Today, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) condemned the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling overturning circuit court decisions that allowed the limited use of race in voluntary school integration plans. Ruling against plans by the Seattle, Washington and Jefferson County, Kentucky public schools, " a fractured majority of the U.S. Supreme Court deprived Latino children - and all American children - the hope of quality education in a diverse environment to prepare them for the 21st century," stated John Trasviña, MALDEF President and General Counsel. "Four Justices, led by Chief Justice Roberts, have turned their backs on the promise of Brown v. Board of Education and held that achieving racial diversity in public schools is not a compelling government interest and is never constitutionally sound.
MALDEF submitted a brief to the Court in support of the limited use of race in voluntary local school integration plans. MALDEF's brief was joined by 16 Latino organizations urging the Court to take into account the cases' effect upon Latino students, who are more likely than other students to be enrolled in segregated public schools.
"At the same time, Justice Kennedy, the key swing vote on the current Court, held that such plans may be constitutionally sound as long as race is only one limited factor among other considerations used in making school assignments. Justice Kennedy's opinion leaves the door open for schools to consider race in a limited way to foster diversity," stated MALDEF Litigation Director Cynthia Valenzuela. "Schools should take that opportunity and design integration plans that use race as one of several factors in making school assignments."
"Our nation's public schools are more segregated than they were before the Court\'s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education," added Peter Zamora, Washington, D.C. Regional Counsel and Co-Chair of the Hispanic Education Coalition. "MALDEF will work with local school districts to reverse this disturbing trend and ensure that schools create school integration plans that reflect our national commitment to desegregation while complying with the strict constitutional limits set forth in these cases."
Thursday, June 28, 2007
MALDEF Condemns Narrow Supreme Court Ruling
Ted Shaw to Appear on News Hour with Jim Lehrer Tonight
On Friday, he will appear on Friday's Democracy Now with Amy Goodman and NPR's Tell Me More.
Council of the Great City Schools Views Ruling as a "Pronounced Step Backwards"
Statement by Michael Casserly. Executive Director, Council of the Great City Schools
The Council of the Great City Schools, the coalition of the nation’s largest city school districts—including Louisville and Seattle, denounces today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down student assignment plans in Louisville and Seattle designed to promote racial diversity in their public schools.
Today’s troubling decision will make it harder for these and other cities to maintain an integrated student body, prevent racial resegregation, improve academic performance, and build a more equitable and competitive America. The ruling now forbids school systems across the nation from using the same strategies that the federal courts once ordered them to implement.
The Council is heartened that a majority of the Court reaffirms that there is a compelling interest in achieving diversity in public school classrooms, and that race-conscious strategies can be consistent with the Constitution. As a practical matter, however, the Court has left school districts across the land with few viable alternatives for using race in pursuit of that interest. School districts now have even fewer options to achieve the racial diversity that was possible before the decision.
Therefore, the Council decries the court’s ruling in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and Crystal D. Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education as a deliberate and pronounced step backwards in the nation’s long march toward racial equality. And the Council views the Bush Administration’s stance in promoting this outcome as deplorable.
Equal Justice Society: Critical but Optimistic
(June 28, 2007) - The Equal Justice Society issued the following statement today regarding the Supreme Court decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education:
"We're encouraged that school districts may continue to use available tools to achieve the critical goals of equal educational opportunity and inclusion that a majority of the Court endorsed today," said Charles Ogletree, Harvard Law School Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, founding and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, and board chair of the Equal Justice Society.
"Just as race can still be considered to achieve the goal of attaining integration and diversity in K-12 education," continued Ogletree, "this decision continues to endorse the core ruling of the University of Michigan affirmative action decisions and the ability to use race as a factor to achieve the compelling interest of diversity in education."
"Although the Court struck down the specific school integration plans, a majority of the Justices recognize and acknowledge that educational diversity and eliminating segregation in all its divisive forms remains a compelling governmental interest. Fortunately, school districts can continue to take race into account to achieve these important ends," said Kimberly Thomas Rapp, EJS director of law and public policy.
