Brief for Respondent at 3334. Independent School Dist., 719 S.W. 2d 350, 352-353 (Ct. App. Justice Breyer, with whom Justice Stevens, Justice Souter, and Justice Ginsburg join, dissenting. In 2003, the petitioner now before us, Crystal Meredith, brought this lawsuit challenging the plans unmodified portions, i.e., those portions that dealt with ordinary, not magnet, schools. These plans classify individuals by race and allocate benefits and burdens on that basis; and as a result, they are to be subjected to strict scrutiny. In this case, the Ninth Circuit held that the School District had a compelling state interest in achieving racial and ethnic diversity in its individual schools. Citizens Against Mandatory Bussing v. Brooks, 80 Wash. 2d 121, 128129, 492 P.2d 536, 541542 (1972) (en banc), overruled on other grounds, Cole v. Webster, 103 Wash. 2d 280, 692 P.2d 799 (1984) (en banc); School Comm. Both cities once tried to achieve more integrated schools by relying solely upon measures such as redrawn district boundaries, new school building construction, and unrestricted voluntary transfers. Justice Breyers position comes down to a familiar claim: The end justifies the means. Moreover, the school districts did not consider other options that might have been more narrowly tailored. 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. The plan also established Parent Assistance Centers to help parents and students navigate the school selection and assignment process. of Ed. of Boston, the Illinois Supreme Court had issued an unpublished opinion holding unconstitutional a similar statute aimed at eliminating racial imbalance in public schools. The student assignment plan of Seattle Public Schools and Jefferson County Public Schools does not meet the narrowly tailored and compelling interest requirements for a race-based assignment plan because it is used only to achieve "racial balance." Second, in Croson, the Court appeared willing to authorize a government unit to remedy past discrimination for which it was responsible. This will be weighed against the consequences of using race as an isolated factor in classifying students. In fact, it contends that the District never seriously considered other race-neutral alternatives. 1. See Education Commission of the States, Open Enrollment: 50-State Report (2007), online at http://mb2.ecs.org/reports/Report.aspx?id=268. See also ante, at 15 (opinion of Kennedy, J.). In reaching this conclusion, the Court did not directly address the constitutional merits of the underlying Seattle plan. in Briggs v. Elliott, O. T. 1953, No. of Ed. [Footnote 7], When petitioner Crystal Meredith moved into the school district in August 2002, she sought to enroll her son, Joshua McDonald, in kindergarten for the 20022003 school year. See Brief for Petitioner at 2526. Adarand, supra, at 227. First, as demonstrated above, the two concepts are distinct. v. Detiege, 358 U. S. 54 (1958) (per curiam) (public parks); Gayle v. Browder, 352 U. S. 903 (1956) (per curiam) (buses); Holmes v. Atlanta, 350 U. S. 879 (1955) (per curiam) (golf courses); Mayor of Baltimore v. Dawson, 350 U. S. 877 (1955) (per curiam) (beaches). Reg. (This Nation has a moral and ethical obligation to fulfill its historic commitment to creating an integrated society that ensures equal opportunity for all of its children). tutional Provisions in the States Where Segregation in Education is Institutionalized). Cf. Second, Seattle noted that it has ceased using the racial tiebreaker pending the outcome of this litigation. [Footnote 4]. The complaint alleged that the Seattle School Board had created or perpetuated unlawful racial segregation through, e.g., certain school-transfer criteria, a construction program that needlessly built new schools in white areas, district line-drawing criteria, the maintenance of inferior facilities at black schools, the use of explicit racial criteria in the assignment of teachers and other staff, and a general pattern of delay in respect to the implementation of promised desegregation efforts. See, e.g., Schofield, Review of Research on School Desegregations Impact on Elementary and Secondary School Students, in Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education 597, 606607 (J. First, there is a historical and remedial element: an interest in setting right the consequences of prior conditions of segregation. Ibid. By and large, public education in our Nation is committed to the control of state and local authorities); Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294, 299 (1955) (Brown II) (Full implementation of these constitutional principles may require solution of varied local school problems. Apr 4, 2018 27 Dislike Share Save Ronaq Sahni 8 subscribers A Brief Video explaining the case of Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle School District. in No. 539 U. S., at 316, 335336. tion of the races); id., at App. The decision was a 5-4 split on the Court, with both sides claiming that their position was truest to the precedent set in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Here Roberts provides the following string citation: quoting Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244, 270, 123 S. Ct. 2411, 156 L. Ed. 693, 227 N.E. 2d 729 (1967), appeal dismd, 389 U. S. 572 (1968) (per curiam), post, at 35, is inapposite for the same reason that many of the cases cited by Justice Breyer are inapposite; the case involved a Massachusetts law that required school districts to avoid racial imbalance in schools but did not specify how to achieve this goaland certainly did not require express racial classifications as the means to do so. The pluralitys postulate that [t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race, ante, at 4041, is not sufficient to decide these cases. (a)Because racial classifications are simply too pernicious to permit any but the most exact connection between justification and classification, Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U. S. 448, 537 (Stevens, J., dissenting), governmental distributions of burdens or benefits based on individual racial classifications are reviewed under strict scrutiny, e.g., Johnson v. California, 543 U. S. 499, 505506. As Justice Marshall said, unless our children begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will ever learn to live together. