Supreme Court to Review School Diversity Policies
Feature Story by Tyler Lewis - 10/11/2006
The Roberts Supreme Court will hear arguments on December 4 in two cases that could have far reaching consequences for local school districts seeking to combat resegregation in the nation's public schools.The cases, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, involve constitutional challenges to local school authorities' use of voluntary, race-conscious student assignment plans. Two federal courts of appeal upheld the plans, and plaintiffs took their claims to the Supreme Court.
The voluntary integration programs in Seattle, Washington and Jefferson County, Kentucky, which includes the Louisville metropolitan area, were adopted by the districts to prevent individual schools from becoming segregated. The locally-elected school boards have defended the policies as the only practical way to ensure school diversity in cities with extreme patterns of residential segregation.
In Seattle, all students are allowed to rank their choices among the city's 10 high schools; race was used only as one of several factors if a high school was both overcrowded and becoming segregated. Even in those cases, proximity to the school was usually the determining factor and among the 10 percent of students who didn't get their first choice all got their second choice.
In Louisville, which also uses a voluntary choice-based plan, all students have the option of transferring to any school in the district. Race is only used as a factor in transfer decisions if the transfer would push the receiving school out of its broadly defined diversity goal.
Several amicus, or friend-of-the-court, briefs have been filed in support of the school districts, arguing that the programs are constitutional.
A brief filed by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund (LCCREF) argues that school integration has been a central and essential part of national policy since the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, a policy reinforced by the declarations of presidents of both parties, acts of Congress, and decisions of the federal courts.
"The Court's decision in these cases will determine whether we maintain the great gains made possible by the landmark ruling in Brown or whether we will head down a path toward re-segregation of our schools," said William L. Taylor, Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights Chair and LCCREF Board President.
LCCR/LCCREF's amicus brief cites a well-documented legal history supporting the constitutionality of the schools' policies upheld by both lower courts and Supreme Court. It also underscores the important role school diversity plays in the education of both white and minority children.
"We are filing a brief in support of the school districts because we understand, as the nation's largest civil rights coalition, the value and importance of diversity in public education," said LCCR President Wade Henderson. "We know that schools teach more than just core academic subjects. They teach our children cultural and social lessons that enable them to function in an increasingly diverse society and empower them to learn for themselves about how we are the same, as well as how we are different."
Other briefs acknowledging the value of diversity in public school education include those filed on behalf of military leaders, the National School Board Association, social scientists, college educators, and civil rights and religious organizations.
Civil rights groups warn that if the newly constituted Court, now without swing voter Sandra Day O'Connor, accepts petitioners' reasoning, the consequences could be severe. "If you follow the petitioners' absurd line of argument, the only way school districts could maintain diversity is if they were under court ordered supervision," Taylor said.
"Considering the racial cleavages that continue to plague our country, it would pervert the purposes of the Equal Protection Clause to pronounce these voluntary policies unconstitutional and to hamstring local communities that seek to honor the legacy of Brown by adopting limited race-conscious measures that promote racial integration," wrote Anurima Bhargava, assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Elsie Boddie, visiting assistant professor of law at Fordham Law School, in a September 27 column.
