ACS blog Supreme Court Preview: Threatening Brown's Promise: Supreme Court Cases from Seattle and Louisville Could Undermine Local School Districts' Voluntary Efforts to Combat Segregation
Legal Briefs and Opinions
Lower Court Opinions
Seattle School District En Banc Opinion Describes current state of the law, in which the full 9th Circuit upheld the Seattle plan. The decision is a detailed description of the facts and law governing the Seattle Plan and is the decision being appealed to the Supreme Court.
McFarland Amicus Brief NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund brief supporting the Jefferson County school district's voluntary integration plan. This brief was submitted to the 6th Circuit to argue for upholding the decision of the lower court, which ruled that the integration plan is constitutional.
Seattle School District Rehearing Brief NAACP LDF's brief for the full 9th Circuit review of the Seattle integration plan. The brief supports the school district's plan and the trial court ruling that upheld it, while arguing against the decision of the 3-judge 9th Circuit panel that reversed the trial court.
Louisville Amicus Brief The Civil Rights Project at Harvard's amicus brief supporting the Jefferson County school district plan. The brief contains extensive summaries of relevant social science research on the educational benefits of racial diversity.
Social Science Research and Reports
National
A Multiracial Society With Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream? Erica Frankerberg, Chungmei Lee and Professor Gary Orfield. January 16, 2003 This report provides clear statistical proof showing how rapidly schools are resegregating despite the overall increase in diversity throughout American society. After significant progress desegregating the nation's schools in the last '60s through mid '80s, schools have been resegregating since the late '80s and are now as bad as they were in 1969.
Why Segregation Matters: Poverty and Educational Inequality Gary Orfield and Chungmei Lee. January 13, 2005 This report examines the complex interaction between racial and economic segregation, demonstrating that educational inequities in poor urban schools cannot be solved without addressing both the effects of concentrated poverty and racial segregation.
Lynn Amicus Brief The American Psychological Associations amicus brief filed in a similar case that the Supreme Court declined to hear last term. It contains a comprehensive summary of the benefits of integrated education
Local Case Studies
The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity: On Educational Outcomes: Lynn, MA School District Michal Kurlaender and John T. Yun. February 1, 2002. Lynn, Massachusetts, a city of 81,000 people, uses a voluntary desegregation plan that has been very effective at keeping its public schools racially and ethnically diverse. This report examines the experiences of the students who went to Lynn's integrated schools.
The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity on Educational Outcomes: Cambridge, MA School District Michal Kurlaender and John T. Yun. January 29, 2002 . Cambridge's public schools provide a unique opportunity to study the impact of a diverse school without any type of school integration plan. Cambridge is a very diverse city of more than 100,000 people and has only one public high school, meaning that it reflects the full diversity of the city, regardless of any residential neighborhood segregation. This report examines the experiences of the students in Cambridge's high school.
