parents involved in community schools v seattle 2007 quizlet
The dissent asserts that racially balanced schools improve educational outcomes for black children. In dozens of subsequent cases, this Court told school districts previously segregated by law what they must do at a minimum to comply with Browns constitutional holding. 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 plans are unnecessarily crude solutions to the problem of school segregation, which can be achieved through more indirect means. 05908, p. 38a. These other meanse.g., where to construct new schools, how to allocate resources among schools, and which academic offerings to provide to attract students to certain schoolsimplicate different considerations than the explicit racial classifications at issue in these cases, and we express no opinion on their validitynot even in dicta. 05908, at 303a. [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 over one-third of the assignments affected by the racial tiebreaker, then, the use of race in the end made no difference, and the district could identify only 52 students who were ultimately affected adversely by the racial tiebreaker in that it resulted in assignment to a school they had not listed as a preference and to which they would not otherwise have been assigned. 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. of New Kent Cty., 391 U. S. 430, 435 (1968) ([T]he State, acting through the local school board and school officials, organized and operated a dual system, part white and part Negro. It was such dual systems that 14 years ago Brown I[, 347 U. S. 483,] held unconstitutional and a year later Brown II[, 349 U. S. 294 (1955)] held must be abolished). The Chief Justice finally concludes his opinion by answering some of the issues raised by Justice Stephen Breyer in his dissent. Second, as Grutter specified, [c]ontext matters when reviewing race-based governmental action under the Equal Protection Clause. 539 U. S., at 327 (citing Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339, 343344 (1960)). The plans are tied to each districts specific racial demographics, rather than to any pedagogic concept of the level of diversity needed to obtain the asserted educational benefits. 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. No. 1, No. 693, 227 N.E.2d 729. Public School Dist., p.2 (Aug. 6, 1996) (1996 Memorandum). Parents Involved commenced this suit in the Western District of Washington, alleging that Seattles use of race in assignments violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,[Footnote 4] Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,[Footnote 5] and the Washington Civil Rights Act. In 20002001, when the racial tiebreaker was last used, Ballards total enrollment was 17.5 percent Asian-American, 10.8 percent African-American, 10.7 percent Latino, 56.4 percent Caucasian, and 4.6 percent Native-American. The plurality is wrong to do so. See Grutter, 539 U.S. at 328. Indeed, the consequences of the approach the Court takes today are serious. Under no fair reading, though, can the majority opinion in Gratz be cited as authority to sustain the racial classifications under consideration here. Nothing but an interest in classroom aesthetics and a hypersensitivity to elite sensibilities justifies the school districts racial balancing programs. Considering the precedent of Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), which is only partly applicable because it concerns higher education, it is apparent that educational institutions must use diversity as one of several admissions criteria rather than setting strict quotas. ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI The school districts in these cases voluntarily adopted student assignment plans that rely upon race to determine which public schools certain children may attend. As I have pointed out, supra, at 4, de facto resegregation is on the rise. The sample includes districts in urban areas of all sizes, suburbs (e.g., Arlington County, Virginia) and rural areas (e.g., Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, and Raleigh County, West Virginia). 1, 458 U. S. 457); see generally Siqueland 2324. And in each city, the school boards plans have evolved over time in ways that progressively diminish the plans use of explicit race-conscious criteria. For example, prior to our decision in School Comm. Student Choice and Project Renaissance, 1991 to 1996. In both Seattle and Louisville, the local school districts began with schools that were highly segregated in fact. Id., at 525528 (Thomas, J., dissenting). Post, at 28 (citing Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. See Board of Ed. Not everyone welcomed this Courts decision in Brown. See also Brief for Appellees in Brown v. Board of Education, O.T. 1952, No. The President of the United States dispatched the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, and federal troops were needed to enforce a desegregation decree. That decision not only expressed our appraisal of the merits of the appeal, but it constitutes a precedent that the Court overrules today. 