Court Casts Doubt on Race-Conscious Student Assignment Plan

This from the School Law blog:

A federal appeals court has cast doubt on a Louisiana school district's student assignment plan that had a goal of maintaining racial balance and had allowed the district to be freed of court supervision for desegregation.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, in New Orleans, ruled 2-1 on Thursday that a lower court must give greater scrutiny to the student assignment plan of the Ascension Parish school system.

The 20,000-student district, between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, was declared unitary, or legally desegregated, in 2004. When the school board in 2006 was evaluating plans to deal with overcrowding at one of the district's four high schools, it took data about the proportion of African-American students and at-risk students at feeder schools into account. The board cited a desire to maintain its unitary status.

A father of two black children in the district sued, alleging that the board's consideration of race and selection of an option that placed more at-risk students in a particular feeder zone violated the U.S. Constitution's equal-protection clause.

A federal district court held that the school system's plan was race neutral on its face and that evidence was lacking that the school board had a discriminatory motive in adopting it.

In its Nov. 3 decision in Lewis v. Ascension Parish School Board, the 5th Circuit panel called for more factual development in the lower court to determine whether the plan involves race classifications and thus must pass muster under the highest level of constitutional analysis, known as "strict scrutiny." ...

Martyr for a Cause: Desegregation

Herald-Leader columnist, Merlene Davis, wrote an interesting column recently about the passing of a 107-year old former teacher named Emma Jean Guyn Miller.

In her tribute to Miller's career, Davis wrote that her career ended "when integration made her years of knowledge and experience dispensable."

Interesting choice of words.

Some would argue that many desegregated schools have yet to become integrated. Further, Davis soft-sells what happened to end Miller's career when she called her experience dispensable."

What happened to Miller was an oft told tale in the African American community - so much so that Davis can be forgiven for glossing over it. But many whites have forgotten the "martyrdom" of far too many African American teachers during desegregation in this and other states.

The truth is that during the Jim Crow decades, whites argued that schools for blacks may have been separate, but they were equal to those of whites. Of course, everyone knew that wasn't true. They were funded at roughly a third of white schools. Leftovers from white schools were standard issue for blacks. The evidence of inequity was overwhelming. It was how folks expected things to be.

There was a period of time when African American teachers were better educated than white teachers in Kentucky, and with her teaching credentials as early as 1921, Miller would have been among that better-educated number.

But when segregation really ended in Kentucky - not in 1954 with the Brown decision, nor in 1955 with Brown II, nor in 1964 with the passage to the Civil Rights Act, but following 1968 when Green v County Board made it clear that school districts that continued to resist desegregation would lose federal funding - those African American teachers who had educated so many were simply discarded because politicians and school administrators knew black teachers would not be acceptable to white parents. They couldn't get jobs in desegregated "white" schools.

Following a parallel course, were the once "equal" schools that blacks attended. After desegregation, those building weren't good enough for white children to attend and most were closed: Lexington's Constitution, Jefferson Davis, and Dunbar high School to name only three.

Yes, Miller became dispensable. Many black teachers became dispensable.

This from H-L:

She taught with love and was loved in return

If calls and e-mails to our newsroom are any indication, Emma Jean Guyn Miller touched a lot of lives before her life ended peacefully at her home in Nicholasville on Friday. She was 107 years old.

For more than 40 years, Mrs. Miller was a schoolteacher, starting in a one-room schoolhouse during segregation and ending when integration made her years of knowledge and experience dispensable.

"She taught every person in my family," said Sarah Newby of Lexington. "There were seven of us."

Newby was in "Miss Emma Jean's" primary class in 1942 at Dunbar Elementary School on Chestnut Street in Nicholasville. Mrs. Miller taught first, second and third grades in one classroom, and Newby remembers her being loving but strict.

"She had a mailbox on her desk," she said. "We all took pride in writing her letters, nice letters, and she would read them on Friday. It was so much fun seeing the expression on her face when she read the letters. It made us all excited."

