See App. Roberts concludes that racial balancing cannot be a compelling state interest. Just as diversity in higher education was deemed compelling in Grutter, diversity in public primary and secondary schoolswhere there is even more to gainmust be, a fortiori, a compelling state interest. Middle and high school students are designated a single resides school and assigned to that school unless it is at the extremes of the racial guidelines. Thus, in respect to race-conscious desegregation measures that the Constitution permitted, but did not require (measures similar to those at issue here), this Court unanimously stated: 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. The Court emphasized that education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. 347 U. S., at 493. 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. See ante, at 1820. However closely related race-based assignments may be to achieving racial balance, that itself cannot be the goal, whether labeled racial diversity or anything else. And some have concluded that there are no demonstrable educational benefits. in No. (Fourteenth Amendment creates rights guaranteed to the individual. 72); Brief for Respondents in No. Parents Involved VI, 377 F.3d 949 (2004). 539 U. S., at 316, 335336. [Footnote 2] In this and other ways, The Chief Justice rewrites the history of one of this Courts most important decisions. See also Adarand, 515 U. S., at 261262 (1995) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (This program, then, if in part a remedy for past discrimination, is most importantly a forward-looking response to practical problems faced by minority subcontractors). The fact that it is possible that children of group members will not be denied admission to a school based on their racebecause they choose an undersubscribed school or an oversubscribed school in which their race is an advantagedoes not eliminate the injury claimed. Strict scrutiny of race-based government decisionmaking is more searching than Chevron-style administrative review for reasonableness. Although all governmental uses of race It gave third preference to students residing in the neighborhood. 1 of King Cty., Washington, and the OCR (June 9, 1978) (filed with the Court as Exh. Yet, as explained, each has failed to provide the support necessary for that proposition. Bowen & Bok 155. at 1166. See App. The Sixth Circuit affirmed. This assertion is inexplicable. 1967) 227 N.E. 2d 729, which challenged the statute providing for elimination of racial imbalance in public schools for want of a substantial federal question. 389 U. S. 572). in No. 10925, 26 Fed. [31], The opinion came less than two months before the start of the regular school year in King County and less than three weeks before the start of year-round school in the District. 19. When a court subjects governmental action to strict scrutiny, it cannot construe ambiguities in favor of the State. These decisions illustrate well how lower courts understood and followed Swanns enunciation of the relevant legal principle. 6, 11 (on file with the University of Washington Library); see generally Siqueland 1215; Hanawalt 1820. "[5] He went on to say, "What the government is not permitted to do, absent a showing of necessity not made here, is to classify every student on the basis of race and to assign each of them to schools based on that classification. According to the schools most recent annual report, [a]cademic excellence is its primary goal. See African American Academy 2006 Annual Report, p.2, online at http://www.seattleschools.org/area/ Upon realizing that the litigation would not be resolved in time for assignment decisions for the 20022003 school year, the Ninth Circuit withdrew its opinion, 294 F.3d 1084 (2002) (Parents Involved III), vacated the injunction, and, pursuant to Wash. Rev. See Reply Brief at 3. But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. Most white students live in the northern part of Seattle, most students of other racial backgrounds in the southern part. CRYSTAL D. MEREDITH, custodial parent and next friend of JOSHUA RYAN M c DONALD, PETITIONER. Student Choice and Project Renaissance, 1991 to 1996. in No. The principle that racial balancing is not permitted is one of substance, not semantics. See post, at 5, 89, 18, 23. See Croson, 488 U. S., at 501 (The history of racial classifications in this country suggests that blind judicial deference to legislative or executive pronouncements of necessity has no place in equal protection analysis); West Virginia Bd. Yet the district also maintains that the guidelines do not apply to kindergartens, Brief for Respondents in No. As the Court explained in Rice v. Cayetano, 528 U. S. 495, 517 (2000), [o]ne of the principal reasons race is treated as a forbidden classification is that it demeans the dignity and worth of a person to be judged by ancestry instead of by his or her own merit and essential qualities.. For the 20012002 school year, the deviation permitted from the desired racial composition was increased from 10 to 15 percent. 2005). in No. In each city the school board modified its plan several times in light of, for example, hostility to busing, the threat of resegregation, and the desirability of introducing greater student choice. 