Racial Discrimination

Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1

School districts throughout the United States have employed racial guidelines to insure that schools are racially integrated. These guidelines have prevented white students from selecting the schools of their choice, leading critics to label these plans as an outlawed form of racial discrimination. Parents of white children have filed federal lawsuits challenging various guidelines that expressly use race as a determining factor in school selection procedures. These lawsuits produced mixed results until the U.S. Supreme Court, in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, __U.S.__, 127 S.Ct. __, __L.Ed.2d __ 2007 WL 1836531 (2007), issued a landmark ruling that struck down the guidelines used by the Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Kentucky school districts, finding that such plans violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Though four justices voted to end the use of race in public education to promote diversity, Justice Anthony Kennedy issued a separate opinion that said that race could still be taken into account if the programs were more narrowly tailored. The dissenting four justices countered that the majority had made a disastrous decision that would unsettle decades of decisions that sought to prevent the resegregation of public schools.

In 1998 the Seattle school district established guidelines on high school assignments. Because some schools were more popular than others, a series of "tiebreakers" were used to determine who was given open slots. The first tiebreaker gave preference to students who had a sibling enrolled in the high school. The next tiebreaker was based on the racial composition of the school and the race of the individual student. The racial composition of the Seattle schools was 41 percent white and 59 percent nonwhite. If the school was not within 10 percent of the district's overall racial balance, then the school would admit students whose race would help bring the school into balance. The district employed these tiebreakers because most white students live in the northern section of Seattle, while nonwhites mostly live in southern areas of the city. By 2000 many white students were not admitted to one of the four high schools in northern Seattle, leading to the formation of Parents Involved in Community Schools. This organization filed a federal lawsuit, arguing that the tiebreaker system violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The federal district court ruled against the organization as did the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Both courts found that under the strict scrutiny analysis of constitutionality the school district had a compelling interest in maintaining racial diversity and had narrowly tailored its plan to serve this interest.

In the second case, the Jefferson County Schools located in the greater Louisville, Kentucky area, established in 2001 a voluntary school assignment plan. The racial composition of the schools was 34 percent black and 66 percent white. The Louisville plan denied admission to grade schools if the student's race would contribute to the school's racial imbalance. Crystal Meredith filed a federal lawsuit challenging the plan after her son was denied the right to transfer to a grade school that was close to their home because the transfer would have an adverse effect on school desegregation. The federal district court and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed her case, finding that the school district had a compelling interest in insuring that the schools remain integrated and that the plan was narrowly tailored to serve that compelling interest.

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, overruled both circuit courts, finding that the plans did not survive strict constitutional scrutiny. Chief Justice John Roberts, in a opinion announcing the judgment of the Court, found that the plans were "directed only to racial balance, pure and simple," which violated the Equal Protection Clause. He concluded that the "way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." Roberts noted that in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954) the Court ruled that schoolchildren could not be told where they could go to school based "on the color of their skin." The school districts had failed to demonstrate that they should be allowed to do this "once again—even for very different reasons." In his view it made no difference if the school districts had worthy goals in mind if they were "free to discriminate on the basis of race to achieve it."

Justice Anthony Kennedy supplied the fifth vote to strike down the two plans but he was not prepared to remove race as a consideration in ensuring diversity. Kennedy disagreed with Roberts' conclusion that race could not be taken into account, stating that "The plurality opinion is too dismissive of the legitimate interest government has in ensuring all people have equal opportunity regardless of race." He suggested that schools could take into account race if they did not single out individual students. The drawing of school attendance zones, "strategic site selection of new schools," and directing resources at special programs such as magnet schools were possible ways of avoiding "the status quo of racial isolation in schools." Kennedy's concurring opinion emerged as the basis for analyzing other school diversity plans, which are currently in use by over 1,000 school districts throughout the United States.

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a lengthy dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justice John Paul Stevens, David Souter, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Breyer found little merit in Justice Kennedy's suggested alter-natives and argued that the Court had taken a "radical" step away from established law. Without the use of such assignment plans he believed that the resegregation by race of the public schools was inevitable. He concluded that the decision would be one that the Supreme Court "and the nation will come to regret."