Newby's love of reading and her love of learning came from Mrs. Miller, she said. She transformed that love into a teaching career that spanned half a century in Lexington....

Jefferson County Board to consider student-assignment plan

This from C-J:

Attendance guide has broad base

The Jefferson County Board of Education will decide tonight whether to move forward with an integration plan that would use race, income and education in assigning children to schools.

Under the proposal, all schools -- elementary, middle and high -- must enroll at least 15 percent and no more than
50 percent of their students from neighborhoods that have income and education levels below the district average and higher-than-average numbers of minorities...

...Some national desegregation experts predict the plan
will withstand legal challenges and keep schools from becoming racially or socioeconomically segregated.But Alan Foutz, senior attorney for California's Pacific Legal Foundation, which is challenging a similar plan in Berkeley,
Calif., said he believes both plans are simply a proxy for using race in making student assignments, and are unconstitutional.

And Teddy Gordon, the Louisville lawyer who forced the district to drop its previous desegregation policy, agreed, saying in a statement yesterday that the plan "will be
challengeable." ...

...Then, district officials expanded its definition of diversity to include not only race, but also education and income level. It measured the average household income, education level and minority population of elementary school enrollment areas, based on U.S. Census data.

It decided that every school must have at least 15 percent and no more than 50 percent of it students from enrollment areas where the average household income among school families was below $41,000; the average education level was less than a high-school diploma with some college; and minority student population was more than 48 percent...

Jefferson County ready to unveil school assignment plans

Final decision expected by mid-May

Civil-rights leaders want to make sure schools stay racially integrated. Parents want to keep school choice. And students want to stay where they are.

The stakes will be high tomorrow when officials with Jefferson County Public Schools make public their highly anticipated student-assignment proposals in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling rejecting the district's desegregation policy.

"This is something that's going to impact the entire community," said Raoul Cunningham, president of the Louisville NAACP. "We are being watched across the nation."

Among those watching are school districts that want to see how Jefferson County, which has been nationally recognized for its integration efforts, will move forward after the Supreme Court said it can no longer assign individual students to schools based on their race.

Determined to avoid resegregation, Jefferson County officials have spent months weighing options such as neighborhood schools, income- and geography-based assignments, open enrollment and other plans...

...But whatever proposal is chosen will signal a historic shift in how school diversity is defined and achieved -- and usher in a new chapter in Louisville's long struggle with race and education...

This from the Courier-Journal.

Jefferson County grapples with the future after Meredith, wary of neighborhood-based plan

To some it seems simple: If Jefferson County Public Schools must redesign its student-assignment plan, why not just send children to the closest school?

Parents will be more involved, bus rides won't be as long and the student-assignment process will be a lot easier to understand, they say.

I'd love a neighborhood school — and a lot of other parents would, too," said LeeAnn Morrison, whose eighth-grade daughter will take a 25-minute bus ride to a Valley Station school next year.

But district officials say that switching to an assignment plan that relies solely on neighborhood schools could create a host of problems.

Schools in growing suburbs could quickly become too crowded. Parents likely would have fewer schools to choose from. And schools in segregated neighborhoods would become less diverse — both racially and economically.

A 2000 district analysis projected that a strict neighborhood plan would leave 48,000 students in resegregated schools, falling outside the district's goal of 15percent to 50percent black enrollment.

"I've heard a lot of people say, `If we could just go back to neighborhood schools...,'" said Amy Metz, a member of the district's PTA board. "But to me, that's the worst thing that could happen."

District officials appear wary of such a strict neighborhood plan.

New Superintendent Sheldon Berman said last week that he was "not leaning in that direction," and Joe Hardesty, chairman of the school board, said board members worry about the effect on the district's integration efforts.

"I'm not ruling anything out," Hardesty said. "But it's probably accurate to say the board would not be interested in a plan that would resegregate our schools, and a neighborhood plan might do that..."

This from the Courier-Journal.

