parents involved in community schools v seattle 2007 quizlet parents involved in community schools v seattle 2007 quizlet

One commentator, reviewing dozens of studies of the educational benefits of desegregated schooling, found that the studies have provided remarkably consistent results, showing that: (1) black students educational achievement is improved in integrated schools as compared to racially isolated schools, (2) black students educational achievement is improved in integrated classes, and (3) the earlier that black students are removed from racial isolation, the better their educational outcomes. In "Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. It is not up to the school boardsthe very government entities whose race-based practices we must strictly scrutinizeto determine what interests qualify as compelling under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is my firm conviction that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with todays decision. See, e.g., n.1, supra. The segregationists in Brown embraced the arguments the Court endorsed in Plessy. at 11 and Brief of Historians of the Civil Rights Era William H. Chafe, Davison Douglas, Charles Payne, Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Kenneth Mack, Risa Goluboff, Kevin Kruse and Matt Lassiter as Amici Curiae Supporting Respondents at 23. See Brief of the States of New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, the District of Columbia, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondents at 11. The first consists of the District Court determination in the Louisville case when it dissolved its desegregation order that there was overwhelming evidence of the Boards good faith compliance with the desegregation Decree and its underlying purposes, indeed that the Board had treated the ideal of an integrated system as much more than a legal obligationthey consider it a positive, desirable policy and an essential element of any well-rounded public school education. Hampton II, 102 F.Supp. Compare ante, at 39 (history will be heard), with Brewer v. Quarterman, 550 U. S. ___, ___ (2007) (slip op., at 11) (Roberts, C.J., dissenting) (It is a familiar adage that history is written by the victors). The Ninth Circuit dismissed fairly briefly the contention that PICS did not have a personal stake or suffer an actual injury, reasoning that it was satisfied because some of the parents had children who would reach high school age within the next several years. Schools frequently group students by academic ability as an aid to efficient instruction, but such groupings often result in classrooms with high concentrations of one race or another. As a threshold matter, we must assure ourselves of our jurisdiction. 547 U. S. __ (2006). The Court quoted the articulation of diversity from Justice Powells opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265 (1978), noting 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. Grutter, supra, at 324325 (citing and quoting Bakke, supra, at 314315 (opinion of Powell, J. See Freeman, 503 U. S., at 496; Jenkins, 515 U. S., at 118 (Thomas, J., concurring). JEFFERSON COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION etal. Perhaps recognizing that reliance on Grutter cannot sustain their plans, both school districts assert additional interests, distinct from the interest upheld in Grutter, to justify their race-based assignments. Moreover, giving some degree of weight to a local school boards knowledge, expertise, and concerns in these particular matters is not inconsistent with rigorous judicial scrutiny. 1 and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education ( PICS ). Gen. Acts 552 (2007). While the school districts use various verbal formulations to describe the interest they seek to promoteracial diversity, avoidance of racial isolation, racial integrationthey offer no definition suggesting that their interest differs from racial balancing. After he had enrolled and after the academic year had begun, he then applied to transfer to his preferred school after the kindergarten assignment deadline had passed, id., at 21, possibly causing school officials to treat his late request as an application to transfer to the first grade, in respect to which the guidelines apply. The enduring hope is that race should not matter; the reality is that too often it does. Cf. 3 Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist., No. See, e.g., Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U. S. 899, 909910 (1996) ([A]n effort to alleviate the effects of societal discrimination is not a compelling interest); Croson, supra, at 498499; Wygant, 476 U. S., at 276 (plurality opinion) (Societal discrimination, without more, is too amorphous a basis for imposing a racially classified remedy); id., at 288 (OConnor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) ([A] governmental agencys interest in remedying societal discrimination, that is, discrimination not traceable to its own actions, cannot be deemed sufficiently compelling to pass constitutional muster). 6. Unless we believe that the Constitution enforces one legal standard for the South and another for the North, this Court should grant Seattle the permission it granted Clarke County, Georgia. First, as demonstrated above, the two concepts are distinct. Aside from constitutionally compelled remediation in schools, this Court has permitted government units to remedy prior racial discrimination only in narrow circumstances. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469, 501. 