1, 149 Wash. 2d 660, 72 P.3d 151 (2003); 137 F.Supp. 05908, pp. 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 First, in schools that were formerly segregated by law, race-based measures are sometimes constitutionally compelled to remedy prior school segregation. In this Courts finest hour, Brown v. Board of Education challenged this history and helped to change it. Both parents appealed the Districts placement but were unable to have their children reassigned. The Ninth Circuit below stated that it share[d] in the hope expressed in Grutter that in 25 years racial preferences would no longer be necessary to further the interest identified in that case. Moreover, the effect of applying race-conscious criteria here affects potentially disadvantaged students less severely, not more severely, than the criteria at issue in Grutter. In support of the third benefit, the District cites findings that minority students in fully integrated schools often perform better academically and are more likely to find work in an integrated workplace. [4], The Parents Involved decision was a "split decision." 4, 1984) (1984 Memorandum); Memorandum from Donald W. Ingwerson, Superintendent, to the Board of Education, Jefferson County Public School District, pp. Jefferson County phrases its interest as racial integration, but integration certainly does not require the sort of racial proportionality reflected in its plan. In 2001, after the decree had been dissolved, Jefferson County adopted the voluntary student assignment plan at issue in this case. Brief for Petitioner at 11. The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. 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. Applying these precedents to K-12 education, the Circuit Court found that the tiebreaker scheme was not narrowly tailored. 2, pp. At the other extreme, Santa Clara, California had a relatively even racial distribution prior to its 1979 desegregation plan. To the contrary, Jefferson County in its briefing has explained how and when it employs these classifications only in terms so broad and imprecise that they cannot withstand strict scrutiny. Id. 2 1996 Memorandum 47, and Attachment 2; Hampton I, supra, at 768. In Jefferson County, it is used to make certain elementary school assignments and to rule on transfer requests. . Moreover, this Court from Swann to Grutter has treated these civic effects as an important virtue of racially diverse education. yrs= (showing that reading scores went up, not down, when Seattles race-based assignment program ended at Sealth High School, Ingraham High School, and Franklin High Schoolsome of the schools most affected by the plan). Parents of students denied assignment to particular schools under these plans solely because of their race brought suit, contending that allocating children to different public schools on the basis of race violated the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection. of Oral Arg. in No. The plan paired (or triaded) imbalanced black schools with imbalanced white schools. Code Ann. The Constitution generally prohibits government race-based decisionmaking, but this Court has authorized the use of race-based measures for remedial purposes in two narrowly defined circumstances. The Seattle School District allowed students to apply to any high school in the District. Second, if the schools racial make-up was more than 15 percent out of line with the overall racial composition of the school district (classified only as white and nonwhite), then the students race was considered. Post, at 38. 05908, at 36 (For Seattle, racial balance is clearly not an end in itself but rather a measure of the extent to which the educational goals the plan was designed to foster are likely to be achieved). They are based upon numerous sources, which for ease of exposition I have cataloged, along with their corresponding citations, at Appendix B, infra. For schools that never segregated on the basis of race, such as Seattle, or that have removed the vestiges of past segregation, such as Jefferson County, the way to achieve a system of determining admission to the public schools on a nonracial basis, Brown II, 349 U. S., at 300301, is to stop assigning students on a racial basis. '"[17], Part III B[14] (joined only by a plurality of the Court) rejected the notion that racial balancing could be a compelling state interest, as to do so "would justify the imposition of racial proportionality throughout American society, contrary to our repeated recognition that "[a]t the heart of the Constitution's 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. wa.us/ Accessed 12 Feb. 2023. 439 U. S., at 1383. 