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. Reg. L. 95561, Tit. The Founders meant the Constitution as a practical document that would transmit its basic values to future generations through principles that remained workable over time. Id. ", Roberts cites to: "539 U.S., at 329, 334, 123 S. Ct. 2325, 156 L. Ed. If there were further remediation to be done, the District Court could not logically have reached the conclusion that Louisville ha[d] eliminated the vestiges associated with the former policy of segregation and its pernicious effects. Ibid. Despite this decision, the three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled that the District use of race failed to meet the standards in Grutter and Gratz. While the school districts use various verbal formulations to describe the interest they seek to promoteracial diversity, avoidance of racial isolation, racial integrationthey offer no definition suggesting that their interest differs from racial balancing. 2 App. See, e.g., Milliken, supra, at 746. The district retained a racial tiebreaker for oversubscribed schools, which takes effect only if the schools minority or majority enrollment falls outside of a 30% range centered on the minority/majority population ratio within the district. [Footnote 23] And foreshadowing todays dissent, the segregationists most heavily relied upon judicial precedent. The way Seattle classifies its students bears this out. App. In design and operation, the plans are directed only to racial balance, an objective this Court has repeatedly condemned as illegitimate. The plurality cites in support those who argued in Brown against segregation, and Justice Thomas likens the approach that I have taken to that of segregations defenders. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Finally, the outcome of this case will give some perspective into how the new composition of the Supreme Court views the still controversial issue of affirmative action. On June 28, 2007, the United States Supreme Court, in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. Changes in the Percentage of White Students in Schools Attended by the Average Black Student by State, 19702003 (includes States with 5% or greater enrollment of black students in 1970 and 1980), % White Students in School Of course, if the Seattle school board were truly committed to the notion that diversity leads directly to educational benefits, operating a school with such a high nonwhite enrollment would be a shocking dereliction of its duty to educate the students enrolled in that school. Although apparently Joshua has now been granted a transfer to Bloom, the school to which transfer was denied under the racial guidelines, Tr. [14], Neither school could plead this compelling interest, because "[w]e have emphasized that the harm being remedied by mandatory desegregation plans is the harm that is traceable to segregation, and that 'the Constitution is not violated by racial imbalance in the schools, without more. In the case Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. It is not up to the school boardsthe very government entities whose race-based practices we must strictly scrutinizeto determine what interests qualify as compelling under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Yesterday, the plans under review were lawful. The dissent attempts to marginalize the notion of a color-blind Constitution by consigning it to me and Members of todays plurality. A federal District Court dismissed the suit, upholding the tiebreaker. See post, at 37. (If petitioners purpose is to assure within its student body some specified percentage of a particular group merely because of its race or ethnic origin, such a preferential purpose must be rejected as facially invalid). Parents Involved in Community Schools, a non-profit organization, argues that the Districts policy amounts to unconstitutional racial balancing under the Supreme Courts 2003 decisions in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) and Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003). This argument that different rules should govern racial classifications designed to include rather than exclude is not new; it has been repeatedly pressed in the past, see, e.g., Gratz, 539 U. S., at 282 (Breyer, J., concurring in judgment); id., at 301 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting); Adarand, supra, at 243 (Stevens, J., dissenting); Wygant, 476 U. S., at 316317 (Stevens, J., dissenting), and has been repeatedly rejected. The Court rejected the interests asserted to justify the layoff program as insufficiently compelling. School Dist. . 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. It does have a duty to provide all children with equal opportunities. But see ante, at 1213, 17, n. 12. . Opposition to Writ of Certiorari at 2021. of Springfield v. Board of Ed., 362 Mass. 2 1996 Memorandum 47, and Attachment 2; Hampton I, supra, at 768. App. If todays dissent said it was adhering to the views expressed in the separate opinions in Gratz and Grutter, see Gratz, 539 U. S., at 281 (Breyer, J., concurring in judgment); id., at 282 (Stevens, J., dissenting); id., at 291 (Souter, J., dissenting); id., at 298 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting); Grutter, supra, at 344 (Ginsburg, J., concurring), that would be understandable, and likely within the traditionto be invoked, in my view, in rare instancesthat permits us to maintain our own positions in the face of stare decisis when fundamental points of doctrine are at stake. Grutter, 539 U. S., at 348 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). There is nothing technical or theoretical, post, at 30, about our approach to such dicta. Breyer, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg, JJ., joined. Strict scrutiny applies to any government classification based on race. Furthermore, it is unclear whether increased interracial contact improves racial attitudes and relations. 