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. The 2007 Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. Compare Brief for Appellees in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1952, No. This leads it to advance propositions that, in my view, are both erroneous and in fundamental conflict with basic equal protection principles. See Beard v. Banks, 548 U. S. ___, ___ (2006) (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment) (noting that two were killed and hundreds were injured in race rioting subsequent to this Courts decision in Johnson). Joshua McDonalds requested transfer was denied because his race was listed as other rather than black, and allowing the transfer would have had an adverse effect on the racial guideline compliance of Young Elementary, the school he sought to leave. History should teach greater humility. Similarly, the fact that Joshua has been granted a transfer does not eliminate the Courts jurisdiction; Jefferson Countys racial guidelines apply at all grade levels and he may again be subject to race-based assignment in middle school. . And what of the long history and moral vision that the Fourteenth Amendment itself embodies? In Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954) (Brown I), we held that segregation deprived black children of equal educational opportunities regardless of whether school facilities and other tangible factors were equal, because government classification and separation on grounds of race themselves denoted inferiority. Sociological Rev., No. of Ed., 476 U. S. 267, 274 (1986), the plurality noted: This Court never has held that societal discrimination alone is sufficient to justify a racial classification. But that length is necessary. Click the card to flip Definition 1 / 8 Seattle School District instituted a "tiebreaker" plan which placed determined student placements on the consideration of a predetermined racial balance Most are not. Thus about 2,000 students out of a total district population of about 60,000 students were involved in one or the other transfer program. PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS v. SEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. Middle and high school students are designated a single resides school and assigned to that school unless it is at the extremes of the racial guidelines. And when de facto discrimination is at issue our tradition has been that the remedial rules are different. Voluntary cessation does not moot a case or controversy unless 'subsequent events ma[ke] it absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur,'", First, "remedying the effects of past intentional discrimination.". 05915, at89. The Jefferson County public schools were previously segregated by law and were subject to a desegregation decree entered in 1975. . 2d, at 360. Approximately 34 percent of the districts 97,000 students are black; most of the remaining 66 percent are white. Jefferson County phrases its interest as racial integration, but integration certainly does not require the sort of racial proportionality reflected in its plan. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265 (1978); Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 79 (1986); Richmond v. J. In a separate conference, JCPS Representative Pat Todd emphasized that the current assignment plan would remain in effect for the 20072008 school year, citing the finalization of budgets, staffing, assignments and busing as prevailing reasons for no change being logistically possible. 1? in No. The present cases are not governed by Grutter. Elementary schools in central Seattle were between 60% and 80% black; Garfield, the central district high school, was more than 50% minority; schools outside the central and southeastern sections of Seattle were virtually all white. Because [o]ur Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens, such race-based decisionmaking is unconstitutional. Post, at 43. It is no answer to say that these cases can be distinguished from Brown because Brown involved invidious racial classifications whereas the racial classifications here are benign. 05908, at 7. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 56061 (1992). Without any detailed discussion of the operation of the plans, the students who are affected, or the districts failure to consider race-neutral alternatives, the dissent concludes that the districts have shown that these racial classifications are necessary to achieve the districts stated goals. Reply Brief for Petitioner in No. [S]chool authorities, the Court said, have wide discretion in formulating school policy, and . At issue were efforts for voluntary school desegregation and integration in Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky. 05908, at 308a. The histories also indicate the complexity of the tasks and the practical difficulties that local school boards face when they seek to achieve greater racial integration. 1*, How are the Equal Protection rights of public high school students affected by the jurisprudence of. of Boston v. Board of Ed., 352 Mass. See supra, at 2224. This means that the government must identify a compelling interest and show that it has used a narrowly tailored means to further it. Even today, two of our wisest federal judges have rejected such a wooden reading of the Equal Protection Clause in the context of school integration. in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1952, No. In both cities, the school boards adopted plans designed to achieve integration by bringing about more racially diverse schools. The degree of heterogeneity within these districts is immediately apparent. Although the Constitution almost always forbids the former, it is significantly more lenient in respect to the latter. Pp. See, e.g., Freeman, supra, at 494. See