We put the burden on state actors to demonstrate that their race-based policies are justified.” Johnson, 543 U. S., at 506, n. 1. Section 2. of Ed. In Grutter, Justice O'Connor applied a deferential form of strict scrutiny review to the government's use of racial preferences which furthers the common good. & Rodgers, Coercion to Compliance: Southern School Districts and School Desegregation Guidelines, 38 J. Yet neither of those briefs contains specific details like the magnitude of the claimed positive effects or the precise demographic mix at which those positive effects begin to be realized. To learn more, visit our Cookies page. Washington v. Seattle School Dist. 2002). Justice Breyer also tries to downplay the impact of the racial assignments by stating that in Seattle “students can decide voluntarily to transfer to a preferred district high school (without any consideration of race-conscious criteria).” Post, at 46. 28–41. of Ed., 402 U. S. 1, 16 (1971), by then-Justice Rehnquist in chambers in Bustop, Inc. v. Los Angeles Bd. But “the principle of inherent equality that underlies and infuses our Constitution” required the disestablishment of de jure segregation. 44, p. 6 (2003–04 Jefferson County Public Schools Elementary Student Assignment Application, Section B) (“Assignment is made to a school for Primary 1 (Kindergarten) through Grade Five as long as racial guidelines are maintained. Jefferson County also argues that it would be incongruous to hold that what was constitutionally required of it one day—race-based assignments pursuant to the desegregation decree—can be constitutionally prohibited the next. of Ed. [Footnote 13]. It predicts that today’s decision “threaten[s]” the validity of “[h]undreds of state and federal statutes and regulations.” Post, at 61; see also post, at 27–28. Because of Justice Kennedy, Grutter's transformative potential - obscured but not extinguished - now waits for a more sympathetic Court to recognize it.

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 Board’s 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 obligation—they consider it a positive, desirable policy and an essential element of any well-rounded public school education.” Hampton II, 102 F. Supp. 17, 48 (1978). in No. us / summary . Consequently, school boards seeking to remedy those societal problems with race-based measures in schools today would have no way to gauge the proper scope of the remedy. But that distinction concerns what the Constitution requires school boards to do, not what it permits them to do. I shall consequently ask whether the school boards in Seattle and Louisville adopted these plans to serve a “compelling governmental interest” and, if so, whether the plans are “narrowly tailored” to achieve that interest. Jefferson County operated under this decree until 2000, when the District Court dissolved the decree after finding that the district had achieved unitary status by eliminating “[t]o the greatest extent practicable” the vestiges of its prior policy of segregation. 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. Given that state law had previously required the school board to maintain a dual school system, the county was obligated to take measures to remedy its prior de jure segregation. See Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45, 75 (1905) (Holmes, J., dissenting) (“The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics”). Finally, the plan created two new magnet schools, one each at the elementary and middle school levels. The fact that those children may not be denied such admission based on their race because of undersubscription or oversubscription that benefits them does not eliminate the injury claimed. It added “magnet” programs at two high schools. App. Achieving racially balanced school districts does not amount to a compelling government interest that satisfies strict scrutiny. The procedures in Gratz placed much less reliance on race than do the plans at issue here. Likewise, a district may consider it a compelling interest to achieve a diverse student population. What about historically black colleges, which have “established traditions and programs that might disproportionately appeal to one race or another”? Indeed, in McDaniel, a case decided the same day as Swann, a group of parents challenged a race-conscious student assignment plan that the Clarke County School Board had voluntarily adopted as a remedy without a court order (though under federal agency pressure—pressure Seattle also encountered). The minimal effect these classifications have on student assignments, however, suggests that other means would be effective. Narrow tailoring requires “serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives,” id., at 339, and yet in Seattle several alternative assignment plans—many of which would not have used express racial classifications—were rejected with little or no consideration. Most worked at unskilled jobs. Seattle argues that Parents Involved lacks standing because its current members’ claimed injuries are not imminent and are too speculative in that, even if the district maintains its current plan and reinstitutes the racial tiebreaker, those members will only be affected if their children seek to enroll in a high school that is oversubscribed and integration positive. And what of the long history and moral vision that the Fourteenth Amendment itself embodies? Though the dissent cites every manner of complaint, record material, and scholarly article relating to Seattle’s race-based student assignment efforts, post, at 73–75, it cites no law or official policy that required separation of the races in Seattle’s schools. Electoral district lines are ‘facially race neutral’ so a more searching inquiry is necessary before strict scrutiny can be found applicable in redistricting cases than in cases of ‘classifications based explicitly on race’ ” (quoting Adarand, 515 U. S., at 213)). The board responded to the lawsuit by introducing a plan that required race-based transfers and mandatory busing. of Boston v. Board of Education, O. T. 1967, No. Under that approach, the school districts have not carried their burden of showing that the ends they seek justify the particular extreme means they have chosen—classifying individual students on the basis of their race and discriminating among them on that basis. Lower state and federal courts had considered the matter settled and uncontroversial even before this Court decided Swann. See also Juris. What other numbers are the boards to use as a “starting point”? The petitioner in the Louisville case received a letter from the school board informing her that her kindergartener would not be allowed to attend the school of petitioner’s choosing because of the child’s race. More recently, the school district sent a delegation of high school students to a “White Privilege Conference.” See Equity and Race Relations White Privilege Conference, https://www.seattleschools. The diversity interest was not focused on race alone but encompassed “all factors that may contribute to student body diversity.” Id., at 337. Grutter, 539 U. S., at 348 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). 05–908, 426 F. 3d 1162; No. Consequently, regardless of the perceived negative effects of racial imbalance, I will not defer to legislative majorities where the Constitution forbids it. Id., at 43. Once Jefferson County achieved unitary status, it had remedied the constitutional wrong that allowed race-based assignments. For the 2000–2001 school year, five of these schools were oversubscribed—Ballard, Nathan Hale, Roosevelt, Garfield, and Franklin—so much so that 82 percent of incoming ninth graders ranked one of these schools as their first choice. 420, 433–434 (1988).