Julian Bond on 'Endangered' minority children

On the same day the American bald eagle was removed from the endangered species list, a plurality of the Supreme Court replaced the once-threatened eagle with minority children. Their decision in two school cases endangers the well-being of countless children of color nationwide.
In the 50th anniversary year of the Little Rock school integration crisis, the Court, by a 5-4 vote, issued a judicial slap in the face to those who, as youngsters, braved howling mobs in Arkansas to make democracy work.

Knocking down voluntary plans to promote diversity in their classrooms, a Court plurality dreamingly suggested non-racial plans to cure the schools' racial imbalances. Sadly for the two cities' children -- and for other believers in fairness -- there are no non-racial remedies for racial discrimination. In order to get beyond race, you've got to go to race. To suggest racial neutrality as a remedy is sophistry of the highest sort...

...Segregated neighborhoods make segregated schools inevitable. This isolation is especially pronounced for poor black children.

According to the National Research Council, "Compared with poor whites, poor blacks are more likely to live in neighborhoods where a high proportion of the residents are poor."

This from the Courier-Journal.

Another point of view...Ruling moves us closer to King's goal

In August 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. expressed the hope that our "children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) case moves the nation one step closer to that goal.

Given the level of media misinformation, it is important to realize what the Court did not hold in its recent decision. First, the Court did not attempt to "turn the clock back" and return the country to the dark days of segregation. Indeed, the Court reaffirmed Brown v. Board of Education's prohibition against de jure or de facto segregation and said nothing that could be interpreted as authorizing JCPS to resegregate local schools. Indeed, although the Court struck down JCPS' student assignment plan, the Court flatly condoned the use of race-conscious remedies to eliminate the vestiges of segregation.

The difficulty for JCPS is that Brown was decided more than a half century ago, and the courts have held that JCPS has eliminated the effects of segregation. While it might have been appropriate for JCPS to use race-conscious remedies during the desegregation phase, the Court held that it is not appropriate for the district to use race conscious remedies now.

Second, the Court did not repudiate the concept of "diversity" in education. Indeed, both the Seattle and Louisville plans were criticized because they did not provide diversity. True diversity includes an array of factors, including "exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas and viewpoints." Both the Louisville and Seattle school districts focused only on race, and Louisville's school assignment plan focused only on a single race (African Americans).

This focus on race produced perverse incentives and results. As the Court noted, under the Seattle plan, a school "with 50 percent Asian-American students and 50 percent white students but no African-American, Native-American, or Latino students would qualify as balanced, while a school with 30 percent Asian-American, 25 percent African American, 25 percent Latino, and 20 percent white students would not." Similarly, in Louisville, a school transfer might be denied even though a student might bring real (racial and ethnic) diversity to the transfer school if it did not produce African-American balance.

This focus on race tends to undercut, rather than enhance, diversity. As the Court recognized in its decision, to "the extent the objective is sufficient diversity so that students see fellow students as individuals rather than solely as members of a racial group, using means that treat students solely as members of a racial group, is fundamentally at cross-purposes with that end."

...The segregationist-era focus on race has had a very negative effect on society. No one doubts that there are a significant number of African-American individuals who are suffering the effects of slavery and segregation, including poverty and lack of economic opportunity. Moreover, few doubt that society has an obligation to provide assistance. The difficulty is that race-conscious remedies provide a blunt and relatively ineffective instrument for dealing with this problem.

...If governmental assistance is based on need (e.g., economic disadvantage), rather than race, society as a whole will advance, and we are more likely to alleviate historical inequalities and disadvantages. Moreover, given that African Americans are disproportionately economically disadvantaged, they will be disproportionately benefitted by progressive programs. However, others who are economically disadvantaged will also be empowered rather than embittered. Society as a whole will be better off.

This from the Courier-Journal.

Supreme Court's majority failed to understand Louisville's situation

After long deliberation and deep division, the Supreme Court has issued a muddled and polarized set of decisions in which the majority recognizes that school districts and the nation have a compelling interest in integrated schools, but rejects some of the most important tools school districts have used to achieve them.