2d, at 1289. in Briggs v. Elliott, O.T. 1953, No. The idea that government racial classifications must be subjected to strict scrutiny did not originate in Adarand. See Gratz, supra, at 301 (Ginsburg, J., joined by Souter, J., dissenting); Adarand, supra, at 242249 (Stevens, J., joined by Ginsburg, J., dissenting); 426 F.3d, at 11931194 (Kozinski, J., concurring). PICS contends that while in Grutter the Court recognized diversity in a holistic sense as a compelling interest, it specifically held that mere racial diversity is not a compelling government interest. In neither city did these prior attempts prove sufficient to achieve the citys integration goals. Regardless of the outcome, this decision will surely have an effect on public schools, be it in the composition of their student body, their admissions policies, or their educational approach generally. After he had enrolled and after the academic year had begun, he then applied to transfer to his preferred school after the kindergarten assignment deadline had passed, id., at 21, possibly causing school officials to treat his late request as an application to transfer to the first grade, in respect to which the guidelines apply. To equate the achievement of a certain statistical mix in several schools with the elimination of the system of systematic de jure segregation trivializes the latter accomplishment. . Furthermore, it was only used in a limited number of schoolsthose that were both over subscribed and relatively unintegrated. Cf. Neither school district has made any such specific findings. Id. . ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI Brief for Respondents in No. See 377 F.3d 949, 10051006 (CA9 2004) (Parents Involved VI) (Graber, J., dissenting). 05915, pp. PICS counters that neighborhood demographics are the result of individuals voluntary choices, and that parents tend to choose schools near their home. When a court subjects governmental action to strict scrutiny, it cannot construe ambiguities in favor of the government. not in compliance with the local school boards desegre- 1, 23 (1995); A. Siqueland, Without A Court Order: The Desegregation of Seattles Schools 10 (1981) (hereinafter Siqueland); D. Pieroth, Desegregating the Public Schools, Seattle, Washington, 19541968, p.6 (Dissertation Draft 1979) (hereinafter Pieroth). Hence it is important to consider the potential consequences of the pluralitys approach, as measured against the Constitutions objectives. To Harris? 2, App. 1. 1, 2, and 4 p.65 (That the Constitution is color blind is our dedicated belief); Brief for Appellants in Brown v. Board of Education, 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). In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle (2007), the United States Supreme Court found that the school district was using race in an unconstitutional manner in its assignment plan. denied, 546 U. S. 1061 (2005). 1 McFarland v. Jefferson Cty. On the matter of stare decisis, I submit that the duration of the challenged practice, while it is persuasive, is not controlling. This distinction is critically important in the context of education. See ante, at 1213. . It also contends that racial diversity is too amorphous and uncertain a concept to be considered a compelling interest, and finally disputes as inconclusive the Districts statistics regarding the increased success rates of students in integrated schools. Fourteen of the districts nineteen non-vocational middle and high schools were close to totally black or totally white. ject.harvard.edu/research/deseg/Racial_Transformation.pdf. Am. Can the government force racial mixing against the will of those being mixed? 5, p.27 (Respondents ask this Court to upset a long established and well settled principle recognized by numerous state Legislatures, and Courts, both state and federal, over a long period of years); Tr. 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. Few black residents lived outside the central section of the city. 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 subsequent statements by the unanimous Court in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. . The dissent elides this distinction between de jure and de facto segregation, casually intimates that Seattles school attendance patterns reflect illegal segregation, post, at 5, 18, 23,[Footnote 15] and fails to credit the judicial determinationunder the most rigorous standardthat Jefferson County had eliminated the vestiges of prior segregation. Moreover, Parents Involved also asserted an interest in not being forced to compete for seats at certain high schools in a system that uses race as a deciding factor in many of its admissions decisions. Ibid. In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No.1 (2007), the Supreme Court ruled that O public school policies that assigned students to a school on the basis of race were constitutional. of Boston v. Board of Education, 389 U. S. 572 (1968) (per curiam) (dismissing for want of a federal question a challenge to a voluntary statewide integration plan using express racial criteria). This conclusion is divorced from any evaluation of the actual impact of the plans at issue in these casesother than to note that the plans often have no effect. Post, at 46. See Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U. S. 1 (1958). 377 F.3d at 959. of Ed. Next, the dissent argues that the interest in integration has an educational element. App. Seattle Public Schools Transportation Service Standards. Similarly, between 1968 and 1980, the number of black children attending schools that were more than 90% minority fell from 64% to 33% in the Nation (from 78% to 23% in the South), but that too reversed direction, rising by the year 2000 from 33% to 37% in the Nation (from 23% to 31% in the South). Though the dissent admits to discomfort in applying strict scrutiny to these plans, it claims to have nonetheless applied that exacting standard. 1, 426 F.3d 1162 (9th Cir. See 539 U. S., at 320. 1, 50 (2002) (describing President Carters support for affirmation action). of Ed., 402 U. S., at 16far more heavily than the school districts themselves. To Crawford? Ante, at 28. 