Court School Ruling Isn't the Last Word
In a divided 5-4 decision today, the Supreme Court overruled two school desegregation programs, in Seattle and Louisville, which created racial targets for school admissions. The decision in the consolidated case of Parents Involved v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education is the most significant ruling on race in education since the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, which upheld the use of race as a factor in school admissions.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts held that "the school districts have not carried their heavy burden of showing that the interest they seek to achieve justifies the extreme means they have chosen—discrimination among individual students based on race by relying upon racial classifications in making school assignments."
But dissenters, led by Justice Stephen Breyer, wrote that the majority's ruling "undermines Brown's promise of integrated primary and secondary education that local communities have sought to make a reality."
U.S. News spoke with Marquette University Prof. Robert Lowe, an expert on the history of racial integration in schools, about this ruling.
Louisville and Seattle are not the only school districts with similar policies. What does today's Supreme Court decision mean for school districts across the country?
In a really global sense it isn't clear how important this decision is in terms of preserving desegregation practices because there isn't very much out there. As far, though, as those school districts that have practiced desegregation, I don't think the decision is likely to make them abandon those plans right now.
While in fact this is likely to precipitate more lawsuits, they are money- and time-intensive and there are probably easier ways of changing desegregation plans through the democratic process by changing school board members' minds or by changing school board members.
The decision leaves open the possibility that race may still be used as a factor in determining school assignments. But even Justice Anthony Kennedy, who sided with the majority, is concerned that the conservatives on the court "imply an unyielding insistence that race cannot be a factor in instances when it may be taken into account." Where is the line?
I'm not sure what line he's trying to draw. He's announcing that race may still matter and may still be used, but he's not very clear when he would consider that use of race to be legitimate. I think it's significant that he pointed it out because it leaves the decision somewhat unsettled.
Justice Roberts noted that part of the problem with the schools' policies was that they failed to take into account other methods of achieving integration. What other possibilities are there?
There is a concern among those who don't like race-specific remedies that there are other ways at getting at a diverse student population. It's not clear that those work. They can, but typically the racial demographics of school districts are significantly segregated, and it makes it extremely difficult to come up with other plans that create school boundaries that try to overlap to really promote effective desegregation.
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