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
Page 4 of 4
In Louisville, the Jefferson County School Board established a broad goal that each of the district's schools should have black student enrollment set between 15 percent and 50 percent of the school's total enrollment. African-American enrollment districtwide is about 35 percent. School administrators set the exact racial mix at each school.
The program tries to encourage students to attend schools outside their neighborhood to help achieve meaningful diversity in every school in the district. School officials urge parents to be flexible in considering an array of second- and third-choice schools to avoid disappointment over being denied admission to a single favored school for racial reasons.
Parents opposed to the plan say it denies a government benefit based on skin color. Supporters say all schools in the district are essentially the same in offering a public education, so being admitted to one school instead of another does not amount to a benefit.
The two cases decided Thursday are Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (05-908) and Crystal Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education (05-915). Complete decisions and dissents are available on the Supreme Court's website at www.supremecourtus.gov/index.html.
Linda Feldmann contributed to this report.
Major US Supreme Court rulings on school segregation
1896: Plessy v. Ferguson: Upheld "Jim Crow" laws designed to ensure racial segregation; established "separate but equal" doctrine
1954: Brown v. Board of Education: Ruled that segregation in public schools violates 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law
1968: Green v. County School Board of New Kent County: Found that "freedom of choice" plans were ineffective at achieving desegregation and had to be replaced by more effective strategies
1971: Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg Board of Education: Busing white and black students to achieve racial balancing in schools is constitutionally permissible
1978: University of California Regents v. Bakke: Declared unconstitutional a medical school's admissions policy that set quotas for the number of slots for minority students, but did not rule out race-based admissions policies
2003: Grutter v. Bollinger: Decided that the University of Michigan Law School's narrowly tailored race-based admissions policies are justified to foster racial diversity
Source: FindLaw
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