3, p.8283 (Our many hours of research and investigation have led only to confirmation of our view that segregation by race in Virginias public schools at this time not only does not offend the Constitution of the United States but serves to provide a better education for living for the children of both races); Tr. To do so provides further reason to believe that the pluralitys approach is legally unsound. The majority ruled that the District had a compelling interest in maintaining racial diversity. The plurality should have remembered that historically only African-American students had been told where they could go to school. 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. 90a92a. of Ed., 402 U. S., at 46; Montgomery County Bd. 2d, at 360. The NAACPs First Legal Challenge and Seattles Response, 1969 to 1977. The plurality would decline their modest request. School authorities are traditionally given broad discretionary powers to formulate and implement educational policy and may properly decide to ensure to their students the value of an integrated school experience. Citizens for Better Ed. 1 Administrative Complaint in Seattle Branch, NAACP v. Seattle School Dist. See Board of Ed. 1, p.5 (The Fourteenth Amendment precludes a state from imposing distinctions or classifications based upon race and color alone);[Footnote 20] see also In Memoriam: Honorable Thurgood Marshall, Proceedings of the Bar and Officers of the Supreme Court of the United States, X (1993) (remarks of Judge Motley) (Marshall had a Bible to which he turned during his most depressed moments. The student population of the school district is approximately 40% white, 60% non-white. of Jefferson Cty., Nos. As well, there is precedent for finding jurisdiction in situations where the passage of time has prevented a direct remedy. The Current Lawsuit, 2003 to the Present. 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 . of Average Black Student. See Missouri v. Jenkins, 515 U. S. 70, 124125 (1995), (Thomas, J., concurring). 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. Studies suggest that children taken from those schools and placed in integrated settings often show positive academic gains. To Harris? The histories that follow set forth these basic facts. Far from being narrowly tailored, this system threatens to defeat its own ends, and the district has provided no convincing explanation for its design. Does it insist upon especially strong evidence supporting inclusion of multiple minority groups in an otherwise lawful government minority-assistance program? In a searing dissent to the sharply divided 5-4 decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. The Court in Grutter expressly articulated key limitations on its holdingdefining a specific type of broad-based diversity and noting the unique context of higher educationbut these limitations were largely disregarded by the lower courts in extending Grutter to uphold race-based assignments in elementary and secondary schools. Gratz, supra, at 251. 1, 2, and 4 and for Respondents in No. In light of this Courts conclusions in Grutter, the compelling nature of these interests in the context of primary and secondary public education follows here a fortiori. 1, 2, 4, 18 (1978 Memo & Order). The plan was in effect from 19992002, for three school years. To McDaniel? See, e.g., Armor & Rossell, Desegregation and Resegregation in the Public Schools, in Beyond the Color Line: New Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America 239, 251 (A. Thernstrom & S. Thernstrom eds. And to the extent the plurality opinion can be interpreted to foreclose consideration of these interests, I disagree with that reasoning. 2d 304. To say, however, that we must ratify the racial classifications here at issue based on the majority opinions in Gratz and Grutter is, with all respect, simply baffling. See Powell 35. 67759, p.11 (It is implicit in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U. S. 483, that color or race is a constitutionally impermissible standard for the assignment of school children to public schools. The context here is one of racial limits that seek, not to keep the races apart, but to bring them together. If the racial demographics of any school's student body deviated by more than a predetermined number of percentage points from those of Seattle's total student population (approximately 41% white and 59% non-white), the racial tiebreaker went into effect. This brings us to the dissents reliance on the Courts opinions in Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 244 (2003), and Grutter, 539 U. S. 306. v. Barksdale, 348 F.2d 261, 266 (CA1 1965). The reasons for rejecting a motives test for racial classifications are clear enough. The Current Plan, 1999 to the Present. See, e.g., id., at 111. In challenging standing, Seattle also notes that it has ceased using the racial tiebreaker pending the outcome of this litigation. The board opposed dissolution, arguing that the old dual system had left a demographic imbalance that prevent[ed] dissolution. In 2000, after reviewing the present plan, the District Court dissolved the 1975 order. [Footnote 27] Whatever else the Courts rejection of the segregationists arguments in Brown might have established, it certainly made clear that state and local governments cannot take from the Constitution a right to make decisions on the basis of race by adverse possession. The new plan permitted each student to choose the school he or she wished to attend, subject to race-based constraints. Jefferson County has articulated a similar goal, phrasing its interest in terms of educating its students in a racially integrated environment. App. [Footnote 5] Rejecting arguments comparable to those that the plurality accepts today,[Footnote 6] that court noted: It would be the height of irony if the racial imbalance act, enacted as it was with the laudable purpose of achieving equal educational opportunities, should, by prescribing school pupil allocations based on race, founder on unsuspected shoals in the Fourteenth Amendment. Id., at 698, 227 N.E. 2d, at 733 (footnote omitted). 