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No. While the Court does not suggest that greater use of race would be preferable, the minimal impact of the districts racial classifications on school enrollment casts doubt on the necessity of using such classifications. But our precedent has recognized that de jure discrimination can be present even in the absence of racially explicit laws. Id., at 338, 123 S. Ct. 2325, 156 L. Ed. That plan, which took effect before 1996, is the very plan that in all relevant respects is in effect now and is the subject of the present challenge. The plan requires all nonmagnet schools to maintain a minimum black enrollment of 15 percent, and a maximum black enrollment of 50 percent. This will surely, however, restrict school districts efforts to achieve diversity and the benefits that arguably come with it. That the school districts consider these plans to be necessary should remind us our highest aspirations are yet unfulfilled. [Footnote 2] If an oversubscribed school is not within 10 percentage points of the districts overall white/nonwhite racial balance, it is what the district calls integration positive, and the district employs a tiebreaker that selects for assignment students whose race will serve to bring the school into balance. Id., at 38a. v. Swann, 402 U. S. 43, 45 (1971), this Court, citing Swann, restated the point. The school boards widespread consultation, their experimentation with numerous other plans, indeed, the 40-year history that Part I sets forth, make clear that plans that are less explicitly race-based are unlikely to achieve the boards compelling objectives. The board responded to the lawsuit by introducing a plan that required race-based transfers and mandatory busing. It initially assigned each student to his or her neighborhood school, but it permitted each student freely to transfer between elementary schools within each cluster provided that the transferring student (a) was black if transferring from a predominantly black school to a predominantly white school, or (b) was white if transferring from a predominantly white school to a predominantly black 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. The issue in Gratz arose, moreover, in the context of college admissions where students had other choices and precedent supported the proposition that First Amendment interests give universities particular latitude in defining diversity. There the Court sustained a system that, it found, was flexible enough to take into account all pertinent elements of diversity, 539 U. S., at 341 (internal quotation marks omitted), and considered race as only one factor among many, id., at 340. 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). as a matter of educational policy school authorities may well conclude that some kind of racial balance in the schools is desirable quite apart from any constitutional requirements. Then-Justice Rehnquist echoed this view in Bustop, Inc. v. Los Angeles Bd. ", Justice Stephen G. Breyer, in the principal dissenting opinion, dismissed Justice Kennedy's proposed alternatives to the labeling and sorting of individual students by race and, in a surprisingly emotional 20 minute speech from the bench, denounced the plurality opinion. Then-Justice Rehnquist, in denying emergency relief, stressed that equitable consideration[s] counseled against preliminary relief. The plan also established Parent Assistance Centers to help parents and students navigate the school selection and assignment process. One approach, reflected in the . As I explained in Grutter, only those measures the State must take to provide a bulwark against anarchy or to prevent violence and a governments effort to remedy past discrimination for which it is responsible constitute compelling interests. A federal District Court dismissed the suit, upholding the tiebreaker. Petitioners, an organization of Seattle parents (Parents Involved) and the mother of a Jefferson County student (Joshua), whose children were or could be assigned under the foregoing plans, filed these suits contending, inter alia, that allocating children to different public schools based solely on their race violates the Fourteenth Amendments equal protection guarantee. Past allegations in another case provide no basis for resolving these cases. 1996); see also T. Sowell, Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study 141165 (2004). Pp. in KentuckyThe Second Year After the Supreme Courts Decision, 25 J. Negro Educ. To the extent the plurality opinion suggests the Constitution mandates that state and local school authorities must accept the status quo of racial isolation in schools, it is, in my view, profoundly mistaken. More recently, the school district sent a delegation of high school students to a White Privilege Conference. See Equity and Race Relations White Privilege Conference, https://www.seattleschools. of Ed. of Ed., 476 U. S. 267, 316 (1986) (same). See Powell 35. Indeed, the social scientists brief rather cautiously claims the existence of any benefit at all, describing the positive impact as modest, id., at 13, acknowledging that there appears to be little or no effect on math scores, id., at 14, and admitting that the underlying reasons for these gains in achievement are not entirely clear, id., at 15. The legal showdown came in a landmark decision called Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. Both school districts voluntarily used individualized racial classifications to achieve diversity and/or to avoid racial isolation through student assignment. As to tracking enrollments, performance and other statistics by race, tracking reveals the problem; it does not cure it. Probs. First, the school districts plans serve compelling interests and are narrowly tailored on any reasonable definition of those terms. 