It could be worse. Many feared that the increasingly conservative Court would simply strike down any race-conscious tools for desegregation and even undermine the goal. That has not happened, but the Court has created new hurdles for Jefferson County and many other school districts whose existing plans must be altered to meet the new standard or the plan will be lost and massive resegregation accepted...

...The majority of the Supreme Court simply does not understand the specifics of the Louisville situation in particular or the challenges of urban desegregation in general.

The desegregation tools that are specifically authorized in Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion are not adequate for a big city and can even be counterproductive in areas of expanding minority residence, where they could speed an unstable racial transition. These tools support the end but reject the means -- tools such as selecting sites for new schools in interracial areas and adjusting boundaries of neighborhood.

In a choice-based plan such as Jefferson County's, the Court majority holds that the practice of making decisions about who gets what choice on the basis of race alone is unconstitutional, even though this policy was part of court-ordered and voluntary plans in thousands of school districts for many years following clear evidence in the early l960s that unrestricted choice plans often intensified segregation. The federal magnet school program for many years required that those receiving federal funds to set up magnets had desegregation policies...

[School systems]... must examine other possible ways of creating diversity -- what would be the impact of using poverty, geographic diversity within the district, test scores, subsized housing status, NCLB or state accountability status of the school or other dimensions to produce diversity.

This from the Courier-Journal.

Here it comes... Income could be a new benchmark

Five years ago, the Jefferson County board of education flirted with a new idea for integrating the district's 150 public schools — one that factored in family income as well as race.

It was an attempt to eliminate high-poverty schools. But board members quickly dismissed it, deciding they didn't want to tinker with their current plan.

Now, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down the county's desegregation plan is forcing the district to look at other options for assigning students to schools — including plans based on students' family income.

"It may be one of the few ways" to effectively maintain diversity, said school board member Steve Imhoff, who proposed income-based assignments in 2002. "At the time people thought, `Why change something that's working,' but now we've got to do something else."

Thursday's Supreme Court decision sharply limiting the use of race to integrate schools has many districts scrambling to find new ways of assigning students, with income-based plans getting new attention nationally as a way to help maintain diversity.

And a new national study by the Century Foundation, a Washington, D.C., think tank, says that income-based or socioeconomic plans can help keep schools integrated — depending on how the plans are implemented.

...About 40 U.S. districts serving more than 2 million students already use socioeconomic assignment plans.

...such plans might be hard to manage, partly because families' income levels change.

...said those plans are less effective in districts where most students are middle class.

...it could work in such districts so that no schools surpass 75percent subsidized-lunch enrollment, the point at which "schools tend to go downhill pretty fast."

This from the Courier-Journal.

Ruling evokes memories of busing

Veteran teacher recalls 1970s' tensions

Mike Amburgy began his teaching career during the tense years when busing began in Jefferson County schools, and he plans to retire as the district's longtime desegregation policy comes to a close....

"I was used to seeing demonstrations on television but had never personally witnessed any violent confrontations."

That changed in Louisville.

During the first football game of the season, he saw "the ugly face of racism" -- a Ku Klux Klan member standing outside the school with a sign reading "NO INTEGRATION." Later he witnessed a KKK demonstration on Dixie Highway, in front of Valley High School.

But he remained enthusiastic about teaching at [Jesse] Stuart High, until he lived through a race riot that erupted from a fight between two boys. At one point, he said, he saw a white girl break her own nose while swinging a homemade weapon.

"The faculty tried to break it up, but in a school of 1,700 students, our efforts were futile," he wrote. "The uniformed school police were called and then the county police were called, and it wasn't until 1 before all the fights were broken up and the fighters were either arrested or sent home.

… There was blood on the floors, tear gas in the halls."

Later, Amburgy was asked to sponsor a "human relations club" with an African-American teacher, and it held meetings with white and black students in which they could come together and share their feelings....

