The U.S. Constitution in Article III 2 specifies the scope of matters on which the federal courts can issue decisions. area/siso/disprof/2005/DP05all.pdf; Brief for Respond- See Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peńa, 515 U. S. 200, 240 (1995) (Thomas, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). of Ed. See, e.g., post, at 21, 4849, 66. The Supreme Court's 5-4 vote on the matter of desegregation and equal access to educational opportunity signals that a divide exists in the United States with respect to the underlying educational values of excellence and . PICS argues, however, that the Seattle School District is doing just thatemploying racial balancing for the sole purpose of achieving racial diversity in its individual schools. Justice Kennedy agreed that the Court has jurisdiction to decide these cases and that respondents student assignment plans are not narrowly tailored to achieve the compelling goal of diversity properly defined, but concluded that some parts of the plurality opinion imply an unyielding insistence that race cannot be a factor in instances when it may be taken into account. Nineteen of the districts forty-six elementary schools were between 80% and 100% black. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 [Footnote 2] Although presently observed racial imbalance might result from past de jure segregation, racial imbalance can also result from any number of innocent private decisions, including voluntary housing choices. 05908, at 286a. 44, p.6 (200304 Jefferson County Public Schools Elementary Student Assignment Application, Section B) (Assignment is made to a school for Primary 1 (Kindergarten) through Grade Five as long as racial guidelines are maintained. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265 (1978).) No. 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. In neither city did these prior attempts prove sufficient to achieve the citys integration goals. local tax dollars will be spent. See, e.g., n.1, supra. How could such a plan be lawful the day before dissolution but then become unlawful the very next day? The en banc Ninth Circuit declared that when a racially diverse school system is the goal (or racial concentration or isolation is the problem), there is no more effective means than a consideration of race to achieve the solution. Parents Involved VII, supra, at 1191. Each respondent has asserted that its assignment of individual students by race is permissible because there is no other way to avoid racial isolation in the school districts. Cf. Third, the plans before us, subjected to rigorous judicial review, are supported by compelling state interests and are narrowly tailored to accomplish those goals. [Footnote 3]. See Williamson v. Lee Optical of Okla., Inc., 348 U. S. 483, 488 (1955) (It is enough that there is an evil at hand for correction, and that it might be thought that the particular legislative measure was a rational way to correct it). 2d 753, 762764 (WD Ky. 1999). Indeed, in its more recent opinions, the Court recognized that the fundamental purpose of strict scrutiny review is to take relevant differences between fundamentally different situations . See ante, at 1112 (Thomas, J., concurring); ante, at 3, 17 (opinion of Kennedy, J.). A compelling interest exists in avoiding racial isolation, an interest that a school district, in its discretion and expertise, may choose to pursue. On the other hand, if the Court chooses not to give deference to the School District, school boards may lose some of their decision-making discretion, which could result in diminished community support. The same must be said for the controlling opinion in Grutter. Post, at 41. of Ed., 72 F.Supp. Kennedy's opinion also emphasized the risks posed by allowing for the proliferation of mechanically imposed individual race classifications of its citizens. See, e.g., Crain & Mahard, Desegregation and Black Achievement: A Review of the Research, 42 L. & Contemp. See also, e.g., Offerman v. Nitkowski, 378 F.2d 22, 24 (CA2 1967); Deal v. Cincinnati Bd. The school districts in these cases have not carried the heavy burden of demonstrating that we should allow this once againeven for very different reasons. It established that the decisions in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. This is confirmed by the fact that Seattle has been able to achieve a desirable degree of diversity without the greater emphasis on race that drawing fine lines among minority groups would require. 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. The District tried to give students their first choice, but when a school had more students applying for it than spots available, it used a series of tiebreakers to determine who received the spots. The histories that follow set forth these basic facts. In challenging standing, Seattle also notes that it has ceased using the racial tiebreaker pending the outcome of this litigation. The dissent repeatedly claims that the school districts are threatened with resegregation and that they will succumb to that threat if these plans are declared unconstitutional. In reality, it is far from apparent that coerced racial mixing has any educational benefits, much less that integration is necessary to black achievement. Brief for Petitioner at 3536. Justice Stevenss reliance on School Comm. 4 Hampton v. Jefferson Cty. The first case started in 1998 when five African American high school students sued JCPS to allow them to attend Central High School, a magnet school. See Part IIB, infra. (PDF) Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District 2, p. 79 (But be that doctrine what it may, somewhere, sometime to every principle comes a moment of repose when it has been so often announced, so confidently relied upon, so long continued, that it passes the limits of judicial discretion and disturbance. . Ante, at 28. Diversity, depending on its meaning and definition, is a compelling educational goal a school district may pursue. 3, p. 71 ([T]o make such a transition, would undo what we have been doing, and which we propose to continue to do for the uplift and advancement of the education of both races. 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). v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 1, 4950 (1973) (extolling local control for the opportunity it offers for participation in the decisionmaking process that determines how . (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). 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. 05915, at 82. aspx? 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. Grutter at 33637; Gratz, 539 U.S. at 27071. Other amici dispute these findings. The statement by Justice Harlan that [o]ur Constitution is color-blind was most certainly justified in the context of his dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, 559 (1896). Third, there is a democratic element: an interest in producing an educational environment that reflects the pluralistic society in which our children will live. v. Goose Creek Consol. 