Supr Court decision

Today's Supreme Court decision may not be as bad for diversity efforts as it
first appears -- Kennedy left a lot of wiggle room. One friend close to the
case wrote: "This was not as broad of a ruling as we feared, and there is a
clear victory -- while narrow -- here." Here's an excerpt from the NAACP
Legal Defense Fund's statement (full text below):

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.

There's some great commentary on this blog:
<http://scintegration.blogspot.com/> http://scintegration.blogspot.com/ (see
comments from various people, below, that were collected by the blog).

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June 28, 2007

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.

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