...Valley High School, where the KKK once demonstrated, now has an African-American principal. Biracial couples are an accepted part of society, he said, and most students seem to abhor discrimination.

Amburgy said he's hopeful about the future and optimistic that the recent Supreme Court ruling might eventually bring a better school system. But he also wonders whether schools might "pretty much re-segregate."

"Society has changed," he said. "Has it changed enough that we can go back to local schools? I don't know."

This from the Courier-Journal.

I see your Moloch...and raise you a Jesus. My response to the Family Foundation's celebration of the Louisville school desegregation decision

Yesterday, Martin Cothran of the Family Foundation wrote a brief celebration on the Supreme Court decision in Meredith on his blog vere loqui. It is a ruling that has many historical overtones that must be understood. Since the issue hit me in my wheelhouse, I thought a response might be in order.

Cothran implies that those who think diversity is a good thing...(actually he says it better than that)...He says those who "sacrificed children to the idols of egalitarianism and diversity" are the modern descendants of the Canaanite god, Moloch.

Well, this sounds really bad. I believe there is strength in diversity, so I wonder... Have I just been offended?

I don't actually know. I'll have to look up Moloch first...to find out if he was particularly nasty or something. But if I've been sacrificing little children to some Canaanite god and didn't even know it...I'm gonna be hacked off.

Martin is correct to point out that school districts will find other means to promote diversity.

Today I reveal the social liberal's Double-secret Plan B.

~
Dear Martin,

Access to quality education – who gets taught, and the quality of that teaching – is the central issue in the history of education in America.

Our Constitution said that all men were created equal. But in America’s earliest days, with few exceptions, it was the sons of white male landowners who received instruction. Why is that?

Racism? Well, yes…slavery was America’s original sin - but also economics.

Poor children were not thought to be worth the effort. After all, how much schooling is necessary to work a plow? An adequate education in the 19th century didn’t have to meet a high standard – just the 3 R’s (at about a 3rd grade level) would do. This - while children of means learned the classics. Millions of poor white and black children were denied equal opportunities. It was about class and economics – one’s station in life.

As a youngster in all-white Ludlow, Kentucky, I knew what it meant to have low expectations. I believe I was one of two Ludlow graduates in 1969 that went right on to college. That was not the story at the upscale Beechwood School. As bad as it could be for poor white children, being black was an additional burden. Why is that?

Neither group found it easy to get to a high quality school. It was doubly tough in Appalachia.

But, future economic success demands a competitive workforce. That means a 21st century education for all Kentucky children – something I suspect you fully support.

So we have to get the kids to school.

Every day school folks put millions of kids (who can’t drive themselves) on buses. We bus them...all over the place. We bus them from wherever they live. Big yellow busses. Flashing lights but no seat belts. And the wheels on the bus go ‘round.

It would have been nice if we never had to bus kids for reasons of racial desegregation. The best solution is always the presence of a high quality school in every neighborhood. But it didn’t work out that way. Why is that?

I assume nobody is arguing in favor of a return to the separate and very unequal days of Plessy v Ferguson. But when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v Board of Education I, in 1954, that separate schools for African-American children were unconstitutional the Court was largely ignored. The following year the Court in Brown II ordered schools to begin desegregating. But they didn’t. Instead over 100 southern legislators decried the Court’s “intrusion,” asserted local control, and signed the Southern Manifesto vowing to obstruct where they could.

It was not until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the decision in Green v. County Board of Education in 1968 that school districts made any real attempt to comply with the court’s 1954 ruling, and then only under threat of losing federal funds. In the 1963-64 school year barely 1% of black children attended school with white children. By 1972 that percentage had grown to better than 75%.

Social engineering? You bet. Let’s say it together. Social engineering.

It would have been better if the Court had never had to intervene. But I think one can argue that the Court in Brown upheld unpopular principles of the Constitution on Christian moral grounds. As I read the Bible, I have trouble finding any place where Jesus did not gravitate toward the poorest, lowest class, downtrodden, sick, or otherwise despised individual and lift them up. Correct me if I’m wrong. Should we not do likewise?