05915, at 4, these ambiguities become all the more problematic in light of the contradictions and confusions that result. 733, 741742 (1998) (hereinafter Hallinan). Identify the clause of the Fourteenth Amendment that is most relevant [Footnote 30] See, e.g., Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. Also, the racial tiebreaker has not been employed in Seattle school district since 2002, first due to injunctions and subsequently by the choice of the school district. ospi. 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. For instance, a Texas appeals court in 1986 rejected a Fourteenth Amendment challenge to a voluntary integration plan by explaining: [T]he absence of a court order to desegregate does not mean that a school board cannot exceed minimum requirements in order to promote school integration. 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. as Amici Curiae 29. Most non-white families live south of downtown, where five high schoolsChief Sealth, Cleveland, Franklin, Garfield, and Rainier Beachare located. See supra, at 3745. in No. The next tiebreaker depends upon the racial composition of the particular school and the race of the individual student. pols 101 ch 4 Flashcards | Quizlet ERIC - EJ919372 - The Path of Diversity in K-12 Educational (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. Furthermore, it is unclear whether increased interracial contact improves racial attitudes and relations. 2002), but then withdrew its opinion, finding that the appeal turned on an unsettled question of state law which the state courts would best be able to answer in the first instance. Although all governmental uses of race 2. Even as to race, the plans here employ only a limited notion of diversity, viewing race exclusively in white/nonwhite terms in Seattle and black/other terms in Jefferson County. at 12. Therefore, if governments may constitutionally use racial balancing to achieve these aspirational ends in schools, they may use racial balancing to achieve similar goals at every levelfrom state-sponsored 4H clubs, see Bazemore v. Friday, 478 U. S. 385, 388390 (1986) (Brennan, J., concurring), to the state civil service. See Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306, 351354 (2003) (Thomas, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Percentage of Black Students in 90100 Percent Nonwhite and Majority Nonwhite Public Schools by Region, 19501954 to 2000, Fall Enrollment. Section 2. See also R. Fischer, The Segregation Struggle in Louisiana 186277, p. 51 (1974) (describing the use of race-conscious remedies); Harlan, Desegregation in New Orleans Public Schools During Reconstruction, 67 Am. Parents Involved VI, 377 F.3d 949 (2004). 1, 127 S. Ct. 2738 (U.S. 2007) Brief Fact Summary. In his concurrence, Kennedy differed with the plurality because, he found, the goal of obtaining a diverse student body is a compelling state interest. To remedy the wrong, school districts that had been segregated by law had no choice, whether under court supervision or pursuant to voluntary desegregation efforts, but to resort to extraordinary measures including individual student and teacher assignment to schools based on race. The plurality, by contrast, does not acknowledge that the school districts have identified a compelling interest here. Cities that have implemented successful school desegregation plans have witnessed increased interracial contact and neighborhoods that tend to become less racially segregated. No one contends that Seattle has established or that Louisville has reestablished a dual school system that separates students on the basis of race. Ante, at 1718. The Constitution abhors classifications based on race, not only because those classifications can harm favored races or are based on illegitimate motives, but also because every time the government places citizens on racial registers and makes race relevant to the provision of burdens or benefits, it demeans us all. Grutter, supra, at 353 (opinion of Thomas, J.). The Seattle school district classifies children as white or nonwhite; the Jefferson County school district as black or other. In Seattle, this racial classification is used to allocate slots in oversubscribed high schools. See Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 244, 275. It was a promise embodied in three Amendments designed to make citizens of slaves. . 2830 (cataloging state laws requiring separa- 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 . Dayton Bd. 36, 71 (1872) ([N]o one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in [all the Reconstruction amendments] . k12. Four of Seattle's high schools are located in the northBallard, Nathan Hale, Ingraham, and Rooseveltand five in the southRainier Beach, Cleveland, West Seattle, Chief Sealth, and Franklin. 1922). The minimal effect these classifications have on student assignments, however, suggests that other means would be effective. It again redrew school assignment boundaries. 05915, p. 10; see also App. 19. Government action dividing us by race is inherently suspect because such classifications promote notions of racial inferiority and lead to a politics of racial hostility, Croson, supra, at 493, reinforce the belief, held by too many for too much of our history, that individuals should be judged by the color of their skin, Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 657 (1993), and endorse race-based reasoning and the conception of a Nation divided into racial blocs, thus contributing to an escalation of racial hostility and conflict. Metro Broadcasting, 497 U. S., at 603 (OConnor, J., dissenting). We relied on the fact that the courts of last appeal of some sixteen or eighteen States have passed upon the validity of the separate but equal doctrine vis-a-vis the Fourteenth Amendment. That policy was necessary because of numerous incidents of racial violence. Id., at 502; id., at 532534 (Thomas, J., dissenting). Similarly, the segregationists made repeated appeals to societal practice and expectation. The discrepancy identified is not some simple and straightforward error that touches only upon the peripheries of the districts use of individual racial classifications. It is a context, as Swann makes clear, where history has required special administrative remedies. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School - Quizlet In Wygant, a school district justified its race-based teacher-layoff program in part on the theory that minority teachers provided role models for minority students and that a racially diverse faculty would improve the education of all students. Grutter, supra, at 352 (opinion of Thomas, J.) This is made for the. Thus, the programs are subject to the general rule that government race-based decisionmaking is unconstitutional. Although there is arguably a danger of racial imbalance in schools in Seattle and Louisville, there is no danger of resegregation. Brief for Respondent at 33, 43. in No. Invoking our mandatory appellate jurisdiction,[Footnote 7] the Boston plaintiffs prosecuted an appeal in this Court.
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