417, 428–429 287 N. E. 2d 438, 447–448 (1972). In over one-third of the assignments affected by the racial tiebreaker, then, the use of race in the end made no difference, and the district could identify only 52 students who were ultimately affected adversely by the racial tiebreaker in that it resulted in assignment to a school they had not listed as a preference and to which they would not otherwise have been assigned. But if the plan was lawful when it was first adopted and if it was lawful the day before the District Court dissolved its order, how can the plurality now suggest that it became unlawful the following day? in Briggs v. Elliott, O. T. 1953, No. 36, 71 (1872) (“[N]o one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in [all the Reconstruction amendments] . Unlike today’s decision, they were also entirely loyal to Brown. 2d 753, 756, and nn. It is hard to understand how a plan that could allow these results can be viewed as being concerned with achieving enrollment that is “ ‘broadly diverse,’ ” Grutter, supra, at 329. See, e.g., Schofield, Review of Research on School Desegregation’s Impact on Elementary and Secondary School Students, in Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education 597, 606–607 (J. of Jefferson Cty., Nos. It was consequently necessary to decide with some care which students would attend the new “mixed” grade. See id., at 342; see also Croson, 488 U. S., at 498; Wygant, 476 U. S., at 275 (plurality opinion).

In Jefferson County, by contrast, the district seeks black enrollment of no less than 15 or more than 50 percent, a range designed to be “equally above and below Black student enrollment systemwide,” McFarland I, 330 F. Supp. In fact, the available data from the Seattle school district appear to undercut the dissent’s view.

A court finding of de jure segregation cannot be the crucial variable. See, e.g., Armor & Rossell, Desegregation and Resegregation in the Public Schools, in Beyond the Color Line: New Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity in America 239, 251 (A. Thernstrom & S. Thernstrom eds. Past wrongs to the black race, wrongs committed by the State and in its name, are a stubborn fact of history. See Brief for Respondents in No. Contrary to what the dissent would have predicted, see post, at 38–39, the children in Seattle’s African American Academy have shown gains when placed in a “highly segregated” environment. 05–908. Two additional precedents more directly related to the plans here at issue reinforce my conclusion. See also Ho v. San Francisco Unified School Dist., 147 F. 3d 854, 865 (CA9 1998). 05–915, at 4, these ambiguities become all the more problematic in light of the contradictions and confusions that result. If we are to insist upon unanimity in the social science literature before finding a compelling interest, we might never find one. Justice Stevens’s reliance on School Comm.

The suggestion that our decision today is somehow inconsistent with our disposition of that appeal is belied by the fact that neither the lower courts, the respondent school districts, nor any of their 51 amici saw fit even to cite the case. In respect to high schools, for example, a student was given a list of a subset of schools, carefully selected by the board to balance racial distribution in the district by including neighborhood schools and schools in racially different neighborhoods elsewhere in the city. Thus, in North Carolina Bd. The fact that it is possible that children of group members will not be denied admission to a school based on their race—because they choose an undersubscribed school or an oversubscribed school in which their race is an advantage—does not eliminate the injury claimed. Is racial diversity a compelling interest that can justify the use of race in

05–908, p. 38a. Meredith brought suit in the Western District of Kentucky, alleging violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See, e.g., Eisenberg v. Montgomery Cty.

05–908, at 103a.

Bd.