Williamson v. Lee Optical of Okla., Inc., 348 U. S. 483, 488 (1955) (It is enough that there is an evil at hand for correction, and that it might be thought that the particular legislative measure was a rational way to correct it). It has failed to explain why, in a district composed of a diversity of races, with fewer than half 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. Cf. Without the racial tiebreaker, the class would have been 39.6 percent Asian-American, 30.2 percent African-American, 8.3 percent Latino, 1.1 percent Native-American, and 20.8 percent Caucasian. I do not know of any opinion which buoyed Marshall more in his pre-Brown days ). Federal law also assumes that a similar target percentage will help avoid detrimental minority group isolation. See No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Title V, Part C, 115 Stat. In design and operation, the plans are directed only to racial balance, an objective this Court has repeatedly condemned as illegitimate. of Average Black Student. He made it clear that "To be forced to live under a state-mandated racial label is inconsistent with the dignity of individuals in our society". Petitioner Parents Involved in Community Schools (Parents Involved) is a nonprofit corporation comprising the parents of children who have been or may be denied assignment to their chosen high school in the district because of their race. Brief for Respondents in No. No. Brief for Petitioner at 3536. In my view the state-mandated racial classifications at issue, official labels proclaiming the race of all persons in a broad class of citizenselementary school students in one case, high school students in anotherare unconstitutional as the cases now come to us. Whats your understanding of when a school suffers from racial isolation? Justice Breyers dissent ends on an unjustified note of alarm. [I]ntegration, we are told, has three essential elements. Ibid. In an effort to achieve its desired racial balance in its popular high schools, the Seattle school A federal District Court dismissed the suit, upholding the tiebreaker. of Ed. Seattle School District No. Segregation is not the only possible explanation for a racial imbalance, and there may be no educational benefit from diversity that is artificially created. See Board of Ed. The plans here are more narrowly tailored than the law school admissions program there at issue. It consequently conducted a nearly year-long review of its plan. He also wrote about the unsettled debate concerning whether racial balance or diversity has a positive effect on educational outcomes. In both cases the efforts were in part remedial. A federal District Court dismissed the suit, upholding the tiebreaker. All this is true enough in the contexts in which these statements were madegovernment contracting, voting districts, allocation of broadcast licenses, and electing state officersbut when it comes to using race to assign children to schools, history will be heard. 05908, at 38a. Many school districts in the South adopted segregation remedies (to which Swann clearly applies) without any such federal order, see supra, at 1920. Code 2.60.020 (2006), certified the state-law question to the Washington Supreme Court, 294 F.3d 1085, 1087 (2002) (Parents Involved IV). CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT No. It is not simply one factor weighed with others in reaching a decision, as in Grutter; it is the factor. Race is defined as Black and "Other". See ante, at 1517, 23 (concurring opinion). Grutter, 539 U. S., at 348 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). The reason is obvious: In Seattle, where the overall student population is 41% white, permitting 85% white enrollment at a single school would make it much more likely that other schools would have very few white students, whereas in Jefferson County, with a 60% white enrollment, one school with 85% white students would be less likely to skew enrollments elsewhere. [Footnote 13] See Jenkins, 515 U. S., at 121122 (Thomas, J., concurring) ([T]here is no reason to think that black students cannot learn as well when surrounded by members of their own race as when they are in an integrated environment). Both cities once tried to achieve more integrated schools by relying solely upon measures such as redrawn district boundaries, new school building construction, and unrestricted voluntary transfers. Jefferson County assigned Joshua to another elementary school in his cluster, Young Elementary. See Parts IIIIV, supra, at 3757. In doing so, a reviewing judge must be fully aware of the potential dangers and pitfalls that Justice Thomas and Justice Kennedy mention. The Seattle district, which has never operated legally segregated schools or been subject to court-ordered desegregation, classified children as white or nonwhite, and used the racial classifications as a tiebreaker to allocate slots in particular high schools. Simply putting students together under the same roof does not necessarily mean that the students will learn together or even interact. Today, they do not. These and related considerations convinced one Ninth Circuit judge in the Seattle case to apply a standard of constitutionality review that is less than strict, and to conclude that this Courts precedents do not require the contrary. The Constitution is color-blind. 