2, 2001). [Footnote 17] One researcher has stated that the reviews of desegregation and intergroup relations were unable to come to any conclusion about what the probable effects of desegregation were [;] virtually all of the reviewers determined that few, if any, firm conclusions about the impact of desegregation on intergroup relations could be drawn. Schofield, School Desegregation and Intergroup Relations: A Review of the Literature, in 17 Review of Research in Education 356 (G. Grant ed. See Hallinan & Williams, Interracial Friendship Choices in Secondary Schools, 54 Am. This interest was critically dependent upon features unique to higher education: the expansive freedoms of speech and thought associated with the university environment, the special niche in our constitutional tradition occupied by universities, and [t]he freedom of a university to make its own judgments as to education[,] includ[ing] the selection of its student body. Id., at 329 (internal quotation marks omitted). The District Court granted summary judgment to the school district, finding that state law did not bar the districts use of the racial tiebreaker and that the plan survived strict scrutiny on the federal constitutional claim because it was narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest. Code 49.60.400(1) (2006). in No. The districts assert, as they must, that the way in which they have employed individual racial classifications is necessary to achieve their stated ends. 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. 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. 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 . in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1952, No. In my view the state-mandated racial classifications at issue, official labels proclaiming the race of all persons in a broad class of citizenselementary school students in one case, high school students in anotherare unconstitutional as the cases now come to us. After agreeing to hear an appeal (Parents Involved, 2006) in Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle School District Number 1 (2007), a highly divided Supreme Court f 6 struck down plans from Seattle and Louisville that classified students by race in making school assignments. The Courts decision undermines other basic institutional principles as well. 1, this Court struck down a state referendum that effectively barred implementation of Seattles desegregation plan and burden[ed] all future attempts to integrate Washington schools in districts throughout the State. Id., at 462463, 483. App. The findings should define the scope of any injury [and] the necessary remedy, id., at 505, and must be more than inherently unmeasurable claims of past wrongs, id., at 506. 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). 6704 (WD Wash., 1969), pp. Jefferson County does not challenge our jurisdiction, Tr. There is reason to believe that those who drafted an Amendment with this basic purpose in mind would have understood the legal and practical difference between the use of race-conscious criteria in defiance of that purpose, namely to keep the races apart, and the use of race-conscious criteria to further that purpose, namely to bring the races together. 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. Post, at 28 (citing Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. See Friends of Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., 528 U. S. 167, 189. It argues that it should not be force to walk the tightrope between violating the constitution by failing to integrate schools and violating the constitution by integrating schools. However, some students still must take public transportation. This, in turn, has consequences of its own. 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. Consequently, in 1996, the board modified Project Renaissance, thereby creating the present plan. 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 . 05908, at 103a (describing application of racial tiebreaker based on current white percentage of 41 percent and current minority percentage of 59 percent (emphasis added)). . 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. 7045 and 7291, (WD Ky., June 16, 1978), pp. In neither city did these prior attempts prove sufficient to achieve the citys integration goals. If the need for the racial classifications embraced by the school districts is unclear, even on the districts own terms, the costs are undeniable. See post, at 62. See Grutter 539 U.S. at 330. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court expressly stated: The racial imbalance act requires the school committee of every municipality annually to submit statistics showing the percentage of nonwhite pupils in all public schools and in each school. Nor could it. By contrast, Croson notes that racial classifications are permitted only "as a last resort".[30]. ante, at 1517 (opinion of Thomas, J.) Thus, Congress has enacted numerous race-conscious statutes that illustrate that principle or rely upon its validity. But see ante, at 1213, 17, n. 12. Numerical racial balance in a district's schools is far from a compelling interest, and in fact it is not even a legitimate purpose. In 2000, Federal Judge John Heyburn, after finding that the JCPS school system did not need to be under a court-ordered desegregation policy, ruled that race could not be used for student assignment placement in the JCPS school system in regard to their magnet school programs. The dissent again relies upon social science research to support the proposition that state-compelled racial mixing teaches children to accept cooperation and improves racial attitudes and race relations. "[13], Roberts noted that prior Supreme Court cases had recognized two compelling interests for the use of race. 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. The dissents persistent refusal to accept this distinctionits insistence on viewing the racial classifications here as if they were just like the ones in McDaniel, devised to overcome a history of segregated public schools, post, at 47explains its inability to understand why the remedial justification for racial classifications cannot decide these cases. of Oral Arg. Unlike todays decision, they were also entirely loyal to Brown. 