The dissent elides this distinction between de jure and de facto segregation, casually intimates that Seattles school attendance patterns reflect illegal segregation, post, at 5, 18, 23,[Footnote 15] and fails to credit the judicial determinationunder the most rigorous standardthat Jefferson County had eliminated the vestiges of prior segregation. Public Schools, 416 F.3d 513 (2005); Memorandum from Stephen W. Daeschner, Superintendent, to the Board of Education, Jefferson Cty. This Courts opinion in McDaniel v. Barresi, 402 U. S. 39 (1971), fits comfortably within this framework. Each of these premises is, in my respectful view, incorrect. 2005). 1, pp. . Data for the Seattle schools in the several years since this litigation was commenced further demonstrate the minimal role that the racial tiebreaker in fact played. Id. The District asserts that it helped these schools by allowing students from the schools to attend other schools, furthering the goals of ending racial isolation and promoting equal access. See also Parents Involved VII, 426 F.3d, at 1222 (Bea, J., dissenting) (The way to end racial discrimination is to stop discriminating by race). The plan provided for open high school enrollment. It was then more faithful to Brown and more respectful of our precedent than it is today. in McFarland I, pp. At the same time, all students were free subsequently to transfer from the school at which they were initially placed to a different school of their choice without regard to race. Section 1. Prior to Grutter, the courts of appeals rejected as unconstitutional attempts to implement race-based assignment planssuch as the plans at issue herein primary and secondary schools. This is not to deny that there is a cost in applying a state-mandated racial label. Ante, at 17 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Most white families live north of the downtown area where four high schools Ballard, Ingraham, Nathan Hale, and Roosevelt are located. aspx? 2d 1, 5 (1965); Jackson v. Pasadena City School Dist., 59 Cal. Grutter, 539 U. S., at 348 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). In addition, a decision in the Districts favor will allow public schools to implement a wide range of programs designed to further the interest of racial diversity. Arkansas, for example, provides by statute that [n]o student may transfer to a nonresident district where the percentage of enrollment for the students race exceeds that percentage in the students resident district. Ark. And if the plurality now chooses to reject that principle, it cannot adequately justify its retreat simply by affixing the label dicta to reasoning with which it disagrees. To raise the specter of resegregation to defend these programs is to ignore the meaning of the word and the nature of the cases before us. 426 F.3d 1162, 1166 (9th Cir. 05915, at 22. Rather, such powers should have been temporary and used only to overcome the widespread resistance to the dictates of the Constitution. 515 U. S., at 125 (Thomas, J., concurring). 149 through 154 (Dec. 8, 2003). [Footnote 27] Whatever else the Courts rejection of the segregationists arguments in Brown might have established, it certainly made clear that state and local governments cannot take from the Constitution a right to make decisions on the basis of race by adverse possession. Given this tenuous relationship between forced racial mixing and improved educational results for black children, the dissent cannot plausibly maintain that an educational element supports the integration interest, let alone makes it compelling. And in each city, the school boards plans have evolved over time in ways that progressively diminish the plans use of explicit race-conscious criteria. See Brief for Respondents in No. In design and operation, the plans are directed only to racial balance, pure and simple, an objective this Court has repeatedly condemned as illegitimate. Id., at 276, 280 (OConnor, J., concurring). Despite the dissents repeated intimation of a remedial purpose, neither of the programs in question qualifies as a permissible race-based remedial measure. 539 U.S., at 325, 123 S. Ct. 2325, 156 L. Ed. Justice Breyer speaks of bringing the races together (putting aside the purely black-and-white nature of the plans), as the justification for excluding individuals on the basis of their race. In light of this Courts conclusions in Grutter, the compelling nature of these interests in the context of primary and secondary public education follows here a fortiori. 3313.98(B)(2)(b)(iii) (Lexis Supp. They resemble other plans, promulgated by hundreds of local school boards, which have attempted a variety of desegregation methods that have evolved over time in light of experience. Cf. remanded for further proceedings. [Footnote 16]. of Ed., 402 U. S., at 16far more heavily than the school districts themselves. Without attempting in these cases to set forth all the interests a school district might assert, it suffices to note that our prior cases, in evaluating the use of racial classifications in the school context, have recognized two interests that qualify as compelling. Indeed, the social scientists brief rather cautiously claims the existence of any benefit at all, describing the positive impact as modest, id., at 13, acknowledging that there appears to be little or no effect on math scores, id., at 14, and admitting that the underlying reasons for these gains in achievement are not entirely clear, id., at 15. At most, those statistics show a national trend toward classroom racial imbalance. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. in KentuckyThe Second Year After the Supreme Courts Decision, 25 J. Negro Educ. The Constitution generally prohibits government race-based decisionmaking, but this Court has authorized the use of race-based measures for remedial purposes in two narrowly defined circumstances. 