1, a case decided by the United States Supreme Court in 2007, established the Seattle School District's racial tiebreaker plan as unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Yesterday, school boards had available to them a full range of means to combat segregated schools. (citing Armor & Rossell, Desegregation and Resegregation in the Public Schools, in Beyond the Color Line 239 (A. Thernstrom & S. Thernstrom eds. The Court was exceedingly careful in describing the interest furthered in Grutter as not an interest in simple ethnic diversity but rather a far broader array of qualifications and characteristics in which race was but a single element. ante, at 1517 (opinion of Thomas, J.) Second, the distinction between de jure segregation (caused by school systems) and de facto segregation (caused, e.g., by housing patterns or generalized societal discrimination) is meaningless in the present context, thereby dooming the pluralitys endeavor to find support for its views in that distinction. Past allegations in another case provide no basis for resolving these cases. Brief for Respondents in No. PICS counters that neighborhood demographics are the result of individuals voluntary choices, and that parents tend to choose schools near their home. Subsequent to the District Courts dissolution of the desegregation order (in 2000) the board simply continued to implement its 1996 plan as modified to reflect the courts magnet school determination. See ibid. Yesterday, the plans under review were lawful. in No. On June 28, 2007, the United States Supreme Court, in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. For this reason, among others, I do not join Parts IIIB and IV. Any use of race to distinguish one person from another threatens to stigmatize individuals and incite hostility. Therefore, the school districts attempts to further integrate are properly thought of as little more than attempts to achieve a particular racial balance. 420, p.25. See also Brief for Appellees in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1952, No. Sch. See Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. The Jefferson County Board of Education fails to meet this threshold mandate. Furthermore, for a government unit to remedy past discrimination for which it was responsible, the Court has required it to demonstrate a strong basis in evidence for its conclusion that remedial action was necessary. Croson, 488 U. S., at 500 (quoting Wygant, supra, at 277 (plurality opinion)). 45 (Dec. 19, 1991) (1991 Memorandum). Memorandum of Agreement between Seattle School District No. The dissent finds that the school districts have identified a compelling interest in increasing diversity, including for the purpose of avoiding racial isolation. 90a92a. in No. The orders requirements reflected a (newly enlarged) school district student population of about 135,000, approximately 20% of whom were black. While extensive jurisprudence has developed over what is an actual case or controversy, in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife the Court specified three elements that must be satisfied: (1) a party must be facing an actual or imminent injury rather than a hypothetical injury (injury in fact); (2) the complained of conduct must have caused the alleged injury (causal connection); and (3) it must still be possible to provide some remedy to that injury by a favorable court decision. When litigation, as here, involves a complex, comprehensive plan that contains multiple strategies for achieving racially integrated schools, Brief for Respondents in No. Nor is it likely to find such a case. A mixture? Most non-white families live south of downtown, where five high schoolsChief Sealth, Cleveland, Franklin, Garfield, and Rainier Beachare located. [Footnote 16]. 1 (2007), the Supreme Court ruled this plan unconstitutional under the 14th amendment. See n.16, infra. 911. Public Schools, 330 F.Supp. Regardless of the outcome, this decision will surely have an effect on public schools, be it in the composition of their student body, their admissions policies, or their educational approach generally. Politics 987, 991 (1976) (similar in Georgia); McDaniel v. Barresi, 402 U. S. 39, 40, n. 1 (1971) (Clarke County, Georgia). No. We simply do not understand how Justice Breyer can maintain that classifying every schoolchild as black or white, and using that classification as a determinative factor in assigning children to achieve pure racial balance, can be regarded as less burdensome, and hence more narrowly tailored than the consideration of race in Grutter, post, at 47, when the Court in Grutter stated that [t]he importance of individualized consideration in the program was paramount, and consideration of race was one factor in a highly individualized, holistic review. 539 U. S., at 337. The plan requires all nonmagnet schools to maintain a minimum black enrollment of 15 percent, and a maximum black enrollment of 50 percent. Because the referendum would have prohibited the adoption of a school-integration plan that involved mandatory busing, and because it would have imposed a special burden on school integration plans (plans that sought to integrate previously segregated schools), the Court found it unconstitutional. The Ninth Circuit below stated that it share[d] in the hope expressed in Grutter that in 25 years racial preferences would no longer be necessary to further the interest identified in that case. The way Seattle classifies its students bears this out. Is it not a fact that the very strength and fiber of our federal system is local self-government in those matters for which local action is competent? By limiting the School Districts use of race, it will be more difficult for it to cure these defects. 1, pp. The opinion of the Court and Justice Breyers dissenting opinion (hereinafter dissent) describe in detail the history of integration efforts in Louisville and Seattle. 