1, 426 F.3d 1162 (9th Cir. And individual racial classifications employed in this manner may be considered legitimate only if they are a last resort to achieve a compelling interest. The dissent overreads Grutter, however, in suggesting that it renders pure racial balancing a constitutionally compelling interest; Grutter itself recognized that using race simply to achieve racial balance would be patently unconstitutional, 539 U. S., at 330. Purportedly benign race-based decisionmaking suffers the same constitutional infirmity as invidious race-based decisionmaking. If the plans survive this strict review, they would survive less exacting review a fortiori. But in Seattle the plans are defended as necessary to address the consequences of racially identifiable housing patterns. And it was that position that prevailed in this Court, which emphasized in its remedial opinion that what was [a]t stake is the personal interest of the plaintiffs in admission to public schools as soon as practicable on a nondiscriminatory basis, and what was required was determining admission to the public schools on a nonracial basis. Brown II, supra, at 300301 (emphasis added). Accord, post, at 68 (Today, almost 50 years later, attitudes toward race in this Nation have changed dramatically. ject.harvard.edu/research/deseg/Racial_Transformation.pdf. 10266aa(b)(2) (2007). 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 has failed to explain why, in a district composed of a diversity of races, with fewer than half of the students classified as white, it has employed the crude racial categories of white and non-white as the basis for its assignment decisions. In reality, it is far from apparent that coerced racial mixing has any educational benefits, much less that integration is necessary to black achievement. The dissents permissive strict scrutiny (which bears more than a passing resemblance to rational-basis review) could invite widespread governmental deployment of racial classifications. Brief for Respondents in No. If too many students list the same school as their first choice, the district employs a series of tiebreakers to determine who will fill the open slots at the oversubscribed school. Schools argue that a diverse environment teaches students tolerance and respect, and the exposure to diverse viewpoints enhances education and dispels stereotypes. A 1987 Civil Rights Commission Study of 125 school districts in the Nation demonstrated the breadth and variety of desegregation plans: The [study] documents almost 300 desegregation plans that were implemented between 1961 and 1985. Such deference is fundamentally at odds with our equal protection jurisprudence. But to this the replication must be: Even so, measures other than differential treatment based on racial typing of individuals first must be exhausted. Will Louisville and all similar school districts have to return to systems like Louisvilles initial 1956 plan, which did not consider race at all? As we have held, one form of injury under the Equal Protection Clause is being forced to compete in a race-based system that may prejudice the plaintiff, Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peńa, 515 U. S. 200, 211 (1995); Northeastern Fla. Chapter, Associated Gen. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265 (1978); Adarand, 515 U. S. 200. And what of laws concern to diminish and peacefully settle conflict among the Nations people? Chief Justice Burger, on behalf of a unanimous Court in a case of exceptional importance, wrote: School authorities are traditionally charged with broad power to formulate and implement educational policy and might well conclude, for example, that in order to prepare students to live in a pluralistic society each school should have a prescribed ratio of Negro to white students reflecting the proportion for the district as a whole. 2d 358, 360 (2000). It is not one in which race-conscious limits stigmatize or exclude; the limits at issue do not pit the races against each other or otherwise significantly exacerbate racial tensions. See Craig v. Boren, 429 U. S. 190, 211 (1976) (concurring opinion). The panel determined that while achieving racial diversity and avoiding racial isolation are compelling government interests, id., at 964, Seattles use of the racial tiebreaker was not narrowly tailored to achieve these interests, id., at 980. (citing Armor & Rossell, Desegregation and Resegregation in the Public Schools, in Beyond the Color Line 239 (A. Thernstrom & S. Thernstrom eds. certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit, No. App. 2. exemplifies the long-running disagreement over the meaning of racial discrimination under the Constitution. The remedy, though, was limited in time and limited to the wrong. Section 5. While diversity may lend to a robust education, parents and students have their own opinions on what factors promote the best education possible. Voluntary School Diversity Efforts A decade ago, on June 28, 2007, the United States Supreme Court issued its ruling in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District ("PICS"), the only It then placed some grades (say, third and fourth grades) at one school building and other grades (say, fifth and sixth grades) at the other school building. The plan provided for open high school enrollment. Memorandum of Agreement between Seattle School District No. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law). 