Of course, the present Court’s ruling was predictable – signaled during oral arguments last March. There is even a rational legal basis for the decision. It is notable that civil rights advocates who argued the need for federal protection in Brown, were now arguing for local control in the Louisville case, Meredith. Legally, what else did they have to argue? It is fairly well understood that today’s residual racial segregation is the result of housing patterns in our cities – not the result of any intentional efforts by school districts to keep the races apart. This under lays Chief Justice Robert’s snappy retort.

So what now?

Is the Court inviting local school districts to return to the days of Jim Crow? Of course not.

I suspect what you will see now is a shift toward economics as a basis for future busing schemes. Since African Americans are overrepresented among the poor, the real impact of the Court’s decision may be limited in some places. In other places, probably in most places, it will result in a racial resegregation. The extent to which communities have built diverse neighborhoods will determine the extent of the impact.

Is this social engineering? You bet. Social engineering and busing. Different ideology, perhaps. Different set of kids maybe. Same buses.

What you won’t see: school districts ignoring the Court.

The solution today is the same as in the beginning. We must have high quality schools in every neighborhood, but the requirements of an adequate education today are much more substantial than in the past. If the citizens of Kentucky will support this effort we will all be better off and the courts won't have to do anything. Actually, our children will all be better off. We need a gainfully employed citizenry – with more employer supported healthcare and a much lower Medicare burden on the state budget. We need to care for the poor – not by giving them a handout, but by giving their children an opportunity to do better.

What would Jesus do?

With respect,

Richard

Supreme Court rules on race-conscious school placements

The US Supreme Court [JURIST news archive] handed down decisions in the last three cases of its 2006 Term Thursday, including the consolidated cases of Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education [Duke Law case backgrounder; JURIST report] and Parents Involved v. Seattle School District [Duke Law case backgrounder], where the Court struck down public school consideration of race when assigning students to public schools.

In the Seattle case, parents sought an injunction against the school district's policy of assigning students to schools based partly on race, so that the racial makeup of each school roughly mirrors that of the district, arguing that the consideration of race violated the equal protection guarantee of the 14th Amendment [text]. The district court upheld the policy. A panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, applying the strict scrutiny standard of the 2003 University of Michigan affirmative action cases [JURIST online symposium] and finding that the policy was not narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling state interest. Following an en banc review, however, the full Ninth Circuit reversed the panel [opinion, PDF] and sided with the school district.

Likewise, in the [Kentucky] case, the district court refused to issue an injunction against the school district and upheld the policy under strict scrutiny. The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed.

The Supreme Court reversed both decisions Thursday, holding that the policies did not survive the applicable "searching standard of review," which required the school districts to "demonstrate that the use of individual racial classifications in the assignment plans here under review is 'narrowly tailored' to achieve a 'compelling' government interest."

Read the Court's opinion per Justice Chief Justice Roberts, along with a concurrence from Justice Thomas, a second concurrence from Justice Kennedy, a dissent from Justice Stevens, and a second dissent from Justice Breyer.

This from Jurist.
~

5-4 ruling limits use of race by district

A divided U.S. Supreme Court struck down Jefferson County Public Schools' desegregation policy yesterday -- saying the district's use of race in assigning students was unconstitutional.

The landmark decision placed new limits on the ability of districts nationwide to pursue racial diversity.

In a 5-4 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts said that by classifying students by race, the Louisville and Seattle school districts perpetuated unequal treatment and had failed to justify the use of race.

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," Roberts said.

The decision reversed the lower courts and was a victory for Crystal Meredith, who challenged the Jefferson County plan when her son was denied a transfer to Bloom Elementary School because he is white.

But the split decision left the door open for schools to consider race in narrower circumstances, with five justices saying that school diversity is a compelling state interest.