05908, p. 38a. Once those vestiges were eliminated, Jefferson County was on the same footing as any other school district, and its use of race must be justified on other grounds. Segregation at the time of Brown gave way to expansive remedies that included busing, which in turn gave rise to fears of white flight and resegregation. This is because "'racial classifications are simply too pernicious to permit any but the most exact connection between justification and classification.'" For Thomas, this means that no discrimination on the basis of race is permitted by the Constitution, even for a so-called "benign" purpose (Thomas rejected the notion that there could be a purely benign purpose in his concurrence in Adarand because the benignity or malignity of race-based discrimination turns on "whose ox is being gored" or is "in the eye of the beholder"). Brief for Petitioner at 11. See The Federalist No. [Footnote 8]. App. In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978), relied on by the Court in Gratz, Justice Powell, in a plurality opinion, stated that preferring members of one group for no reasons other than race or ethnic origin is discrimination for its own sake, and therefore unlawful. 1? of Oral Arg. App. Even in the context of mandatory desegregation, we have stressed that racial proportionality is not required, see Milliken, 433 U. S., at 280, n. 14 ([A desegregation] order contemplating the substantive constitutional right [to a] particular degree of racial balance or mixing is infirm as a matter of law (internal quotation marks omitted)); Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. See post, at 29. 2d 750 (opinion of Powell, J. 05915, at 31. Moreover, the school boards have no interest in remedying the sundry consequences of prior segregation unrelated to schooling, such as housing patterns, employment practices, economic conditions, and social attitudes. Post, at 38. This interest, the Court said, can be achieved by considering the student overall, not just his or her race, and the contribution he or she can make to the schools diversity. Id. The District then petitioned for an en banc ruling by a panel of 11 Ninth Circuit judges. . See, e.g., North Carolina Bd. Banks & C. Banks eds. Simply because the school districts may seek a worthy goal does not mean they are free to discriminate on the basis of race to achieve it, or that their racial classifications should be subject to less exacting scrutiny. 05915, p. 77. 1 Hampton v. Jefferson Cty., Bd. 16, 18. In Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483, the Court held that segregation deprived black children of equal educational opportunities regardless of whether school facilities and other tangible factors were equal, because the classification and separation themselves denoted inferiority. In Board of Ed. Brief for Respondent at 2434. 294 F.3d 1085 (9th Cir. would support indefinite use of racial classifications, employed first to obtain the appropriate mixture of racial views and then to ensure that the [program] continues to reflect that mixture. of Cal. See Grutter, 539 U.S. at 334. Roberts, C.J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II, IIIA, and IIIC, in which Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito, JJ., joined, and an opinion with respect to Parts IIIB and IV, in which Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, JJ., joined. In sum, the districts race-conscious plans satisfy strict scrutiny and are therefore lawful. These include the types of activities or programs offered, the teachers, and the schools location. See Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356, 373374 (1886). See Seattle School District, Ethnic Count 2005-2006, at 8. Thus, Congress has enacted numerous race-conscious statutes that illustrate that principle or rely upon its validity. [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. And their history reveals school district goals whose remedial, educational, and democratic elements are inextricably intertwined each with the others. But that is not a meaningful legal distinction. [Footnote 15] Environmental reflection, though, is just another way to say racial balancing. "[5], According to Kennedy, "The cases here were argued upon the assumption, and come to us on the premise, that the discrimination in question did not result from de jure actions." For example, in Wygant v. Jackson Bd. The system that was upheld in Grutter considered a number of other factors to assure diversity of not only race but also socioeconomic status, skills, and so forth. See id., at 711. in Brown I, p. 7 (Robert L. Carter, Dec. 9, 1952). boundary lines and executing school attendance policies that would create and maintain predominantly Negro or non-white schools, and in part by building schools in such a manner as to restrict the Negro plaintiffs and the class they represent to predominantly negro or non-white schools. The complaint also charged that the board discriminated in assigning teachers. So it was, as the dissent observes, see post, at 1314, that Louisville classified children by race in its school assignment and busing plan in the 1970s. App. See generally R. Sears, A Utopian Experiment in Kentucky: Integration and Social Equality