458 U. S., at 535, n.11. In 2003, the Supreme Court decided two casesGrutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) and Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003)both of which involved affirmative action in higher education admissions. in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1952, No. Code 2.60.020 (2006), certified the state-law question to the Washington Supreme Court, 294 F.3d 1085, 1087 (2002) (Parents Involved IV). See School Comm. Cf. In a searing dissent to the sharply divided 5-4 decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Gratz, supra, at 301 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting); Adarand, supra, at 243 (Stevens, J., dissenting); Carter, When Victims Happen To Be Black, 97 Yale L.J. No. Seattle Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. The idea that if race is the problem, race is the instrument with which to solve it cannot be accepted as an analytical leap forward. 911. 1. In that case, I stressed the importance of confining a remedy for past wrongdoing to the members of the injured class. In briefing and argument before this Court, Seattle contends that its use of race helps to reduce racial concentration in schools and to ensure that racially concentrated housing patterns do not prevent nonwhite students from having access to the most desirable schools. Because the school boards lack any further interest in remedying segregation, this element offers no support for the purported interest in integration.. Brief for Respondents in No. at 315 (opinion of Powell, J. It also cited to Justice Powells opinion in Bakke, approving of the limited use of race-conscious criteria in a university-admissions affirmative action case. See Parts IA and IB, supra, at 618. To do this as an educational policy is within the broad discretionary powers of school authorities. 402 U. S., at 16. University of Texas v. Camenisch, 451 U. S. 390, 393 (1981). The Court quoted the articulation of diversity from Justice Powells opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265 (1978), noting that it is not an interest in simple ethnic diversity, in which a specified percentage of the student body is in effect guaranteed to be members of selected ethnic groups, that can justify the use of race. Grutter, supra, at 324325 (citing and quoting Bakke, supra, at 314315 (opinion of Powell, J. Nothing in the extensive history of desegregation efforts over the past 50 years gives the districts, or this Court, any reason to believe that another method is possible to accomplish these goals. Ed. 05908, pp. That, though, is not the case. See Beard v. Banks, 548 U. S. ___, ___ (2006) (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment) (noting that two were killed and hundreds were injured in race rioting subsequent to this Courts decision in Johnson). Instead, what was upheld in Grutter was consideration of a far broader array of qualifications and characteristics of which racial or ethnic origin is but a single though important element. 539 U. S., at 325 (quoting Bakke, supra, [Footnote 26], What was wrong in 1954 cannot be right today. Although the Supreme Court must find jurisdiction in order to give an opinion on the equal protection claims, it is uncertain whether the Court will address this question in much detail. But the Court set forth in Swann a basic principle of constitutional lawa principle of law that has found wide acceptance in the legal culture. Dickerson v. United States, 530 U. S. 428, 443 (2000) (internal quotation marks omitted); Mitchell v. United States, 526 U. S. 314, 330 (1999); id., at 331, 332 (Scalia, J., dissenting) (citing wide acceptance in the legal culture as adequate reason not to overrule prior cases). The plurality could validly claim that no court ever found that Seattle schools were segregated in law. 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). Indeed, it is a cruel distortion of history to compare Topeka, Kansas, in the 1950s to Louisville and Seattle in the modern dayto equate the plight of Linda Brown (who was ordered to attend a Jim Crow school) to the circumstances of Joshua McDonald (whose request to transfer to a school closer to home was initially declined). 2, p. 76 ([A] State has power to establish a school system which is capable of efficient administration, taking into account local problems and conditions). Statement in School Comm. 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). . Preliminary Challenges, 1956 to 1969. 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). 