Supreme Court rejects school racial diversity plans

In a major civil rights ruling, a narrow majority struck down two school-enrollment plans.

from the June 29, 2007 edition

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The 41-page decision backs away from some of the constitutional ground staked out four years ago in June 2003, when then-Justice Sandra Day O'Connor cast the deciding vote in a 5-to-4 decision upholding the use of race to achieve student diversity at the prestigious University of Michigan Law School.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a dissent in that case accusing the majority justices in the Michigan Law School decision of abandoning the high constitutional bar that had traditionally been applied by the court to the use of race in the context of university admissions. Thursday's decision beefs up that constitutional scrutiny, but Justice Kennedy declined to join the court's four conservatives in adopting a colorblind approach in matters of school enrollment. Such an approach would have potentially closed the door on all race-based plans.

School officials have a compelling interest in avoiding racial isolation and in achieving a diverse student population, Kennedy writes in a concurring opinion. "Race may be one component of that diversity, but other demographic factors, plus special talents and needs, should also be considered," he says.

As in the high court's April 18 abortion decision, the shift in its race-based enrollment jurisprudence can be linked to Justice O'Connor's retirement from the court and her replacement by a more conservative justice, Samuel Alito.

Both sides of the sharply divided court attempted to wrap their arguments in references to Brown v. Board of Education.

In his majority opinion, the chief justice quoted from a second Brown decision in 1955 as requiring government officials "to achieve a system of determining admission to the public schools on a nonracial basis."

"What do racial classifications do in these cases, if not determine admissions to a public school on a racial basis?" Roberts asks.

"Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin," he writes. "The school districts in these cases have not carried the heavy burden of demonstrating that we should allow this once again – even for very different reasons."

In a 68-page dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer said that to invalidate the Seattle and Louisville enrollment plans "is to threaten the promise of Brown."

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