at Berea, 18661904 (1996) (describing federal funding, through the Freedmans Bureau, of race-conscious school integration programs). As these programs demonstrate, every time the government uses racial criteria to bring the races together, post, at 29, someone gets excluded, and the person excluded suffers an injury solely because of his or her race. v. Goose Creek Consol. See Hallinan & Williams, Interracial Friendship Choices in Secondary Schools, 54 Am. The Court has changed significantly since it decided School Comm. Others have been more circumspect. To raise the specter of resegregation to defend these programs is to ignore the meaning of the word and the nature of the cases before us. Governmental use of race-based criteria can arise in the context of, for example, census forms, research expenditures for diseases, assignments of police officers patrolling predominantly minority-race neighborhoods, efforts to desegregate racially segregated schools, policies that favor minorities when distributing goods or services in short supply, actions that create majority-minority electoral districts, peremptory strikes that remove potential jurors on the basis of race, and others. Does the Constitution mandate this inefficient result? Public Schools, 330 F.Supp. 1314. The District first gave priority to students who had a sibling at the school. Id., at 39a. De jure? It contends that race was used in a narrow way because the race tiebreaker determined the placement of only about ten percent of incoming high school students and was one of several factors under consideration. By 1972, however, the Louisville School District remained highly segregated. Nineteen of the districts forty-six elementary schools were between 80% and 100% black. Ante, at 1718. See 426 F.3d 1162, 11931194 (2005) (Kozinski, J., concurring) (That a student is denied the school of his choice may be disappointing, but it carries no racial stigma and says nothing at all about that individuals aptitude or ability). A racial imbalance determination requires the district to submit a plan to correct the racial imbalance, which plan may include mandatory pupil reassignment. 10226e5(a) and (c)(4). The Western District of Washington dismissed the suit, upholding the tiebreaker. The Chief Justice rejects the conclusion that the racial classifications at issue here should be viewed differently than others, because they do not impose burdens on one race alone and do not stigmatize or exclude. The procedures in Gratz placed much less reliance on race than do the plans at issue here. The plan then drew new geographical school assignment zones designed to satisfy these guidelines; the district could reassign students if particular schools failed to meet the guidelines and was required to do so if a school repeatedly missed these targets. This leads it to advance propositions that, in my view, are both erroneous and in fundamental conflict with basic equal protection principles. No. of Boston v. Board of Education, O.T. 1967, No. 05908, pp. Section 2. 05908, at 284a. Part IB, supra. Each respondent has failed to provide the necessary support for the proposition that there is no other way than individual racial classifications to avoid racial isolation in their school districts. My views do not allow me to join the balance of the opinion by The Chief Justice, which seems to me to be inconsistent in both its approach and its implications with the history, meaning, and reach of the Equal Protection Clause. Id., at 494. Under Supreme Court jurisprudence, to prove there was no jurisdiction under Article III 2, the School District had to prove that they would not reinstate the policy. Second, "the interest in diversity in higher education", as upheld in, This page was last edited on 5 February 2023, at 17:43. Where there has been de jure segregation, there is a cognizable legal wrong, and the courts and legislatures have broad power to remedy it. In Seattle, then, the benefits of racial diversity require enrollment of at least 31 percent white students; in Jefferson County, at least 50 percent. That necessary implication of the pluralitys position strikes the 13th chime of the clock. in No. Id., at 39a40a. The following notice, published in a Louisville newspaper in 1976, gives a sense of how the districts race-based busing plan operated in practice: Louisville Courier Journal, June 18, 1976 (reproduced in J. Wilkinson, From Brown to Bakke: The Supreme Court and School Integration 19541978, p. 176 (1979)). 2. 935, 937 (1989) (calling Brown the Supreme Courts greatest anti-discrimination decision); Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae in Brown, 347 U. S. 483; Dudziak, Brown as a Cold War Case, 91 J. But the evidence supporting an educational interest in racially integrated schools is well established and strong enough to permit a democratically elected school board reasonably to determine that this interest is a compelling one. See also San Antonio Independent School Dist. Now localities will have to cope with the difficult problems they face (including resegregation) deprived of one means they may find necessary. The district did not attempt to defend the proposition that anything outside its range posed the specter of exceptionality. Nor did it demonstrate in any way how the educational and social benefits of racial diversity or avoidance of racial isolation are more likely to be achieved at a school that is 50 percent white and 50 percent Asian-American, which would qualify as diverse under Seattles plan, than at a school that is 30 percent Asian-American, 25 percent African-American, 25 percent Latino, and 20 percent white, which under Seattles definition would be racially concentrated.