of Cal. See Bustop, Inc. v. Los Angeles Bd. But unlike the plurality, such a judge would also be aware that a legislature or school administrators, ultimately accountable to the electorate, could nonetheless properly conclude that a racial classification sometimes serves a purpose important enough to overcome the risks they mention, for example, helping to end racial isolation or to achieve a diverse student body in public schools. (For ease of exposition, I shall still use Louisville to refer to what is now the combined districts.) The segregationists also relied upon the likely practical consequences of ending the state-imposed system of racial separation. The Washington Supreme Court determined that the State Civil Rights Act bars only preferential treatment programs where race or gender is used by government to select a less qualified applicant over a more qualified applicant, and not [p]rograms which are racially neutral, such as the [districts] open choice plan. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist., No. The majority acknowledges that in prior cases this Court has recognized at least two interests as compelling: an interest in remedying the effects of past intentional discrimination, and an interest in diversity in higher education. Ante, at 12, 13. And it ordered the board not to control access to those scarce programs through the use of racial targets. It provided that each elementary school would have a black student population of between 15% and 50%; each middle and high school would have a black population and a white population that fell within a range, the boundaries of which were set at 15% above and 15% below the general student population percentages in the county at that grade level. Many parents, white and black alike, want their children to attend schools with children of different races. This plan is in place as of 2017. 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). 426 F.3d 1162, 1166 (9th Cir. Unlike the dissenters, I am unwilling to delegate my constitutional responsibilities to local school boards and allow them to experiment with race-based decisionmaking on the assumption that their intentions will forever remain as good as Justice Breyers. Roberts cites to: Grutter, supra, at 327, 328, 334, 123 S. Ct. 2325, 156 L. Ed. 4. See supra, at 12. [Footnote 29] See post, at 2834, 6465. By the dissents account, improvements in racial attitudes depend upon the increased contact between black and white students thought to occur in more racially balanced schools. Synopsis of Rule of Law. 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. The plans here are more narrowly tailored than the law school admissions program there at issue. 2002). of City School Dist. School Dist. The Seattle School Board challenged the constitutionality of the initiative. Again, this approach to racial classifications is fundamentally at odds with our precedent, which makes clear that the Equal Protection Clause protect[s] persons, not groups, Adarand, 515 U. S., at 227 (emphasis in original). If we are to insist upon unanimity in the social science literature before finding a compelling interest, we might never find one. No. At a press conference the day of the opinion, Attorney for the Plaintiff Teddy Gordon stated that he would, if necessary, seek legal measures to prevent the use of the current Student Assignment Plan for the 20072008 school year. Will Louisville and all similar school districts have to return to systems like Louisvilles initial 1956 plan, which did not consider race at all? See post, at 6566. Although we examine the plans under the same legal framework, the specifics of the two plans, and the circumstances Moreover, Louisvilles history makes clear that a community under a court order to desegregate might submit a race-conscious remedial plan before the court dissolved the order, but with every intention of following that plan even after dissolution. First, in schools that were formerly segregated by law, race-based measures are sometimes constitutionally compelled to remedy prior school segregation. 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. 05908, at 299a301a; Affidavit of Kathleen Brose Pursuant to this Courts Rule 32.3 (Lodging of Petitioner Parents Involved), and the complaint sought declaratory and injunctive relief on behalf of Parents Involved members whose elementary and middle school children may be denied admission to the high schools of their choice when they apply for those schools in the future, App. 2d 1224, 1240 (WD Wash. 2001) (Parents Involved I). Here the most Jefferson County itself claims is that because the guidelines provide a firm definition of the Boards goal of racially integrated schools, they provide administrators with the authority to facilitate, negotiate and collaborate with principals and staff to maintain schools within the 1550% range. Brief in Opposition in No. 2738, 168 L.Ed.2d 508 (2007), United States Supreme Court, case facts, key issues, and holdings and reasonings online today. Decisions to assign students to schools within each cluster are based on available space within the schools and the racial guidelines in the Districts current student assignment plan. Id., at 38. See Swann, 402 U. S., at 31. Seattles circumstances are not meaningfully different from those in, say, McDaniel, where this Court approved race-conscious remedies. [Footnote 11]. 539 U. S., at 324325 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Current Plan: Project Renaissance Modified, 1996 to 2003. Bd. of Oral Arg. But that is not a meaningful legal distinction. ject.harvard.edu/research/deseg/Racial_Transformation.pdf. 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. See supra, at 4648. 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. [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. Seattles plan, by contrast, relies upon a mechanical formula that has denied hundreds of students their preferred schools on the basis of three rigid criteria: placement of siblings, distance from schools, and race. More recently, however, progress has stalled. When asked for a range of percentage that would be diverse, however, Seattles expert said it was important to have sufficient numbers so as to avoid students feeling any kind of specter of exceptionality. App. 05908, at 276a. This Court has made many decisions of widespread effect; none would affect more people more directly in more fundamental interests and, in fact, cause more chaos in local government than a reversal of the decision in this case). History should teach greater humility. Initially, as the Court explained just last Term, we are not bound to follow our dicta in a prior case in which the point now at issue was not fully debated. Central Va. Community College v. Katz, 546 U. S. 356, 363 (2006). Between 80% and 90% of all students received their first choice assignment; between 89% and 97% received their first or second choice assignment. In neither city did these prior attempts prove sufficient to achieve the citys integration goals. 