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. The plan required that each elementary school in the district maintain 20% to 40% enrollment of African-American students, corresponding to the racial composition of the district. The fact that Seattle has ceased using the racial tiebreaker pending the outcome here is not dispositive, since the district vigorously defends its programs constitutionality, and nowhere suggests that it will not resume using race to assign students if it prevails. See Brief of the Asian American Legal Foundation as Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioners at 5. Most white families live north of the downtown area where four high schools Ballard, Ingraham, Nathan Hale, and Roosevelt are located. To adopt the dissents deferential approach would be to abdicate our constitutional responsibilities. Furthermore, it would leave our equal-protection jurisprudence at the mercy of elected government officials evaluating the evanescent views of a handful of social scientists. The dissents reliance on this interest is, therefore, inconsistent with Wygant. More broadly, however, allowing racial diversity or balance as a compelling state interest, even if confined to secondary education, calls into question the Equal. Because the Constitution emphatically does not forbid the use of race-conscious measures by districts in the South that voluntarily desegregated their schools, on what basis does the plurality claim that the law forbids Seattle to do the same? 393, 407 (1857) ([T]hey [members of the negro African race] had no rights which the white man was bound to respect). 2, pp. b. explicitly overturned the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. It sought one law, one Nation, one people, not simply as a matter of legal principle but in terms of how we actually live. Jenkins, supra, at 121 (Thomas, J., concurring); cf. And it has its roots in preventing what gradually may become the de facto resegregation of Americas public schools. Other problems are evident in Seattles system, but there is no need to address them now. Kennedy argued that the government had an interest in ensuring racial equality: "The plurality opinion is too dismissive of the legitimate interest government has in ensuring all people have equal opportunity regardless of their race.". 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. . . W. Bowen & D. Bok, The Shape of the River 118 (1998) (hereinafter Bowen & Bok). Thus, the programs are subject to the general rule that government race-based decisionmaking is unconstitutional. May a school district that is not racially segregated and that normally permits a student to attend any high school of her choosing deny a child admission to her chosen school solely because of her race in an effort to achieve a desired racial balance in particular schools, or does such racial balancing violated the. Finally, it argues that race-neutral techniques, such as a lottery or taking into account many forms of diversity in a holistic approach, would be as effective as the racial tiebreaker. Roberts concludes his opinion for the plurality by saying: The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. School Dist. The plan required each middle school student to be assigned to his or her neighborhood school unless the student applied for, and was accepted by, a magnet middle school. It should escape no one that behind Justice Breyers veil of judicial modesty hides an inflated role for the Federal Judiciary. Level=School&orgLinkId=1061&yrs=; http://reportcard. This Court has recognized that the public interests at stake in such cases are compelling. We have approved of narrowly tailored plans that are no less race-conscious than the plans before us. His resides school was only a mile from his new home, but it had no available spaceassignments had been made in May, and the class was full. But our precedent has recognized that de jure discrimination can be present even in the absence of racially explicit laws. of Cal. During the period the tiebreaker applied, it typically affected about 300 students per year. Id., at 38a. 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). Diversity, depending on its meaning and definition, is a compelling educational goal a school district may pursue. Second, Seattle noted that it has ceased using the racial tiebreaker pending the outcome of this litigation. Grutter, 539 U. S., at 348 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Justice John Paul Stevens wrote a sharply worded short dissent in which he accused the plurality of misusing and misapplying previous Supreme Court precedents including Brown v. Board of Education. on writ of certiorari to the united states court of 420, p.25. 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. [citation needed]. Pp. In 1995 and 1996, the Louisville School Board, with the help of a special Planning Team, community meetings, and other official and unofficial study groups, monitored the effects of Project Renaissance and considered proposals for improvement. Brief for Respondent at 33, 43. See Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. Other amici dispute these findings. SCHOOLS, PETITIONER, on writ of certiorari to the united states court of Compare Brief for Kansas on Reargument in Brown v. Board of Education, O.T. 1953, No. in No. We granted certiorari. Here Roberts provides the following string citation: Here, Roberts provides the following string cite: Id., at 337, 123 S. Ct. 2325, 156 L. Ed. 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). in No. 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).