"While we disagree with the ruling since it limits options available to school districts to eliminate racial segregation, we agree with the majority of Justices that believe school districts can affirmatively consider race as a factor among many when pursuing diversity and inclusion in our schools. Many options remain open to schools that allow districts to take race into account, including factors such as site selection, drawing attendance zones and magnet schools," said Thomas Rapp.
"It's troubling that four members of the Court -- including the two most recent Justices nominated by President Bush -- would have outlawed almost all effective efforts to promote inclusion in our nation's schools. They would have preferred to tear apart Brown v. Board of Education, which ended de jure segregation, from its historical roots and would have used it to blind school districts to existing racial segregation in their communities. The extreme position taken by these Justices highlights the importance of closer scrutiny of justices and judges nominated by the President."
National School Board Assocation Press Release--Disappointed but not Defeated
"NSBA Disappointed, but Hopeful, as Supreme Court Strikes Down Seattle, Louisville School District Voluntary Integration Plans"
Alexandria, VA – June 28 - The National School Boards Association (NSBA) today expressed disappointment in the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to strike down the voluntary integration plans of the Seattle and Louisville school districts, but maintained hope that a majority of the court recognized the ability of school boards to continue to maintain racial diversity as a legitimate educational goal. The cases were Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District #1 and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., who wrote the majority opinion in the combined cases, said that the two school districts have "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."
“Despite the majority opinion, we are pleased with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s separate concurrence that explicitly rejected the plurality’s contention that racial diversity constituted racial balancing, which is constitutionally impermissible,” said NSBA General Counsel Francisco Negrón. Justice Kennedy and four other members of the court constituting a majority recognize that diversity as an educational goal remains a compelling government interest.
"We hope that school boards will continue to pursue those educational priorities through careful race-conscious policies,” said NSBA Executive Director Anne L. Bryant. These measures could include school site selection, magnet programs, and attendance zones. NSBA is also advising school boards to engage their local communities and meet with experts to devise specific policies to meet their goal of classroom diversity.
“I see hope in this decision because Justice Kennedy left open the possibility of the use of race to achieve classroom diversity,” Negrón said. “He did not give us a lot of guidance on how the plan must be devised, but he expressed confidence in the ability of school boards and communities to bring the kind of creativity and energy that is essential to the very important goal of diversity as an educational goal."
“School districts have a compelling reason to create a diverse learning environment because it helps improve student achievement and prepares students to live and work in an increasingly diverse society,” Bryant said."
NSBA’s complete amicus brief, as well as more resources on the cases, can be found at www.nsba.org/diversitycases.
The National School Boards Association, a federation of state school boards associations representing more than 95,000 local school board members, closely monitors the courts and regularly files friend-of-the-court briefs in cases that affect the nation’s 50 million public school students.
Statement from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund on the Supreme Court's Rulings in Seattle and Louisville School Cases
Today's decision striking down voluntary school integration plans in Louisville, KY and Seattle, WA is a step backward from Brown v. Board of Education. LDF is deeply disappointed that five Justices of the Supreme Court today struck down the voluntary racial integration plans of the Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky, school systems as unconstitutional because they were not "narrowly tailored" to take race into account to the minimum extent necessary.
We stand with local governments, school boards, and families committed to providing a high-quality, inclusive, integrated and diverse education for all students. Americans have long understood, and the courts, Congress and local governments have repeatedly recognized that to strive for anything less would do a grave disservice to our children and to the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education and that unanimous decision's mandate to end racially-segregated schools.
We believe that the four dissenting Justices, who joined in an opinion authored by Justice Stephen Breyer, explained the compelling necessity for the measures pursued by these school systems to avoid racially isolated schooling and unequal opportunities for children -- especially but not solely minority children -- that inevitably accompany those circumstances.
It is critically important to realize that today's decision does not categorically reject the use of race-conscious measures, or hold that it is unconstitutional for school districts to take steps, including steps that have a racial component, to create racially and ethnically diverse schools. While this split decision has both positive and negative implications for our nation and Constitution, we are very pleased that a majority of the Justices recognize educational diversity and overcoming our history of segregation to be compelling governmental interests -- among our country's highest priorities -- that can be pursued through careful race-conscious efforts.