Although the ruling will restrict hundreds of districts' ability to integrate schools, it wasn't as sweeping as some civil-rights advocates had feared: It did not overturn past decisions on race in higher education or delve into affirmative action.

This from the Courier-Journal.
~
Also from C-J, Jefferson County Board of Education preliminary Press Conference; and Press Conference on School Desegregation ruling.
~

SCOTUS strikes down Jefferson County Schools' Integration Plan by 5-4 vote

Here is the opinion of the US Supreme Court (a/k/a SCOTUS) in the Seattle and Jefferson County School desegregation cases released June 28, 2007. For any SCOTUS afficianados, there were 75 slip opinions for the Oct 2006 term which can be found here. The local case was styled Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education but was consolidated with the Seattle schools case.

Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1
From SCOTUSBLOG.com is the following short summary of this decision at Court strikes down school integration plans, ends Term:

[T]he Supreme Court divided 5-4 on Thursday in striking down voluntary integration plans in the public schools of Seattle and Louisville. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., wrote the majority opinion in the combined cases. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy did not join all of the majority opinion, but joined in the result. Kennedy suggested in a separate opinion that the Chief Justice'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."

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," Roberts wrote. On the two school plans, the majority found that the districts have "failed to provide the necessary support for the proposition that there is no other way than individual racial classifications to avoid racial isolation in their school districts."

The Chief Justice, in his oral announcement of the ruling, insisted that the Court was remaining faithful to Brown v. Board of Education in barring public school districts from assigning students on the basis of race. Answering that, Justice John Paul Stevens said in dissent that there was a "cruel irony" in making that claim, because it involved a rewriting of the history "of one of this Court's most important decisions." Stevens noted that he joined the Court in 1975, and asserted that "no member of the Court" at that time "would have agreed with today's decision."

This from the Kentucky Law Review blog.
~

Schools to re-examine racial integration

What to do now? School officials around the country are asking that question following a Supreme Court decision rejecting racial integration plans in Seattle and Louisville, Ky.

The 5-4 ruling prohibited those district plans but didn't entirely shut the door on using race as a factor when making decisions about what schools should look like.

The ruling brought complaints that it allegedly betrayed the Supreme Court's most acclaimed ruling - the 53-year-old Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing segregated schools.

Justice Anthony Kennedy went along with the court's four most conservative members in rejecting the Louisville and Seattle plans. However, he stopped short of saying race can never be a component of school efforts to achieve diversity.

This from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
~

Justices Limit the Use of Race in School Plans for Integration

With competing blocs of justices claiming the mantle of Brown v. Board of Education, a bitterly divided Supreme Court declared Thursday that public school systems cannot seek to achieve or maintain integration through measures that take explicit account of a student’s race.

...Chief Justice Roberts’s control was not quite complete, however. While Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined his opinion on the schools case in full, the fifth member of the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, did not. Justice Kennedy agreed that the two programs were unconstitutional. But he was highly critical of what he described as the chief justice’s “all-too-unyielding insistence that race cannot be a factor in instances when, in my view, it may be taken into account.”

This from the New York Times.
~
And also from the Times...this editorial:

Resegregation Now

The Supreme Court ruled 53 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated education is inherently unequal, and it ordered the nation’s schools to integrate. Yesterday, the court switched sides and told two cities that they cannot take modest steps to bring public school students of different races together. It was a sad day for the court and for the ideal of racial equality.

Since 1954, the Supreme Court has been the nation’s driving force for integration. Its orders required segregated buses and public buildings, parks and playgrounds to open up to all Americans. It wasn’t always easy: governors, senators and angry mobs talked of massive resistance. But the court never wavered, and in many of the most important cases it spoke unanimously.

