, but did not pursue eliminating that element entirely. The Court recognized that seeking diversity and avoiding racial segregation in schools are compelling state interests. We granted certiorari, and now reverse. 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). B. Explain the similarity in the facts between Brown V. Board of 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. 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 this Courts paradigmatic segregation cases, there was a local ordinance, state statute, or state constitutional provision requiring racial separation. of City School Dist. 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. 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. 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. See also Parents Involved VII, 426 F.3d, at 1194 (Kozinski, J., concurring); Strauss, Discriminatory Intent and the Taming of Brown, 56 U. Chi. It added that the fact that a law treats [a person] unequally because of his or her race . [Footnote 15] Environmental reflection, though, is just another way to say racial balancing. See Grutter, 539 U. S., at 342 (stating the requirement that all governmental use of race must have a logical end point). Reg. 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. . Regents of Univ. 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.
parents involved in community schools v seattle 2007 quizlet