Schools' interim desegregation plan challenged

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race

is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,"

US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.

That was the zinger that encapsulated the Court's decision in Meredith v Jefferson County Board of Education. But that is not the whole case.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy did not join all of the majority opinion - only the result. That left a gap of uncertainty as to the meaning of the Court's 5-4 decision; a gap the Jefferson County Board of Education is trying to squeeze into.

Kennedy suggested in his separate opinion that the Robert's opinion, in part, "is at least open to the interpretation that the Constitution requires school districts to ignore the problem of de facto resegregation in schooling. I cannot endorse that conclusion," he wrote.

The Jefferson County Board of Education responded with a new temporary student assignment plan that looks like the old plan.

So it wasn't too hard to predict what would happen next. This from the Courier-Journal:

The Louisville lawyer who successfully challenged Jefferson County's school desegregation policy is now challenging the district's interim plan, saying it illegally uses race to assign students.

Attorney Ted Gordon filed a motion yesterday in U.S. District Court in Louisville, asking Judge John Heyburn II to review the temporary plan adopted last week for the 2008-09 school year.

Gordon said he wants Heyburn to determine whether Jefferson County Public Schools has revived "a quota system" and is "assigning kindergartners and first-graders to elementary schools based upon racial classifications."

"They are still using race as a way to assign children and they cannot do that," Gordon said in an interview yesterday. "I am shocked the school board did not ask (Heyburn) for approval before they approved this plan."

Byron Leet, an attorney who represents the county Board of Education, said yesterday that Gordon's motion has no merit.

"He is trying to reopen a case that has already been closed," Leet said...

Education Week's School Law Blog lists several resources for those thying to divine the Court's real meaning.

...[T]he NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund recently published a manual for parents, educators, and advocates on what steps are still legally available to maintain racially diverse schools. The 95-page manual, Still Looking to the Future: Voluntary K-12 School Integration, is available in PDF form online or can be ordered from the organization. "While altering the landscape of school integration, the Seattle/Louisville decision did not provide a clear set of rules and principles for school districts to follow, and created some confusion about what school districts and communities can do to promote integration in their schools," the manual states.

There are some other helpful documents out there for educators as they grapple with the Seattle/Jefferson County decision.

The National School Boards Association teamed up with the College Board last year to publish "Not Black and White," a guide to the Supreme Court's decision.

And earlier, the NSBA had released "An Educated Guess: Initial Guidance on Diversity in Public Schools After PICS v. Seattle School District."

And the Hogan & Hartson law firm, which works with many school districts on diversity issues, put out its own guidance last year. The firm issued this document shortly after the decision last summer, and this updated guidance last September. (Thanks to Maree Sneed of Hogan & Hartson for the documents.)

Finally, for those who want more to chew on, the Harvard Law Review devoted several articles to analyzing the Seattle/Jefferson County race decisions in its November issue.