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U. S. 717, 783 (1974) (dissenting opinion). The Court was exceedingly careful in describing the interest furthered in Grutter as not an interest in simple ethnic diversity but rather a far broader array of qualifications and characteristics in which race was but a single element. App. 5. App. [Footnote 3] If it is still necessary to select students for the school after using the racial tiebreaker, the next tiebreaker is the geographic proximity of the school to the students residence. denied, 389 U. S. 847 (1967); Springfield School Comm. Resort to the record, including the parties Stipulation of Facts, further confuses the matter. of Oral Arg. of Ed., 402 U. S., at 16far more heavily than the school districts themselves. The order required the school board to create and to maintain schools with student populations that ranged, for elementary schools, between 12% and 40% black, and for secondary schools (with one exception), between 12.5% and 35% black. of Ed., 395 U. S. 225, 232 (1969) (approving a lower court desegregation order that provided that the [school] board must move toward a goal under which in each school the ratio of white to Negro faculty members is substantially the same as it is throughout the system, and immediately requiring [t]he ratio of Negro to white teachers in each school to be equal to the ratio of Negro to white teachers in the system as a whole). By 1988, many white families had left the school district, and many Asian families had moved in. b. explicitly overturned the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Segregation, 1945 to 1956. 05908, at 30a. If the Court defers to the district, this will reaffirm local autonomy and give districts broad discretion to develop educational policy. 05915, p.7, n.4; Tr. of Cal. Id. Race-conscious objectives to achieve diverse school environment may be acceptable. See App. It is a context, as Swann makes clear, where history has required special administrative remedies. Written and curated by real attorneys at Quimbee. And some have concluded that there are no demonstrable educational benefits. The Jefferson County plan, however, is based on a goal of replicating at each school an African-American enrollment equivalent to the average district-wide African-American enrollment. Id., at 81. Initial plans were implemented in Mobile, Alabama and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, and in a number of other southern districts in the face of total racial segregation. 3313.98(B)(2)(b)(iii) (Lexis Supp. And, in any event, the histories of Seattle and Louisville make clear that this distinctionbetween court-ordered and voluntary desegregationseeks a line that sensibly cannot be drawn. ices Office, District Summaries 19992005, available at Compare, e.g., App. Richmond v. J. 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. 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. See post, at 5, 89, 18, 23. Importantly, it considered that issue only under rational-basis review, 39 Ill. 2d, at 600, 237 N.E. 2d, at 502 (The test of any legislative classification essentially is one of reasonableness), which even the dissent grudgingly recognizes is an improper standard for evaluating express racial classifications. 05908, p. 7. 6. Most white students live in the northern part of Seattle, most students of other racial backgrounds in the southern part. See Welch 8391. Bd. Dawkins & Braddock 401403; Wells & Crain 550. Id. Id., at 499, 504; Wygant, supra, at 274 (plurality opinion); cf. Furthermore, it was only used in a limited number of schoolsthose that were both over subscribed and relatively unintegrated. And it was Brown, after all, focusing upon primary and secondary schools, not Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U. S. 629 (1950), focusing on law schools, or McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Ed., 339 U. S. 637 (1950), focusing on graduate schools, that affected so deeply not only Americans but the world. First, Seattle claimed that none of the current members of Parents Involved can claim an imminent injury. (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. 2528. Unlike todays decision, they were also entirely loyal to Brown. In this hearing en banc, the Ninth Circuit reversed itself yet again, ruling that the Seattle school districts admission program was narrowly tailored and constitutionally acceptable. 05915, at 37 (Each [Jefferson County] school has a designated geographic attendance area, which is called the resides area of the school[, and each] such school is the resides school for those students whose parents or guardians residence address is within the schools geographic attendance area); id., at 82 (All elementary students shall be assigned to the school which serves the area in which they reside); and Brief for Respondents in No. Our cases clearly reject the argument that motives affect the strict scrutiny analysis. at 1171. The new plan worked roughly as expected for the two school years during which it was in effect (19992000 and 20002001). 