3:02CV00620JGH; Doc. 491 U.S. 524, 54142 (1989) (Scalia, concurring). Public Schools, 416 F.3d 513, 514 (2005) (McFarland II). Id., at 690, 72 P.3d, at 167. at 11 and Brief of Historians of the Civil Rights Era William H. Chafe, Davison Douglas, Charles Payne, Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Kenneth Mack, Risa Goluboff, Kevin Kruse and Matt Lassiter as Amici Curiae Supporting Respondents at 23. This litigation was commenced in July 2000, and the record in the District Court was closed before assignments for the 20012002 school year were made. For the dissent, in contrast, individualized scrutiny is simply beside the point. Post, at 55. In fact, the available data from the Seattle school district appear to undercut the dissents view. In addition, a decision in the Districts favor will allow public schools to implement a wide range of programs designed to further the interest of racial diversity. Accordingly, the school boards cannot satisfy strict scrutiny. When determining where to place a child or where to transfer a child both school districts use race as the qualifying factor on where to send the child. 1 Complaint in Adams v. Forbes Bottomly, Civ. In a typical year, say, 1995, about 20,000 potential high school students participated. of Oral Arg. Moreover, the school districts did not consider other options that might have been more narrowly tailored. Const., Art. See, e.g., n.1, supra. Assessed in any objective manner, there is no comparison between the two. 929; that provision was repealed in 1988, see 102 Stat. Petitioner Parents Involved in Community Schools (Parents Involved) is a nonprofit corporation comprising the parents of children who have been or may be denied assignment to their chosen high school in the district because of their race. 1, p.29 (It is universally held, therefore, that each state shall determine for itself, subject to the observance of the fundamental rights and liberties guaranteed by the federal Constitution, how it shall exercise the police power . The wide variety of different integration plans that school districts use throughout the Nation suggests that the problem of racial segregation in schools, including de facto segregation, is difficult to solve. This Court then held that the initiativewhich would have prevented the Seattle Plan from taking effectviolated the Fourteenth Amendment. Student Choice and Project Renaissance, 1991 to 1996. Gratz involved a system where race was not the entire classification. No. The Constitution and our cases require us to be much more demanding before permitting local school boards to make decisions based on race. JEFFERSON COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION etal. Others have been more circumspect. It consequently held unconstitutional the use of race-based targets to govern admission to magnet schools. In this respect, Swann was not a sharp or unexpected departure from prior rulings; it reflected a consensus that had already emerged among state and lower federal courts. Those schools do not select their own students, and education in the elementary and secondary environment generally does not involve the free interchange of ideas thought to be an integral part of higher education. 1 is premised upon the constitutionality of the original Seattle Plan, it is equally premised upon the constitutionality of the present plan, for the present plan is the Seattle Plan, modified only insofar as it places even less emphasis on race-conscious elements than its predecessors. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time . The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decisions in cases involving school districts in Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky, seem to indicate that the United States is moving away from diversity in its public schools. That view understands the basic objective of those who wrote the Equal Protection Clause as forbidding practices that lead to racial exclusion. The Seattle school districts Website formerly contained the following definition of cultural racism: Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as other, different, less than, or render them invisible. Assigning to each student a personal designation according to a crude system of individual racial classifications is quite a different matter; and the legal analysis changes accordingly. See also Grutter, supra, at 326 ([G]overnmental action based on racea group classification long recognized as in most circumstances irrelevant and therefore prohibitedshould be subjected to detailed judicial inquiry (internal quotation marks and emphasis omitted)). See supra, at 2224. One of those plans, which involved using race as a factor in assigning students to high schools, is the subject of this litigation. See Hallinan 741742. in McFarland I, at 190 (Dec. 8, 2003) (Q. in No. More broadly, however, allowing racial diversity or balance as a compelling state interest, even if confined to secondary education, calls into question the Equal. (Enrollment Guide). However, the government is entitled to consider race as one of several factors in determining school admissions and enrollment. The law was upheld under rational-basis review, with the state court explicitly rejecting the suggestionwhich is now plainly the lawthat racial group classifications bear a far heavier burden of justification. 352 Mass., at 700, 227 N.E. 2d, at 734 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and That is particularly true given that, when Swann was decided, this Court had not yet confirmed that strict scrutiny applies to racial classifications like those before us. Rather, it must explain to the courts and to the Nation why it would abandon guidance set forth many years before, guidance that countless others have built upon over time, and which the law has continuously embodied. 1 of King Cty., Washington, and the OCR (June 9, 1978) (filed with the Court as Exh. 2429, and at oral argument, counsel for Louisville disavowed any claim that Louisvilles argument depend[ed] in any way on the prior de jure segregation, Tr. See 539 U. S., at 326. 61, 39 Ill. 2d 593, 596598, 237 N.E. 2d 498, 500502 (1968), an Illinois decision, as evidence that state and federal courts had considered the matter settled and uncontroversial. Post, at 25. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle by Steve O'Brien See also Reply Brief for Appellees in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1953, No. Cf. of Ed., 402 U. S. 1, 16 (1971), by then-Justice Rehnquist in chambers in Bustop, Inc. v. Los Angeles Bd. As a result of this Courts insistence on strict scrutiny of that policy, but see id., at 538547, inmates in the California prisons were killed.
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