In keeping with his view that strict scrutiny should not apply, Justice Breyer repeatedly urges deference to local school boards on these issues. Nonetheless, the Seattle Plan, due to its busing, provoked serious opposition within the State. 05908, pp. The plurality should have remembered that historically only African-American students had been told where they could go to school. Justice Breyer speaks of bringing the races together (putting aside the purely black-and-white nature of the plans), as the justification for excluding individuals on the basis of their race. See Brief of the Asian American Legal Foundation as Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioners at 5. The District further argues that the plan passes muster under the strictest scrutiny. The Ninth Circuit held that the burden had not been met since counsel for the School District admitted it was likely that the policy would be reinstated. 663, 664 (1962) (same); W. Vaughn, Schools for All: The Blacks and Public Education in the South, 18651877, pp. In Grutter, the consideration of race was viewed as indispensable in more than tripling minority representation at the law schoolfrom 4 to 14.5 percent. To Harris? 1" (2007) and "Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education" (2007), the high court forbade those . [Footnote 3] The only justification for refusing to acknowledge the obvious importance of that difference is the citation of a few recent opinionsnone of which even approached unanimitygrandly proclaiming that all racial classifications must be analyzed under strict scrutiny. See, e.g., Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peńa, 515 U. S. 200, 227 (1995). in No. "[6] Justice Breyer noted, "No one here disputes that Louisville's segregation was de jure" and cites a 1956 memo where the Seattle School Board admitted its schools were de jure segregated as well. 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. 1. The last half-century has witnessed great strides toward racial equality, but we have not yet realized the promise of Brown. I do not know of any opinion which buoyed Marshall more in his pre-Brown days ). See Seattle School District, Middle School and High School 2006-2007 Enrollment Guide for Parents, at 40. 1 1991 Memorandum 14, 711 (Stipulated Exh. The third tiebreaker was the distance from the students home to the school, and the final tiebreaker was a lottery, which was seldom used. Parents Involved in Community Schools, a non-profit organization, argues that the Districts policy amounts to unconstitutional racial balancing under the Supreme Courts 2003 decisions in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) and Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003). 6. 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. See Hallinan 741742. 1 McFarland v. Jefferson Cty. There are obvious disincentives for students to transfer to a different school after a full quarter of their high school experience has passed, and the record sheds no light on how transfers to the oversubscribed high schools are handled. 539 U. S., at 324325 (internal quotation marks omitted). 2. exemplifies the long-running disagreement over the meaning of racial discrimination under the Constitution. Brief for Petitioner at 3536. It is hard to understand how a plan that could allow these results can be viewed as being concerned with achieving enrollment that is broadly diverse, Grutter, supra, at 329. These allegations were never proved and were not even made in this case. Today, however, the Court restricts (and some Members would eliminate) that leeway. In Johnson v. California, 543 U. S. 499 (2005), this Court considered a California prison policy that separated inmates racially. The dream of a Nation of equal citizens in a society where race is irrelevant to personal opportunity and achievement would be lost in a mosaic of shifting preferences based on inherently unmeasurable claims of past wrongs. Id., at 505506. Id., at 328 (Our holding today is in keeping with our tradition of giving a degree of deference to a universitys academic decisions). To raise the specter of resegregation to defend these programs is to ignore the meaning of the word and the nature of the cases before us. App. Id., at 338, 123 S. Ct. 2325, 156 L. Ed. De jure? [Footnote 13] See Jenkins, 515 U. S., at 121122 (Thomas, J., concurring) ([T]here is no reason to think that black students cannot learn as well when surrounded by members of their own race as when they are in an integrated environment). Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion. A federal District Court dismissed the suit, upholding the tiebreaker. If there were doubts before Swann was decided, they did not survive this Courts decision. Upon enrolling their child with the district, parents are required to identify their child as a member of a particular racial group. These plans are unnecessarily crude solutions to the problem of school segregation, which can be achieved through more indirect means. And the Court repeated this same statement in Grutter. 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. 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. If a school district has an interest in teaching racial understanding and cooperation, there is no logical reason why that interest should not extend to the composition of the teaching staff as well as the composition of the student body. 05908, pp. . 1117, 2528. Two additional precedents more directly related to the plans here at issue reinforce my conclusion. This Courts opinion in McDaniel v. Barresi, 402 U. S. 39 (1971), fits comfortably within this framework. Banks & C. Banks eds. See, e.g., Brief for Appellees on Reargument in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1953, No. Well, we want to have the schools that make up the percentage of students of the population). 539 U.S., at 325, 123 S. Ct. 2325, 156 L. Ed. If a school has reached the extremes of the racial guidelines, a student whose race would contribute to the schools racial imbalance will not be assigned there. The OCR and the school board entered into a formal settlement agreement. The highest white student population would have been 64 percent, which PICS contends still contains a significant portion of minority students. 2002). Johnson v. California, 543 U. S. 499, 505506 (2005); Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306, 326 (2003); Adarand, supra, at 224. And it thereby required, for example, all fourth grade students from the previously black and previously white schools first to attend together what would now be a mixed fourth grade at one of the school buildings and then the next year to attend what would now be a mixed fifth grade at the other school building. 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). Cf. In a word, the school plans under review do not involve the kind of race-based harm that has led this Court, in other contexts, to find the use of race-conscious criteria unconstitutional. Four of Seattles high schools are located in the northBallard, Nathan Hale, Ingraham, and Rooseveltand five in the southRainier Beach, Cleveland, West Seattle, Chief Sealth, and Franklin. 