2d, at 370. No State shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. U. S. The majority acknowledges that in prior cases this Court has recognized at least two interests as compelling: an interest in remedying the effects of past intentional discrimination, and an interest in diversity in higher education. Ante, at 12, 13. Similarly, in Zaslawsky v. Bd. The Supreme Court's 5-4 vote on the matter of desegregation and equal access to educational opportunity signals that a divide exists in the United States with respect to the underlying educational values of excellence and . The dissent does not face the complicated questions attending its proposed standard. And the present context requires a court to examine carefully the race-conscious program at issue. It was not the inequality of the facilities but the fact of legally separating children based on race on which the Court relied to find a constitutional violation in that case. "[5] He went on to say, "What the government is not permitted to do, absent a showing of necessity not made here, is to classify every student on the basis of race and to assign each of them to schools based on that classification. We relied on the fact that this Court had not once but seven times, I think it is, pronounced in favor of the separate but equal doctrine. Petitioners, an organization of Seattle parents (Parents Involved) and the mother of a Jefferson County student (Joshua), whose children were or could be assigned under the foregoing plans, filed these suits contending, inter alia, that allocating children to different public schools based solely on their race violates the Fourteenth Amendments equal protection guarantee. [Footnote 25] And just as the dissent argues that the need for these programs will lessen over time, the segregationists claimed that reliance on segregation was lessening and might eventually end. 3, p.5 ([I]t would be difficult to find from any field of law a legal principle more repeatedly and conclusively decided than the one sought to be raised by appellants); Brief for Appellees in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1953, No. B1, B5. 1, 3, 5 (Apr. Justice Breyer questioned the utility "of looking simply to whether earlier school segregation was de jure or de facto in order to draw firm lines separating the constitutionally permissible from the constitutionally forbidden use of 'race-conscious' criteria. For Swann is predicated upon a well-established legal view of the Fourteenth Amendment. 2d 304 (quoting Bakke, supra, at 315, 98 S. Ct. 2733, 57 L. Ed. In order for its plan to be constitutional under strict scrutiny, the School District must show its use of race in the admission process was furthering a compelling government interest (compelling interest) and that the School District plan was the narrowest possible use of race that could achieve this interest (narrowly tailored). Justice Breyers reliance on McDaniel v. Barresi, 402 U. S. 39 (1971), post, at 2324, 2930, highlights how far removed the discussion in the dissent is from the question actually presented in these cases. 2d 1267 (1996). App. Because students often attend schools closest to their homes, the result is racially segregated schools. The plan required redrawing school attendance zones, closing 12 schools, and busing groups of students, selected by race and the first letter of their last names, to schools outside their immediate neighborhoods. See The Federalist No. Considering the precedent of Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), which is only partly applicable because it concerns higher education, it is apparent that educational institutions must use diversity as one of several admissions criteria rather than setting strict quotas. Jefferson County also argues that it would be incongruous to hold that what was constitutionally required of it one dayrace-based assignments pursuant to the desegregation decreecan be constitutionally prohibited the next. It is well established that when the government distributes burdens or benefits on the basis of individual racial classifications, that action is reviewed under strict scrutiny. This Court in Adarand added that such classifications are constitutional only if they are narrowly tailored measures that further compelling governmental interests. Ibid. Parents Involved, the Court noted that: Seattle and Louisville had not demonstrated that they seriously considered race-neutral alternatives; the individual racial classifications used had a minimal impact that cast doubt on their necessity; the districts defined Moreover, this Court from Swann to Grutter has treated these civic effects as an important virtue of racially diverse education. They asked the court to dissolve the desegregation order and to hold the use of magnet school racial guidelines unconstitutional. 1 Complaint in Adams v. Forbes Bottomly, Civ. [Footnote 2] Although presently observed racial imbalance might result from past de jure segregation, racial imbalance can also result from any number of innocent private decisions, including voluntary housing choices. Only then must the judge defer to a democratic majority. Synopsis of Rule of Law. 05915, p.38. in No. Finally, the plan created two new magnet schools, one each at the elementary and middle school levels. at 116669. 3. See 426 F.3d, at 1208 (Bea, J., dissenting). Race is not. The dissent avoids reaching that conclusion by unquestioningly accepting the assertions of selected social scientists while completely ignoring the fact that those assertions are the subject of fervent debate. 5 (Jan. 2003), online at http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/reseg03/AreWeLosingtheDream.pdf (Frankenberg, Lee, & Orfield) (using U. S. Dept. No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. 78 Stat.