3 Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist., No. How do the remedial interests here differ in kind from those at issue in the voluntary desegregation efforts that Attorney General Kennedy many years ago described in his letter to the President? Swann, 402 U. S., at 16. And in no field is this right of the several states more clearly recognized than in that of public education (quoting Briggs v. Elliott, 98 F.Supp. Such reservations and preliminary analyses of course did not decide the merits of this questionas evidenced by the disagreement among the lower courts on this issue. . Before the merits of the case can be addressed, the Court first has to address the Districts jurisdictional challenge that no case or controversy exists within the Constitutional sense of those terms. These mechanisms are race conscious but do not lead to different treatment based on a classification that tells each student he or she is to be defined by race, so it is unlikely any of them would demand strict scrutiny to be found permissible. Id., at 39a40a. 05908, at 7. More recently, however, progress has stalled. Bd. And we have understood that the Constitution permits local communities to adopt desegregation plans even where it does not require them to do so. In 2000, the District Court that entered that decree dissolved it, finding that Jefferson County had eliminated the vestiges associated with the former policy of segregation and its pernicious effects, and thus had achieved unitary status. of New Kent Cty., 391 U. S. 430, 441442 (1968). Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. See also Quillian & Campbell 541. Brief for Petitioner at 79. Ultimately, the dissents entire analysis is corrupted by the considerations that lead it initially to question whether strict scrutiny should apply at all. Oyez, www.oyez.org/cases/2006/parents-involved-community-schools-v-seattle-school-district-1-et-al-06282007. Furthermore, for a government unit to remedy past discrimination for which it was responsible, the Court has required it to demonstrate a strong basis in evidence for its conclusion that remedial action was necessary. Croson, 488 U. S., at 500 (quoting Wygant, supra, at 277 (plurality opinion)). Nathan Hales 20052006 enrollment was 17.3 percent Asian-American, 10.7 percent African-American, 8 percent Latino, 61.5 percent Caucasian, and 2.5 percent Native-American. The plurality does not seem confident as to the answer. Jefferson County has articulated a similar goal, phrasing its interest in terms of educating its students in a racially integrated environment. App. And federal courts would rightly hesitate to find unitary status if the consequences of the ruling were so dramatically disruptive. 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. If the plans survive this strict review, they would survive less exacting review a fortiori. The history of each school system reveals highly segregated schools, followed by remedial plans that involved forced busing, followed by efforts to attract or retain students through the use of plans that abandoned busing and replaced it with greater student choice. The State must seek alternatives to the classification and differential treatment of individuals by race, at least absent some extraordinary showing not present here. Accordingly, the plans are unconstitutional. But in Seattle the plans are defended as necessary to address the consequences of racially identifiable housing patterns. 1986) (upholding rezoning plan under rational-basis review). Perhaps recognizing that reliance on Grutter cannot sustain their plans, both school districts assert additional interests, distinct from the interest upheld in Grutter, to justify their race-based assignments. See, e.g., Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peńa, 515 U. S. 200, 243, 248, n.6 (1995) (Stevens, J., dissenting); Wygant v. Jackson Bd. And in light of those challenges, they have asked us not to take from their hands the instruments they have used to rid their schools of racial segregation, instruments that they believe are needed to overcome the problems of cities divided by race and poverty. See ante, at 1213. That is what is at issue here. Moreover, these cases are not governed by Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306, 328, in which the Court held that, for strict scrutiny purposes, a government interest in student body diversity in the context of higher education is compelling. 1, 2, and 4 and for Respondents in No. Upon Joshuas enrollment in middle school, he may again be subject to assignment based on his race. .
(PDF) Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District Another brief claims that school desegregation has a modest positive impact on the achievement of African-American students. App. A Connecticut statute states that its student choice program will seek to preserve racial and ethnic balance. Conn. Gen. Stat. See ante, at 9 (Executive and legislative branches, which for generations now have considered these types of policies and procedures, should be permitted to employ them with candor and with confidence that a constitutional violation does not occur whenever a decisionmaker considers the impact a given approach might have on students of different races). 1, 149 Wash. 2d 660, 72 P.3d 151 (2003); 137 F.Supp. As the panel majority in Parents Involved VI concluded: [T]he tiebreakers annual effect is thus merely to shuffle a few handfuls of different minority students between a few schoolsabout a dozen additional Latinos into Ballard, a dozen black students into Nathan Hale, perhaps two dozen Asians into Roosevelt, and so on. The statistics cited in Appendix A to the dissent are not to the contrary. More recently, the school district sent a delegation of high school students to a White Privilege Conference. See Equity and Race Relations White Privilege Conference, https://www.seattleschools. It reported that most districts92 of them, in factadopted desegregation policies that combined two or more highly race-conscious strategies, for example, rezoning or pairing. as a matter of educational policy school authorities may well conclude that some kind of racial balance in the schools is desirable quite apart from any constitutional requirements. Then-Justice Rehnquist echoed this view in Bustop, Inc. v. Los Angeles Bd.