[32], Plurality opinion by Chief Justice Roberts. The districts here invoke the ultimate goal of those who filed Brown and subsequent cases to support their argument, but the argument of the plaintiff in Brown was that the Equal Protection Clause prevents states from according differential treatment to American children on the basis of their color or race, and that view prevailedthis Court ruled in its remedial opinion that Brown required school districts to achieve a system of determining admission to the public schools on a nonracial basis. Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294, 300301 (emphasis added). In Brown V. Board of Education, the court ruled that 'separate but equal' was an unconstitutional provision and that the practice of segregation was 'inherently unequal'. Apparently Justice Kennedy also agrees that strict scrutiny would not apply in respect to certain race-conscious school board policies. 05908, at 303a. A 1987 Civil Rights Commission Study of 125 school districts in the Nation demonstrated the breadth and variety of desegregation plans: The [study] documents almost 300 desegregation plans that were implemented between 1961 and 1985. App. But in its search for a compelling interest, the dissent casually accepts even the most tenuous interests asserted on behalf of the plans, grouping them all under the term integration. See post, at 37. It used explicitly racial criteria in making these assignments (i.e., it deliberately assigned to the new middle schools black students, not white students, from the black schools and white students, not black students, from the white schools). 3, p.4647 (If this case were to be decided solely on the basis of precedent, this brief could have been much more limited. [Footnote 9] We have made it unusually clear that strict scrutiny applies to every racial classification. See also Kennedy Report. 2d 1267 (1996). School districts that had engaged in de jure segregation had an affirmative constitutional duty to desegregate; those that were de facto segregated did not. See Research, Evaluation and Assessment, Student Information Serv- (Would it be necessary to adjudicate the obvious [Footnote 15] Environmental reflection, though, is just another way to say racial balancing. Disappointed students are not rejected from a States flagship graduate program; they simply attend a different one of the districts many public schools, which in aspiration and in fact are substantially equal. Upon realizing that the litigation would not be resolved in time for assignment decisions for the 20022003 school year, the Ninth Circuit withdrew its opinion, 294 F.3d 1084 (2002) (Parents Involved III), vacated the injunction, and, pursuant to Wash. Rev. IV); 34 CFR 280.2, 280.4 (2006) (implementing regulations). Accepting racial balancing as a compelling state interest would justify the imposition of racial proportionality throughout American society, contrary to our repeated recognition that [a]t the heart of the Constitutions guarantee of equal protection lies the simple command that the Government must treat citizens as individuals, not as simply components of a racial, religious, sexual or national class. Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 911 (1995) (quoting Metro Broadcasting, 497 U. S., at 602 (OConnor, J., dissenting); internal quotation marks omitted). And in each city, the school boards plans have evolved over time in ways that progressively diminish the plans use of explicit race-conscious criteria. Id. Seattle argues that Parents Involved lacks standing because none of its current members can claim an imminent injury. VII, 1, ch. Sometimes Members of this Court have disagreed about the degree of leniency that the Clause affords to programs designed to include. After the site was removed, the district offered the comforting clarification that the site was not intended to hold onto unsuccessful concepts such as melting pot or colorblind mentality. Ibid. The dissent claims that the law requires application here of a standard of review that is not strict in the traditional sense of that word. Post, at 36. ment one would expect to find if black achievement were contin- The subsequent statements by the unanimous Court in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. Finally, it lists several race-neutral alternatives that were considered (such as a lottery system, the use of poverty as a proxy for race, and regional assignments) and argues that they would not have been as effective as the plan that is the subject of this litigation. A mixture? 