Supremes: hear cases on race-based school admissions

http://www.nysun.com/article/44548

The article is from the NYSun, which explains the Spitzer angle, but the cases originated in Seattle and Louiville. In general, I favor color-blind school assignments, but recognize there are some tangible benfits to ethnic diversity in schools and society at large. I would favor a system the kept preferences, but changed the criteria from race/ethnicity/sex, to economic status. not just in elementary and secondary schools, but in college admissions as well.

[rquoter]Spitzer Argues For Race-Based School Admission

BY JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
December 4, 2006

Governor-elect Spitzer will face a final legal test as attorney general before the U.S. Supreme Court today as the nine weigh arguments he makes in a legal brief arguing that local officials should be allowed to consider race in assigning students to schools.

The Supreme Court is set to hear two cases today that call on it to decide whether school officials can assign students to individual public schools according to race to further school integration efforts.

The cases ask the court to decide the legacy of Brown v Board of Education in an era when schoolchildren are two and three generations removed from overt state-sponsored segregation.

The cases are brought by the parents of children who have challenged school assignment decisions in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle. In Louisville, the school board considers race in assigning students to schools and deciding whether to allow students to transfer between schools. In Seattle, the school boards consider race to assign students to schools in instances when schools receive too many applications.

The two cases question whether cities can decide for themselves to send students, according to race, far from their neighborhood schools in an effort to achieve racial integration.

The Louisville case in particular calls on the justices to consider the history of school integration efforts. Between 1976 and 2000, the Louisville schools were under a federal court decree aimed at eliminating the vestige of state-sponsored racial segregation. For the first decade, that involved a busing program that randomly assigned some students to certain schools regardless of where they lived.

Although a federal judge had said the school district had complied with integration efforts and gave up federal jurisdiction in 2000, the elected school board still uses a race-conscious program in assigning students to schools. Under the program, a student's race is considered when the school's enrollment of black students threatens to fall below 15% or rise above 50%. Blacks comprise 34% of the students in the school district.

The case calls on the Supreme Court to decide whether the legacy of Brown champions the ideal of either a colorblind school system or a racially integrated school system. In separate briefs, the solicitor general of the United States, Paul Clement, and the Attorney General of New York, Eliot Spitzer, provide different answers to this question.

Mr. Spitzer, in a brief filed on behalf of 16 states, including New York, argues that the court should permit the race-conscious programs to allow efforts at integration to continue.

"It would be ironic, indeed, if after five decades of supervising the desegregation of public schools… the Court now profoundly limits local authorities from finding ways on their own to maintain their integrated schools if they so choose," Mr. Spitzer's brief reads.

But Mr. Clement filed a brief that provides a reading of Brown that could resonate with the idea of the "colorblind Constitution" embraced by Justice Scalia. Once the court order governing the Louisville school district was lifted in 2000, racial classifications can no longer be constitutional in deciding school assignments there, says the Clement brief, which is filed on behalf of the Bush administration.

Mr. Clement says the use of racial classifications in both Seattle and Louisville are designed to "achieve a pre-determined racial balance rather than to eliminate the lingering effects" of segregation.

Mr. Clement said that perpetuating racial classifications in school assignments is not part of "the path forward."

In his brief, Mr. Spitzer argues that the court should "afford a degree of deference" to the decisions that states and school boards make aimed at reducing racial isolation in schools.

Legal observers will be watching Justice Anthony Kennedy's questions closely during today's arguments. With Sandra Day O'Connor retired, Justice Kennedy could be poised to play the role of the swing vote on issues of affirmative action.

In the Louisville case, there is only one plaintiff, Joshua McDonald, a white student who was 5 years old in 2003. His lawyer claims that Joshua's request for a school transfer was denied because he was white and that the school he was assigned to and hoped to leave was close to becoming predominately black. The effect of the school board's decision goes beyond inconvenience, according to the plaintiff's briefs.

The school district's decision "denigrates a 5-year old's self-worth and self-esteem by comporting him to be color coded throughout his educational career," according to the brief.

In Seattle, parents say that students are subjected to long bus rides as a result of the program and that has led some parents to move out of the city or send their children to parochial schools, according to the brief.

Some race-conscious school assignments would require students to have made round-trip commute of up to four hours, according to the brief.

The program in Seattle takes race into account only in instances in which students apply to high schools that receive too many applications from incoming freshmen. As a tiebreaker, schools used, among other considerations, race in an effort to bring the schools closer to a student ratio of 40% white and 60% non-white. Because of the lawsuit, the school system has stopped using race as a consideration, it says.

The cases are Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and Crystal Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education.[/rquoter]

 

not quite, and i appreciate your impugning of the sun's motives. if you actually read the article before typing you'd find that's it's a straightforward news article, not an editorial.

 

The real issue is whether antidiscrimination laws, including constitutional amendments, ban discrimination altogether. conservatives would argue that they protect individuals from discrimination, liberals that discrimination is fine in the pursuit of diversity or integration. i wonder what dr. king would say.

 

agreed, and the same logic applies to abortion and gay marriage- the court shouldn't intervene.

yes, in 1954. but 40 years later the remedies have run their course.

 

integration never occurred?