Court: Schools can't use race to achieve diversity goals

Star Ledger
Robert Cohen and John Mooney
Thursday June 28

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court today ruled against public school systems using race as a factor in promoting diversity and integration.

In a 5-4 vote, the justices invalidated voluntary integration plans in Seattle and Louisville, Ky. The decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, comes a half-century after the Supreme Court outlawed state-sponsored school segregation in the landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education.

Roberts said the two school districts "failed to provide the necessary support for the proposition that there is no other way than individual racial classifications to avoid racial isolation in their school districts."

Justice Anthony Kennedy joined the majority in the result, agreeing that the plans in Lousiville and Seattle went too far. But Kennedy in a concurring opinion said race may be a component of school district plans designed to achieve diversity.

Civil rights lawyers said segregated schools are a fact of life throughout much of the country today because of housing patterns. But the decision, they said, may largely eviscerate what remains of the legal framework of the 53-year-old Brown decision - voluntary plans instituted by school systems to promote diversity.

The impact on New Jersey is unclear, given the state is already among the nation's most segregated when it comes to schools.

There are, however, some high-profile desegregation efforts in communities such as Montclair and Englewood that could be jeopardized, if ever challenged, and the state's own laws against de facto segregation could also be in peril. In addition, districts that explicitly use race in making school assignments, including some of the magnet high schools in Newark and Jersey City, could see their positions especially challenged, experts say.

For more detail on the makeup of the state's schools, see the Star-Ledger's New Jersey By The Numbers page.

Just four years ago, the justices in a 5-4 ruling upheld the limited consideration of race in college admissions to attain a diverse student body. But that was a different court, with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who wrote the 2003 decision, having been replaced by Justice Samuel Alito Jr., a former federal appeals court judge from New Jersey.

Alito joined the conservative majority today in outlawing using race in seeking to diversify public schools.

Mostly white parents challenged the diversity plans instituted in Seattle and Louisville.

The systems offered students and parents a choice of schools to help achieve a level of integration that wouldn't otherwise be possible because of racially segregated housing patterns. Both set goals for white and minority representation at schools and along with other factors made decisions about school assignments based on a student's race.

The Bush administration took the side of the mostly white parents who sued the school districts, arguing the plans essentially used illegal racial quotas. The administration said school districts have an interest in reducing minority isolation but only through race-neutral means.