05-908, at 38a-39a, 45a. It was the promise of true racial equalitynot as a matter of fine words on paper, but as a matter of everyday life in the Nations cities and schools. It predicts that todays decision threaten[s] the validity of [h]undreds of state and federal statutes and regulations. Post, at 61; see also post, at 2728. Pluralism also affords some opportunity for experimentation, innovation, and a healthy competition for educational excellence); Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U. S. 97, 104 (1968) (Judicial interposition in the operation of the public school system of the Nation raises problems requiring care and restraint. CRYSTAL D. MEREDITH, custodial parent and next friend of JOSHUA RYAN M c DONALD, PETITIONER. of Oral Arg. Aside from constitutionally compelled remediation in schools, this Court has permitted government units to remedy prior racial discrimination only in narrow circumstances. To Crawford? Swann, supra, at 6; see also Green v. School Bd. The Court made clear that [s]trict scrutiny does not trea[t] dissimilar race-based decisions as though they were equally objectionable. Ibid. 1 (2007) Term 1 / 8 What are the core facts of the case? But its conclusion is short: The plans before us satisfy the requirements of the Equal Protection Clause. 911. Some have concluded that black students receive genuine educational benefits. The pluralitys postulate that [t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race, ante, at 4041, is not sufficient to decide these cases. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the District had a compelling state interest in achieving the benefits of racial diversity and that its plan was narrowly tailored. Any use of race to distinguish one person from another threatens to stigmatize individuals and incite hostility. Indeed, if our history has taught us anything, it has taught us to beware of elites bearing racial theories. That policy was necessary because of numerous incidents of racial violence. Id., at 502; id., at 532534 (Thomas, J., dissenting). Here Roberts provides the following string citation: quoting Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244, 270, 123 S. Ct. 2411, 156 L. Ed. 539 U. S., at 316, 335336. Research suggests, for example, that black children from segregated educational environments significantly increase their achievement levels once they are placed in a more integrated setting. School authorities are traditionally given broad discretionary powers to formulate and implement educational policy and may properly decide to ensure to their students the value of an integrated school experience. Citizens for Better Ed. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. And it is for them to decide, to quote the pluralitys slogan, whether the best way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. Ante, at 4041. 69. Accord, post, at 48 ([L]ocal school boards better understand their own communities and have a better knowledge of what in practice will best meet the educational needs of their pupils); post, at 66 ([W]hat of respect for democratic local decisionmaking by States and school boards?); ibid. have recognized that voluntary programs of local school authorities designed to alleviate de facto segregation and racial imbalance in the schools are not constitutionally forbidden. Tometz v. Board of Ed., Waukegan School Dist. 1, 458 U. S., at 472473. 2005) (" Parents IV"). For Seattle, the dissent attempts to make up for this failing by adverting to allegations made in past complaints filed against the Seattle school district. This is a fatal flaw under the Courts existing precedent. In Grutter, the Court gave significant deference to the University of Michigan Law Schools judgment that diversity was essential to achieving the schools educational mission. As a result, different districtssome acting under court decree, some acting in order to avoid threatened lawsuits, some seeking to comply with federal administrative orders, some acting purely voluntarily, some acting after federal courts had dissolved earlier ordersadopted, modified, and experimented with hosts of different kinds of plans, including race-conscious plans, all with a similar objective: greater racial integration of public schools. For much of this Nations history, the races remained divided. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District In this case, the Ninth Circuit held that the School District had a compelling state interest in achieving racial and ethnic diversity in its individual schools. The dissent accuses me of feel[ing] confident that, to end invidious discrimination, one must end all governmental use of race-conscious criteria and chastises me for not deferring to democratically elected majorities. See, e.g., Brief for Respondents in No. Justice Breyers dissent takes a different approach to these cases, one that fails to ground the result it would reach in law. not in compliance with the local school boards desegre- 1996). When the court made this determination in 2000, it did so in the context of the Louisville desegregation plan that the board had adopted in 1996. In Louisville, Kentucky, the Jefferson County Public Schools voluntarily implemented a system of student assignments that set quota percentages for African-American students in each school. 