1 Complaint in Adams v. Forbes Bottomly, Civ. And their history reveals school district goals whose remedial, educational, and democratic elements are inextricably intertwined each with the others. Finally, the outcome of this case will give some perspective into how the new composition of the Supreme Court views the still controversial issue of affirmative action. History should teach greater humility. in No. 19. Absent searching judicial inquiry into the justification for such race-based measures, there is simply no way of determining what classifications are benign or remedial and what classifications are in fact motivated by illegitimate notions of racial inferiority or simple racial politics. Richmond v. J. 4 Id., at 1516; Memorandum from Stephen W. Daeschner, Superintendent, to the Board of Education, Jefferson Cty. 2005), online at http://www.seattleschools.org/area/facilties&nbhyph;plan/Choice/05&nbhyph; [Footnote 7] Although Louisville once operated a segregated school system and was subject to a Federal District Courts desegregation decree, see ante, at 7; Hampton v. Jefferson Cty. 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 . Once those vestiges were eliminated, Jefferson County was on the same footing as any other school district, and its use of race must be justified on other grounds. 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. KORRELL ON BEHALF OF PETITIONER MR. KORRELL: Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court. 2, p. 59 ([I]t would be difficult indeed to find a case so favored by precedent as is the case for South Carolina here). In 1977, the NAACP filed another legal complaint, this time with the federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfares Office for Civil Rights (OCR). That decision not only expressed our appraisal of the merits of the appeal, but it constitutes a precedent that the Court overrules today. See post, at 29. Written and curated by real attorneys at Quimbee. of Ed., 402 U. S. 1, 6 (1971); see also Monroe v. Board of Commrs of Jackson, 391 U. S. 450, 452 (1968). friend of JOSHUA RYAN McDONALD, PETITIONER. Is it not a fact that the very strength and fiber of our federal system is local self-government in those matters for which local action is competent? 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. Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 920 (1995), and I shall subject the tailoring of their plans to rigorous judicial review. Grutter, 539 U. S., at 388 (Kennedy, J., dissenting). (a)As part of its burden of proving that racial classifications are narrowly tailored to further compelling interests, the government must establish, in detail, how decisions based on an individual students race are made in a challenged program. schoolId=1061&report Id., at 525528 (Thomas, J., dissenting). ; see also App. See, e.g., Brief for Appellants in Brown v. Board of Education, O.T. 1953, Nos. 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. For several decades this Court has rested its public school decisions upon Swanns basic view that the Constitution grants local school districts a significant degree of leeway where the inclusive use of race-conscious criteria is at issue. v. Swann, 402 U. S. 43, 46 (1971) (no absolute prohibition against [the] use of mathematical ratios as a starting point); Swann, 402 U. S., at 2425 (approving the use of a ratio reflecting the racial composition of the whole school system as a useful starting point, but not as an inflexible requirement). That policy was necessary because of numerous incidents of racial violence. Id., at 502; id., at 532534 (Thomas, J., dissenting). Second, the plurality downplays the importance of Swann and related cases by frequently describing their relevant statements as dicta. These criticisms, however, miss the main point. This case was originally filed in 2001 in the Western District of Washington, which ruled in favor of the school district. McFarland I, 330 F.Supp. 10226e3(b) (1999). Thus, the dissent argues that [e]ach plan embodies the results of local experience and community consultation. Post, at 47. past cases have est. 252, 42 U. S.C. 2000d. Cf. Over a period of several months in 20072008, JCPS developed a diversity plan based upon social economic and minority status (income of parents), a plan suggested by school board members Steve Imhoff and Larry Hujo in 2002. See Brief for Petitioner at 35. of Oral Arg. of Ed., 402 U. S., at 46; Montgomery County Bd. Once Jefferson County achieved unitary status, it had remedied the constitutional wrong that allowed race-based assignments. 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. on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit. But Louisville should be able to answer the relevant questions on remand. The bulk of the data in the record was collected using the 10 percent band, see n. 1, supra. As the districts demographics shift, so too will their definition of racial diversity. See Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306, 351354 (2003) (Thomas, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). But segregation policies did not simply tell schoolchildren where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin, ante, at 40 (plurality opinion); they perpetuated a caste system rooted in the institutions of slavery and 80 years of legalized subordination. Franklin was integration positive because its nonwhite enrollment the previous school year was greater than 69 percent; 89 more white students were assigned to Franklin by operation of the racial tiebreaker in the 20002001 school year than otherwise would have been. See, e.g., Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U. S. 467, 495 (1992). 05-908 v. SEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. For Thomas, this means that no discrimination on the basis of race is permitted by the Constitution, even for a so-called "benign" purpose (Thomas rejected the notion that there could be a purely benign purpose in his concurrence in Adarand because the benignity or malignity of race-based discrimination turns on "whose ox is being gored" or is "in the eye of the beholder"). 05-915 v. JEFFERSON COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION et al. 1, pp. This presumably refers to the districts decision to cease, for 20012002 school year assignments, applying the racial tiebreaker to students seeking to transfer to a different school after ninth grade. [28] He contrasted this circumstance to Grutter, where "the consideration of race was viewed as indispensable" in more than tripling minority representation at the law schoolfrom 4 to 14.5 percent. The Seattle district, which has never operated legally segregated schools or been subject to court-ordered desegregation, classified children as white or nonwhite, and used the racial classifications as a tiebreaker to allocate slots in particular high schools. In place of the color-blind Constitution, the dissent would permit measures to keep the races together and proscribe measures to keep the races apart.
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