Although Justice Kennedy concurred with the Chief Justice John Roberts's opinion in finding the specifics of the plans at issue to be unconstitutional, Kennedy refrained from joining them in their conclusion that the school districts did not have an interest in providing their children with an inclusive, integrated education. "My views do not allow me to join the balance of the opinion by The Chief Justice, which seems to me to be inconsistent in both its approach and its implications with the history, meaning, and reach of the Equal Protection Clause [of the Fourteenth Amendment]," he wrote.
Instead Justice Kennedy stated unequivocally: "To the extent the plurality opinion suggests the Constitution mandates that state and local school authorities must accept the status quo of racial isolation in schools, it is, in my view, profoundly mistaken..." Further, he wrote, "A compelling interest exists in avoiding racial isolation, an interest that a school district, in its discretion and expertise, may choose to pursue."
To achieve such a goal, a majority of the Justices made clear that a range of other, affirmative measures remain available to communities committed to diversity in schools. Justice Kennedy delineated a number of these options, including, strategic site selection of new schools; drawing attendance zones with consideration of neighborhood demographics; allocating resources for special programs; recruiting students and faculty in a targeted fashion; and tracking enrollments, performance and other statistics by race.
Even Chief Justice Roberts's opinion reaffirmed the holding of Grutter 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."
In 1954, the Brown Court spoke in one voice of the importance of education in the battle against prejudice and inequity, as the foundation of "our most basic public responsibilities... of good citizenship." It also stated that education "is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment."
Instead of speaking with one voice, today a deeply divided Court has narrowed the voluntary integration options for schools seeking to fulfill Brown's promise.
Today, the nation's public schools are more segregated than they were in 1970. It is of vital importance for communities to identify ways of fashioning solutions to this problem and to put these plans into action. These decisions have made their job much harder and, as a result, put America that much further away from providing the kind of educational experience necessary for America to not just compete but also thrive in the 21st century.
We call on communities and leaders around our country to pursue the tools that remain available to achieve the important goals of equal educational opportunity and inclusion that a majority of the Court endorsed today.
Americans value the differences that have made our nation as technologically, culturally, and ideologically innovative as it is today. We will remain a country committed to diversity -- no court decision can change that.
Boalt Hall Releases Media Advisory
Berkeley, CA—June 28, 2007.
The United States Supreme Court today sent school districts “back to the drawing board” in devising student assignment plans to promote racial integration, even as it recognized the compelling importance of avoiding racial isolation and achieving a diverse student body in public schools, according to Goodwin Liu, assistant professor of law and co-director of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law.
Although the Court held unconstitutional voluntary school integration policies in Seattle, WA, and Louisville, KY, the cases ended in a “4-1-4” split among the nine Justices. Four Justices, in an opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, endorsed a broad rule against the use of race in student assignment. Four other Justices, in a dissenting opinion authored by Justice Stephen Breyer, would have upheld the plans. Justice Kennedy, in a separate and controlling opinion, strongly endorsed the goal of racial integration in public schools while significantly limiting the use of race to classify individual students on the basis of race.
“Today a five-Justice majority of the Court recognized that racial integration of public schools remains a compelling and enduring aspiration for our society,” said Professor Liu. “Justice Kennedy’s controlling opinion leaves open several avenues for race-conscious measures to achieve integration, including strategic attendance zoning and school siting decisions as well as magnet schools and special programs. The upshot is that the Court has sent school districts literally back to the drawing board to devise creative assignment plans to integrate our public schools.”
“It is significant that a majority of the Court—Justice Kennedy and the four dissenting Justices—rejected Chief Justice Roberts’s attempt to read Brown v. Board of Education as a categorical rule of colorblindness,” according to Professor Liu. “It is remarkable that the Chief Justice of the United States would cite Brown to defeat not defend school integration, and five Justices rejected this view as deeply a historical.”