Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007)

In order to create a numerical racial balance among its 10 public high schools, the Seattle School District assigned students among them. However, Seattle did not have a history of racially segregated schools. 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. While the County had been under a desegregation order from 1975 to 2000, this order had been dissolved when a federal judge found that it had largely solved the problem of segregated schools. Both school districts were sued by parents of children who were denied admission to certain schools. The parents argued that the assignment plans violated the Equal Protection Clause, but the plans survived review by the lower courts.

Whether a public school that has not operated legally segregated schools or has been found to be unitary may classify students by race and rely upon that classification in making school assignments, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection.

s To show that the school assignment plans here meet the requirements of the Constitution, I have written at exceptional length. But that length is necessary. I cannot refer to the history of the plans in these cases to justify the use of race-conscious criteria without describing that history in full. I cannot rely upon Swann ’s statement that the use of race-conscious limits is permissible without showing, rather than simply asserting, that the statement represents a constitutional principle firmly rooted in federal and state law. Nor can I explain my disagreement with the Court’s holding and the plurality’s opinion, without offering a detailed account of the arguments they propound and the consequences they risk. Thus, the opinion’s reasoning is long. But its conclusion is short: The plans before us satisfy the requirements of the Equal Protection Clause. And it is the plurality’s opinion, not this dissent that “fails to ground the result it would reach in law.” Ante , at 28. Four basic considerations have led me to this view. First , the histories of Louisville and Seattle reveal complex circumstances and a long tradition of conscientious efforts by local school boards to resist racial segregation in public schools. Segregation at the time of Brown gave way to expansive remedies that included busing, which in turn gave rise to fears of white flight and resegregation. For decades now, these school boards have considered and adopted and revised assignment plans that sought to rely less upon race, to emphasize greater student choice, and to improve the conditions of all schools for all students, no matter the color of their skin, no matter where they happen to reside. The plans under review—which are less burdensome, more egalitarian, and more effective than prior plans—continue in that tradition. And their history reveals school district goals whose remedial, educational, and democratic elements are inextricably intertwined each with the others. See Part I, supra , at 2–21. Second , since this Court’s decision in Brown , the law has consistently and unequivocally approved of both voluntary and compulsory race-conscious measures to combat segregated schools. The Equal Protection Clause, ratified following the Civil War, has always distinguished in practice between state action that excludes and thereby subordinates racial minorities and

The Court was not persuaded that these plans were acceptable because race was integrated with other criteria or because ratios based on race gave children the benefit of a more diverse environment.