05908, pp. A further 16% were assigned to a school they had not listed. The new plan permitted each student to choose the school he or she wished to attend, subject to race-based constraints. Accord, post, at 61 (At a minimum, the pluralitys views would threaten a surge of race-based litigation. Although apparently Joshua has now been granted a transfer to Bloom, the school to which transfer was denied under the racial guidelines, Tr. There, too, the distinction serves as a limit on the exercise of a power that reaches to the very verge of constitutional authority. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 637 (1943) (The Fourteenth Amendment protects the citizen against the State itself and all of its creaturesBoards of Education not excepted). They constitute but one part of plans that depend primarily upon other, nonracial elements. In Jefferson County, it is used to make certain elementary school assignments and to rule on transfer requests. Other cases cited are similarly inapplicable. Not even the school districts go this far, and for good reason. These statements nowhere suggest that this freedom is limited to school districts where court-ordered desegregation measures are also in effect. See Brief for Petitioner at 45. area/siso/disprof/2005/DP05all.pdf; Brief for Respond- It is my firm conviction that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today's decision. 2d 358, at 360 (WD Ky. 2000). The plurality opinion is at least open to the interpretation that the Constitution requires school districts to ignore the problem of de facto resegregation in schooling. One approach, reflected in the . Simply because the school districts may seek a worthy goal does not mean they are free to discriminate on the basis of race to achieve it, or that their racial classifications should be subject to less exacting scrutiny. See also Juris. This conclusion is divorced from any evaluation of the actual impact of the plans at issue in these casesother than to note that the plans often have no effect. Post, at 46. of Ed., 402 U. S. 1, 16 (1971) (emphasis added). Thus, at worst, a student would have to spend one year at a high school he did not pick as a first or second choice. The Courts misuse of the three-tiered approach to Equal Protection analysis merely reconfirms my own view that there is only one such Clause in the Constitution. Under the Supreme Court's precedents on racial classification in higher education, Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, race-based classifications must be directed toward a "compelling government interest" and must be "narrowly tailored" to that interest. That school was founded in 1990 as part of the school boards effort to increase academic achievement.[Footnote 12] See African American Academy History, online at http://www. Crude measures of this sort threaten to reduce children to racial chits valued and traded according to one schools supply and anothers demand. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007) Plaintiff- Parents Involved in Community Schools (non-profit organization led by Kathleen Get started for FREE Continue More broadly, however, allowing racial diversity or balance as a compelling state interest, even if confined to secondary education, calls into question the Equal. But with reference to schools, the effect of the legal wrong proved most difficult to correct. of Ed. 05908, at 910, 47; App. Despite his argument that these cases should be evaluated under a standard of review that is not strict in the traditional sense of that word, post, at 36, Justice Breyer still purports to apply strict scrutiny to these cases. We have many times over reaffirmed that [r]acial balance is not to be achieved for its own sake. Freeman, 503 U. S., at 494. into account. Adarand, supra, at 228 (internal quotation marks omitted). Compare Brief for Kansas on Reargument in Brown v. Board of Education, O.T. 1953, No. As becomes clearer when the districts plan is further considered, Jefferson County has explained how and when it employs these classifications only in terms so broad and imprecise that they cannot withstand strict scrutiny. Hist. Section 7. 51, p. 349 (J. Cooke ed. Nor could it. The district did not attempt to defend the proposition that anything outside its range posed the specter of exceptionality. Nor did it demonstrate in any way how the educational and social benefits of racial diversity or avoidance of racial isolation are more likely to be achieved at a school that is 50 percent white and 50 percent Asian-American, which would qualify as diverse under Seattles plan, than at a school that is 30 percent Asian-American, 25 percent African-American, 25 percent Latino, and 20 percent white, which under Seattles definition would be racially concentrated. This will be weighed against the consequences of using race as an isolated factor in classifying students. Two of the plaintiffs in this case had children who were entering high school in the fall of 2000. Consequently, even though the issue was in some respect moot with respect to that petitioner, jurisdiction existed. Accepting Justice Breyers approach