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. In 1963, the transfer programs first year, 239 black students and 8 white students transferred. JCPS is the 26th largest school district in the United States. The reason is obvious: In Seattle, where the overall student population is 41% white, permitting 85% white enrollment at a single school would make it much more likely that other schools would have very few white students, whereas in Jefferson County, with a 60% white enrollment, one school with 85% white students would be less likely to skew enrollments elsewhere. This Court has also held that school districts may be required by federal statute to undertake race-conscious desegregation efforts even when there is no likelihood that de jure segregation can be shown. W. Bowen & D. Bok, The Shape of the River 118 (1998) (hereinafter Bowen & Bok). When formulating the plans under review, both districts drew upon their considerable experience with earlier plans, having revised their policies periodically in light of that experience. Is it not a fact that the very strength and fiber of our federal system is local self-government in those matters for which local action is competent? The Supreme Court will now review that determination in light of its Equal Protection decisions in Grutter and Gratz and is asked to decide whether racial diversity in high schools is a compelling state interest. The Seattle Plan achieved the school integration that it sought. In Brown V. Board of Education, the court ruled that 'separate but equal' was an unconstitutional provision and that the practice of segregation was 'inherently unequal'. To Crawford? See ante, at 1820. See Part V, supra, at 5763. There was no doubt that the county had operated a dual school system, McDaniel, supra, at 41, and no one questions that the obligation to disestablish a school system segregated by law can include race-conscious remedieswhether or not a court had issued an order to that effect. I shall consequently ask whether the school boards in Seattle and Louisville adopted these plans to serve a compelling governmental interest and, if so, whether the plans are narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. 539 U.S., at 325, 123 S. Ct. 2325, 156 L. Ed. What do the racial classifications do in these cases, if not determine admission to a public school on a racial basis? See n.16, infra. In Seattle School Dist. Although the Constitution almost always forbids the former, it is significantly more lenient in respect to the latter. Bd. Agencies Regs. of Los Angeles, 458 U. S. 527 (1982), post, at 24, in which a state referendum prohibiting a race-based assignment plan was challenged, is inappositein Crawford the Court again expressly reserved the question presented by these cases. While diversity may lend to a robust education, parents and students have their own opinions on what factors promote the best education possible. 11246, 30 Fed. Instead of accommodating different good-faith visions of our country and our Constitution, todays holding upsets settled expectations, creates legal uncertainty, and threatens to produce considerable further litigation, aggravating race-related conflict. Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S. 95, 109 (1983). This entire contention is tantamount to saying that the vindication and enjoyment of constitutional rights recognized by this Court as present and personal can be postponed whenever such postponement is claimed to be socially desirable). And it is a context in which the school boards plans simply set race-conscious limits at the outer boundaries of a broad range. of Springfield v. Board of Ed., 362 Mass. What has happened to stare decisis? That is a gamble I am unwilling to take, and it is one the Constitution does not allow. 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. 05915, at 159, 147. To adopt the dissents deferential approach would be to abdicate our constitutional responsibilities. This refers back to a time when public schools were highly segregated, often as a result of legal or administrative policies that facilitated racial segregation in public schools. Id., at 73. Evidence from the Segregated Schooling of African American Children, in Beyond Desegregation 209226 (M. Shujaa ed. The plurality refers to no case in support of its demand. 05908, at19. Presidential administrations for the past half-century have used and supported various race-conscious measures. The compelling interest at issue here, then, includes an effort to eradicate the remnants, not of general societal discrimination, ante, at 23 (plurality opinion), but of primary and secondary school segregation, see supra, at 7, 14; it includes an effort to create school environments that provide better educational opportunities for all children; it includes an effort to help create citizens better prepared to know, to understand, and to work with people of all races and backgrounds, thereby furthering the kind of democratic government our Constitution foresees. ospi. See Brief of the States of New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, the District of Columbia, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondents at 11. to reject the argument that a race-conscious plan is permissible only when there has been a judicial finding of de jure segregation. 610 F.2d, at 663664. Applying a test from Grutter, the Circuit Court also ruled that the tiebreaker plan was narrowly tailored, because 1) the District did not employ quotas, 2) the District had considered race-neutral alternatives, 3) the plan caused no undue harm to races, and 4) the plan had an ending point. b. explicitly overturned the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. IV); 34 CFR 280.2, 280.4 (2006) (implementing regulations). Get free summaries of new US Supreme Court opinions delivered to your inbox! See Freeman, 503 U. S., at 496; Jenkins, 515 U. S., at 118 (Thomas, J., concurring). Others have been more circumspect. In 1969, about 2,200 (of 10,383 total) of the districts black students and about 400 of the districts white students took advantage of the plan. Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw, 528 U.S. 167, 189 (2000). See Tr. 05908, at 103a. 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. Neither can assign to the other all responsibility for persisting injustices. 05908, p. 42. The diversity interest was not focused on race alone but encompassed all factors that may contribute to student body diversity. Id., at 337.