05908, at 308a. See also Adarand, supra, at 226 ([I]t may not always be clear that a so-called preference is in fact benign (quoting Bakke, supra, at 298 (opinion of Powell, J.))). The history of the plans before us, their educational importance, their highly limited use of raceall these and moremake clear that the compelling interest here is stronger than in Grutter. For example, at Franklin High School in Seattle, the racial tiebreaker was applied because nonwhite enrollment exceeded 69 percent, and resulted in an incoming ninth-grade class in 20002001 that was 30.3 percent Asian-American, 21.9 percent African-American, 6.8 percent Latino, 0.5 percent Native-American, and 40.5 percent Caucasian. Similarly, the citation of Crawford v. Board of Ed. 05915, pp. Justice Breyers dissent ends on an unjustified note of alarm. [D]istinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality. Adarand, 515 U. S., at 214 (internal quotation marks omitted). 06AppsChoicesBoardApril2005final.pdf. PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS, PETITIONER. Brief for Respondents in No. See Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45, 75 (1905) (Holmes, J., dissenting) (The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencers Social Statics). By way of contrast, I do not claim to know how best to stop harmful discrimination; how best to create a society that includes all Americans; how best to overcome our serious problems of increasing de facto segregation, troubled inner city schooling, and poverty correlated with race. v. Seattle Sch. As a result, it reverses course and reaches the wrong conclusion. A panel of the Ninth Circuit then again reversed the District Court, this time ruling on the federal constitutional question. Our established strict scrutiny test for racial classifications, however, insists on detailed examination, both as to ends and as to means. Adarand, supra, at 236 (emphasis added). App. United States v. Fordice, 505 U. S. 717, 745 (1992) (Thomas, J., concurring). 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. Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Statement in School Comm. there are two compelling interests: 1. remedying the effect of past intentional discrimination 2. interest of student body diversity in higher education 1. 'Parents Involved,' A Decade Later - The American Prospect 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 . It gave fourth preference to students who received child care in the neighborhood. No. 1 McFarland v. Jefferson Cty. 69. [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. Cf. The Courts decision in that case was a grievous error it took far too long to overrule. See Appendix A, infra. Parents Involved in Cmty. As for the Seattle case, the school district has gone further in describing the methods and criteria used to determine assignment decisions on the basis of individual racial classifications. What does the plurality say in response? Consequently, the demographics of a neighborhood school would also be the consequence of those individual choices. We granted certiorari, and now reverse. 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. 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. There is no ambiguity in that statement. 05908, at 257a (Q. And contexts differ dramatically one from the other. See Parts IA and IB, supra, at 618. See id. In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle (2007), the United States Supreme Courtfound that the school district was using race in an unconstitutional manner in its assignment plan. 1, supra, at 461; Complaint and Motion to Dismiss or Affirm in Seattle School Dist. See, e.g., App. . 6, 39 Ill. 2d 593, 597598, 237 N.E. 2d 498, 501 (1968) (citations omitted) (citing decisions from the high courts of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, California, New York, and Connecticut, and from the Courts of Appeals for the First, Second, Fourth, and Sixth Circuits). First, as demonstrated above, the two concepts are distinct. See, e.g., Brief for Appellants in Brown v. Board of Education, O.T. 1953, Nos. 5 (Jan. 2003), online at http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/reseg03/AreWeLosingtheDream.pdf (Frankenberg, Lee, & Orfield) (using U. S. Dept. It was not the inequality of the facilities but the fact of legally separating children based on race on which the Court relied to find a constitutional violation in that case. However, shortly after we dismissed the Massachusetts suit for want of a substantial federal question, the Illinois Supreme Court reversed course and upheld its statute in the published decision that Justice Breyer extensively quotes in his dissent. Navigating around that inconvenient authority, the dissent argues that the racial balancing in these plans is not an end in itself but is instead intended to teac[h] children to engage in the kind of cooperation among Americans of all races that is necessary to make a land of three hundred million people one Nation. Post, at 3940. 539 U. S., at 328. [S]chool districts themselves retain a state-law obligation to take reasonably feasible steps to desegregate, and they remain free to adopt reassignment and busing plans to effectuate desegregation (emphasis added)); School Comm. Regardless of what Justice Breyers goals might be, this Court does not sit to create a society that includes all Americans or to solve the problems of troubled inner city schooling. Ibid. Compare ante, at 39 (history will be heard), with Brewer v. Quarterman, 550 U. S. ___, ___ (2007) (slip op., at 11) (Roberts, C.J., dissenting) (It is a familiar adage that history is written by the victors). Opinions differed. Adarand, 515 U. S., at 227; Grutter, 539 U. S., at 326; Johnson v. California, 543 U. S. 499, 505 (2005) (We have insisted on strict scrutiny in every context, even for so-called benign racial classifications). The next Term, we accordingly stated that full compliance with Brown I required school districts to achieve a system of determining admission to the public schools on a nonracial basis. Brown II, 349 U. S., at 300301 (emphasis added). 05915, at 81; McFarland I, supra, at 842. These statements nowhere suggest that this freedom is limited to school districts where court-ordered desegregation measures are also in effect.
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