would do no more than move us from separate but equal to unequal but benign. Metro Broadcasting, supra, at 638 (Kennedy, J., dissenting). Although the District tried to make each high school unique by offering different programs, thus making each desirable, some schools were significantly more popular than others. Changes in the Percentage of White Students in Schools Attended by the Average Black Student by State, 19702003 (includes States with 5% or greater enrollment of black students in 1970 and 1980), % White Students in School Rather, race-based government decisionmaking is categorically prohibited unless narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest. The District further argues that the plan passes muster under the strictest scrutiny. Ante, at 6; ante, at 1516 (opinion of the Court). ([A]ll governmental action based on racea group classification long recognized as in most circumstances irrelevant and therefore prohibited, Hirabayashi [v. United States, 320 U. S. 81, 100 (1943)]should be subjected to detailed judicial inquiry to ensure that the personal right to equal protection of the laws has not been infringed (first emphasis in original); Metro Broadcasting, supra, at 636 ([O]ur Constitution protects each citizen as an individual, not as a member of a group (Kennedy, J., dissenting)); Bakke, supra, at 289 (opinion of Powell, J.) 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007) Opinions Syllabus Opinion (Roberts) Concurrence (Thomas) Concurrence (Kennedy) Dissent (Breyer) Dissent (Stevens) Justia Opinion Summary and Annotations Annotation Primary Holding 05908, at 299a301a; Affidavit of Kathleen Brose Pursuant to this Courts Rule 32.3 (Lodging of Petitioner Parents Involved), and the complaint sought declaratory and injunctive relief on behalf of Parents Involved members whose elementary and middle school children may be denied admission to the high schools of their choice when they apply for those schools in the future, App. in No. The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact the dissents newly minted understanding of liberty. The suggestion that our decision today is somehow inconsistent with our disposition of that appeal is belied by the fact that neither the lower courts, the respondent school districts, nor any of their 51 amici saw fit even to cite the case. To School Committee of Boston? 23 (OCR, Apr. 2002). [S]chool districts themselves retain a state-law obligation to take reasonably feasible steps to desegregate, and they remain free to adopt reassignment and busing plans to effectuate desegregation (emphasis added)); School Comm. 1 L. Kohn, Priority Shift: The Fate of Mandatory Busing for School Desegregation in Seattle and the Nation 2730, 32 (Mar. In the districts public schools approximately 41 percent of enrolled students are white; the remaining 59 percent, comprising all other racial groups, are classified by Seattle for assignment purposes as nonwhite. The District has not met its burden of proving these marginal changes outweigh the cost of subjecting hundreds of students to disparate treatment based solely upon the color of their skin. 377 F.3d, at 984985 (footnote omitted). See, e.g., Schofield, School Desegregation and Intergroup Relations, in 17 Review of Research in Education 356 (G. Grant ed. In doing so, it sought to deemphasize the use of racial criteria and to increase the likelihood that a student would receive an assignment at his first or second choice high school. in No. But our precedent has recognized that de jure discrimination can be present even in the absence of racially explicit laws. Garfield was the only oversubscribed school whose composition during the 19992000 school year was within the racial guidelines, although in previous years Garfields enrollment had been predominantly nonwhite, and the racial tiebreaker had been used to give preference to white students. . Jefferson County Public Schools & Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. ante, at 1517 (opinion of Thomas, J.) Such measures may include strategic site selection of new schools; drawing attendance zones with general recognition of neighborhood demographics; allocating resources for special programs; recruiting students and faculty in a targeted fashion; and tracking enrollments, performance, and other statistics by race. of Ed., 402 U. S. 1, 16 (1971), by then-Justice Rehnquist in chambers in Bustop, Inc. v. Los Angeles Bd. App. 1099&OrgType=4&reportLevel=School; http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/ And even if the determination is difficult, it is one the dissent acknowledges must be made to determine what remedies school districts are required to adopt. 426 F.3d 1162, 1166 (9th Cir. How does the Jefferson County School Board define diversity? A. [Footnote 22] The dissent argues that todays decision threatens to substitute for present calm a disruptive round of race-related litigation, post, at 2, and claims that todays decision risks serious harm to the law and for the Nation, post, at 65. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 Other problems are evident in Seattles system, but there is no need to address them now. But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. 1, supra. In Seattle, the parties settled after the school district pledged to undertake a desegregation plan. When a students first choice cannot be accommodated, the District uses race as a tiebreaker in order to achieve a desired racial balance in each individual school. The Current Plan, 1999 to the Present. 05915, p. 97. PICS disagrees that the race tiebreaker was necessary to the Districts goals, even if the Court finds them to be compelling interests. [Footnote 13]. Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 920 (1995), and I shall subject the tailoring of their plans to rigorous judicial review. Grutter, 539 U. S., at 388 (Kennedy, J., dissenting). I agree with The Chief Justice that we have jurisdiction to decide the cases before us and join Parts I and II of the Courts opinion. Revisited: Desegregation to Resegregation, 52 J. Negro Educ. Governmental classifications that command people to march in different directions based on racial typologies can cause a new divisiveness. First, in an open choice district like that in Seattle, using race as an isolated factor for admission may deny some students the opportunity to attend the school of their choice, thereby burdening those families affected. That, though, is not the case. [Footnote 2] If an oversubscribed school is not within 10 percentage points of the districts overall white/nonwhite racial balance, it is what the district calls integration positive, and the district employs a tiebreaker that selects for assignment students whose race will serve to bring the school into balance. Id., at 38a. In 1998, it adopted the plan at issue in this case for assigning students to these schools. faqs.htm; see generally Westneat, School Districts Obsessed with Race, Seattle Times, Apr. If the dissent were to say that college cases are simply not applicable to public school systems in kindergarten through high school, this would seem to me wrong, but at least an arguable distinction. Both, he explains, cannot be true. parents involved in community schools v seattle 2007 quizlet 3, p.8 ([W]e take the unqualified position that the Fourteenth Amendment has totally stripped the state of power to make race and color the basis for governmental action); Tr. However, the actual hard-won gain in these cases is the elimination of the vestiges of the system of state-enforced racial separation that once existed in Louisville. The District argues that its use of race in high school admissions serves three compelling government interests: (1) the educational benefits of a diverse student body; (2) the reduction of racial isolation and de facto segregation; and (3) providing equality of opportunity to all students. In the Seattle case, the school district has gone further in describing the methods and criteria used to determine assignment decisions based on individual racial classifications, but it has nevertheless failed to explain why, in a district composed of a diversity of races, with only a minority of the students classified as white, it has employed the crude racial categories of white and non-white as the basis for its assignment decisions. Seattle has never operated segregated schoolslegally separate schools for students of different racesnor has it ever been subject to court-ordered desegregation. Cf. 1, 458 U. S. 457, is directly on point. This is incorrect. (citing Brief for Respondents, O.T. 1984, No. As for Louisville, its slate was cleared by the District Courts 2000 dissolution decree, which effectively declared that there were no longer any effects of de jure discrimination in need of remediation. Each locality is free to tailor local programs to local needs. 1, p.57 ([T]he people of Kansas . Quoting Justice Powells articulation of diversity in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, 314315, the Grutter Court noted that it is not an interest in simple ethnic diversity, in which a specified percentage of the student body is in effect guaranteed to be members of selected ethnic groups, that can justify the use of race, 539 U. S., at 324325, but a far broader array of qualifications and characteristics of which racial or ethnic origin is but a single though important element, id., at 325. v. Barksdale, 348 F.2d 261, 266 (CA1 1965); Pennsylvania Human Relations Commn v. Chester School Dist., 427 Pa. 157, 164, 233 A. First, no casenot Adarand, Gratz, Grutter, or any otherhas ever held that the test of strict scrutiny means that all racial classificationsno matter whether they seek to include or excludemust in practice be treated the same. Each of these premises is, in my respectful view, incorrect. Grutter, 539 U. S., at 345 (Ginsburg, J., concurring). 377 F.3d 949, 969 (9th Cir. These districts have followed this Courts holdings and advice in tailoring their plans.