Yesterday, the court’s radical new majority turned its back on that proud tradition in a 5-4 ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts. It has been some time since the court, which has grown more conservative by the year, did much to compel local governments to promote racial integration. But now it is moving in reverse, broadly ordering the public schools to become more segregated.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who provided the majority’s fifth vote, reined in the ruling somewhat by signing only part of the majority opinion and writing separately to underscore that some limited programs that take race into account are still acceptable. But it is unclear how much room his analysis will leave, in practice, for school districts to promote integration. His unwillingness to uphold Seattle’s and Louisville’s relatively modest plans is certainly a discouraging sign.

In an eloquent dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer explained just how sharp a break the decision is with history. The Supreme Court has often ordered schools to use race-conscious remedies, and it has unanimously held that deciding to make assignments based on race “to prepare students to live in a pluralistic society” is “within the broad discretionary powers of school authorities...”

~

Across U.S., a New Look at School Integration Efforts

...Louisville, whose plan was struck down by yesterday’s ruling, could move in that direction.
“We didn’t have a, quote, Plan B, ready in case we lost,” said Stephen Imhoff, one of seven members of the Jefferson County school board that oversees the Louisville schools at issue in ruling. “But I began bringing up socioeconomic diversity with the board five years ago, and I think it will be one of the viable options we will discuss. Our board believes that diversity is valuable, and we will work to maintain it.”

Sharon Browne, a lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative group that supported the parents suing Seattle and Louisville, said at a news conference yesterday that in addition to the foundation’s current litigation against policies in Los Angeles and Berkeley, Calif., schools, her group has identified several other districts, including Lynn, Mass., and Rochester, whose policies now seem ripe for challenge.

There are no reliable statistics on how many districts try to achieve racial balance by using race in decisions about which students go to which schools; estimates range from a few hundred to nearly 1,000. Some states specifically call for such plans....

This from the New York Times.

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Parsing the High Court's Ruling on Race and Schools

What does this decision mean for other public school plans that consider race as a factor?
The decision narrows the arsenal of tools available to public school districts seeking to achieve or maintain racial diversity. However, because of Kennedy's concurring opinion, the decision does leave the door open for race to be used as a factor in limited circumstances.

Recent high court rulings have addressed diversity plans in higher education. Thursday's decision applies specifically to K-12 public education. However, even the majority justices disagreed on whether and how race may be considered as a factor in public school admissions. So, it isn't clear how this ruling will affect programs and circumstances in which a student's race is considered — such as admissions to competitive magnet programs. That uncertainty leaves school districts some room to maneuver.

What is clear is that school districts cannot classify students by race for the purpose of school assignments, as the Seattle and Louisville school plans did. Using race for other educational purposes, such as to track enrollment, is still permissible, based on Kennedy's concurring opinion.

This audio from NPR.

Schools await desegregation ruling

Jefferson lawsuit could
reshape policy across U.S.
With just 10 days left in its session, education and civil-rights leaders across the nation are anxiously waiting to see whether a conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court will end voluntary desegregation in America's public schools -- particularly those in Jefferson County.

No one can say for certain, but some legal experts predict that the court will restrict race-based school assignments in some way, affecting hundreds of districts.

"The conventional thinking is they will limit it or strike it down," said John Brittain, chief counsel for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a civil-rights legal organization. But he said some remain hopeful.

...If the Jefferson County district loses, it would mark the beginning of a long and difficult effort to redesign how students are assigned -- and determine whether more indirect uses of race, such as attendance zones, are still permissible.

This from the Courier-Journal.

And this local history of JCPS desegregation, again from the Courier-Journal.
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Has anyone else noticed a 180 degree shift in the legal strategy being advanced by the desegregation advocates? In the Brown cases, 1954 & 1955, it was argued that federal protections were needed to combat local control and advance a compelling state interest. Now, the advocacy is reversed. Louisville wants to maintain its deseg plan as a compelling local interest. Tricky.

I'll bet a nickle that this conservative court will have no trouble finding a rationale that essentially says any residual segregation in our schools is the produce of segregated housing patterns in our cities and therefore, not the "fault" of any attempt by the schools to segregate. Look for Louisville to lose. Then, look for a resegregation based mostly on economic differences.