2, p. 79 (But be that doctrine what it may, somewhere, sometime to every principle comes a moment of repose when it has been so often announced, so confidently relied upon, so long continued, that it passes the limits of judicial discretion and disturbance. To uphold these programs the Court is asked to brush aside two concepts of central importance for determining the validity of laws and decrees designed to alleviate the hurt and adverse consequences resulting from race discrimination. This brings us to the dissents reliance on the Courts opinions in Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 244 (2003), and Grutter, 539 U. S. 306. The idea that if race is the problem, race is the instrument with which to solve it cannot be accepted as an analytical leap forward. These effects not only reinforce the prior gains of integrated primary and secondary education; they also foresee a time when there is less need to use race-conscious criteria. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U. S. 717, 740741, and n.19 (1974). See 426 F.3d 1162, 11931194 (2005) (Kozinski, J., concurring) (That a student is denied the school of his choice may be disappointing, but it carries no racial stigma and says nothing at all about that individuals aptitude or ability). 1 Complaint in Adams v. Forbes Bottomly, Civ. See id., at 380 (The very analysis for dissolving desegregation decrees supports continued maintenance of a desegregated system as a compelling state interest). Part II dismissed the respondent's attempts to argue that Parents Involved lacks standing. 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. PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS v. SEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. See Part IB, supra. [Footnote 13]. Sch. I wholly concur in The Chief Justices opinion. The public school population had fallen from about 100,000 to less than 50,000. [Footnote 13] See Jenkins, 515 U. S., at 121122 (Thomas, J., concurring) ([T]here is no reason to think that black students cannot learn as well when surrounded by members of their own race as when they are in an integrated environment). Opposition to Writ of Certiorari at 2021. Race-based government measures during the 1860s and 1870s to remedy state-enforced slavery were therefore not inconsistent with the color-blind Constitution. Moreover, the democratic interest has no durational limit, contrary to Grutters command. . See Harrell, School Web Site Removed: Examples of Racism Sparked Controversy, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 2, 2006, p. B1. Because of its importance, I shall repeat what this Court said about the matter in Swann. The Nations schools strive to teach that our strength comes from people of different races, creeds, and cultures uniting in commitment to the freedom of all. And the design of particular plans has been dictated by both the law and the specific needs of the district. Ibid. The tenth high school, West Seattle, is located west of downtown. That is what is at issue here. This, in turn, could encourage policy-makers to be more accountable to families and implement policy that is innovative and responsive to local needs. Unlike de jure segregation, there is no ultimate remedy for racial imbalance. Again, neither school board asserts that its race-based actions were taken to remedy prior discrimination. On what legal ground can the majority rest its contrary view? (Would it be necessary to adjudicate the obvious See ante, at 3436. 1986) (upholding rezoning plan under rational-basis review). 5, p.27 (Respondents ask this Court to upset a long established and well settled principle recognized by numerous state Legislatures, and Courts, both state and federal, over a long period of years); Tr. A majority of these desegregation techniques explicitly considered a students race. See Grutter, 539 U. S., at 342 (stating the requirement that all governmental use of race must have a logical end point). 1 L. Kohn, Priority Shift: The Fate of Mandatory Busing for School Desegregation in Seattle and the Nation 2730, 32 (Mar. v. Seattle Sch. At the time of Brown, v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954), Georgias Constitution required that [s]eparate schools shall be provided for the white and colored races. Ga. Moreover, maintaining this federally mandated system of classification makes sense insofar as Seattles experience indicates that the relevant circumstances in respect to each of these different minority groups are roughly similar, e.g., in terms of residential patterns, and call for roughly similar responses. And federal courts would rightly hesitate to find unitary status if the consequences of the ruling were so dramatically disruptive. As the districts demographics shift, so too will their definition of racial diversity. Unless we believe that the Constitution enforces one legal standard for the South and another for the North, this Court should grant Seattle the permission it granted Clarke County, Georgia. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469 (1989); Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630 (1993); Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peńa, 515 U. S. 200 (1995); Grutter, supra; Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 244 (2003); Johnson v. California, 543 U. S. 499 (2005). After preliminary rulings and an eventual victory for the plaintiffs in the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the District Court in July 1975 entered an order requiring desegregation. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the District had a compelling state interest in achieving the benefits of racial diversity and that its plan was narrowly tailored. org/area/equityandrace/whiteprivilegeconference.xml. Furthermore, it is unclear whether increased interracial contact improves racial attitudes and relations. In support of the third benefit, the District cites findings that minority students in fully integrated schools often perform better academically and are more likely to find work in an integrated workplace. 16, 18. Finally, I recognize that the Court seeks to distinguish Grutter from these cases by claiming that Grutter arose in the context of higher education. Ante, at 16. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265 (1978); Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 79 (1986); Richmond v. J. At the same time, these compelling interests, in my view, do help inform the present inquiry. For Brown held out a promise. [Footnote 10] There are good reasons not to apply a lesser standard to these cases. 17, 48 (1978). 2d 358, 360 (2000). In sum, the districts race-conscious plans satisfy strict scrutiny and are therefore lawful. L. 95561, Tit. And, in any event, the histories of Seattle and Louisville make clear that this distinctionbetween court-ordered and voluntary desegregationseeks a line that sensibly cannot be drawn. See N. St. John, School Desegregation Outcomes for Children 6768 (1975) (A glance at [the data] shows that for either race positive findings are less common than negative findings); Stephan, The Effects of School Desegregation: An Evaluation 30 Years After Brown, in Advances in Applied Social Psychology 183186 (M. Saks & L. Saxe eds. 2d, at 842, based on the objective of achieving at all schools an African-American enrollment equivalent to the average district-wide African-American enrollment of 34 percent. If the need for the racial classifications embraced by the school districts is unclear, even on the districts own terms, the costs are undeniable. 2d 304: "[The law school's] policy makes clear there are many possible bases for diversity admissions, and provides examples of admittees who have lived or traveled widely abroad, are fluent in several languages, have overcome personal adversity and family hardship, have exceptional records of extensive community service, and have had successful careers in other fields." During the period the tiebreaker applied, it typically affected about 300 students per year. of Oral Arg. Any continued use of race must be justified on some other basis. See ante, at 4041 (plurality opinion); see also ante, at 26 (Thomas, J., concurring). In order for its plan to be constitutional under strict scrutiny, the School District must show its use of race in the admission process was furthering a compelling government interest (compelling interest) and that the School District plan was the narrowest possible use of race that could achieve this interest (narrowly tailored). 05915, at 4, these ambiguities become all the more problematic in light of the contradictions and confusions that result. The latter approach would be informed by Grutter, though the criteria relevant to student placement would differ based on the students age, the parents needs, and the schools role. But its conclusion is short: The plans before us satisfy the requirements of the Equal Protection Clause. Compare, e.g., App. There seems to be no principled rule, moreover, to limit the dissents rationale to the context of public schools. in No. Justice Kennedy, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. But Tometz addressed a challenge to a statute requiring race-consciousness in drawing school attendance boundariesan issue well beyond the scope of the question presented in these cases. Am. The District further points to the line of Supreme Court cases requiring that schools desegregate even when such segregation was simply the effect of where the districts boundaries were drawn. Again, data support this insight. In the Justice's 77-page written opinion he called the ruling a "radical" step away from established law that would take from communities a critical tool used for many years in the prevention of resegregation. For the plurality now to insist as it does, ante, at 2728, that these school districts ought to have said so officially is either to ask for the superfluous (if they need only make explicit what is implicit) or to demand the impossible (if they must somehow provide more proof that there is no hypothetical other plan that could work as well as theirs). See, e.g., Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. No. Cf. See, e.g., Brief for Kansas on Reargument in Brown v. Board of Education, O.T. 1953, No. In the context of public schooling, segregation is the deliberate operation of a school system to carry out a governmental policy to separate pupils in schools solely on the basis of race. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. Post, at 22. Past allegations in another case provide no basis for resolving these cases. Even supposing it mattered to the constitutional analysis, the race-based student assignment programs before us are not as benign as the dissent believes. 05915, at 97. 90a92a. Third, the plans before us, subjected to rigorous judicial review, are supported by compelling state interests and are narrowly tailored to accomplish those goals. Thus about 2,000 students out of a total district population of about 60,000 students were involved in one or the other transfer program. The system that was upheld in Grutter considered a number of other factors to assure diversity of not only race but also socioeconomic status, skills, and so forth. in No. Petitioner Parents Involved in Community Schools (Parents Involved) is a nonprofit corporation comprising the parents of children who have been or may be denied assignment to their chosen high school in the district because of their race. of Ed., 402 U. S. 1, 16 (1971), by then-Justice Rehnquist in chambers in Bustop, Inc. v. Los Angeles Bd. The School District relies on Grutter in describing the educational benefits of a diverse student body as (1) instilling the civic virtue of cross-racial understanding; (2) creating better-informed citizens by exposing students to a wide range of viewpoints; and (3) enabling students to achieve more success. See Chevron U. S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, 845 (1984). However, Seattle did not have a history of racially segregated schools. Of course, if the Seattle school board were truly committed to the notion that diversity leads directly to educational benefits, operating a school with such a high nonwhite enrollment would be a shocking dereliction of its duty to educate the students enrolled in that school. To do this as an educational policy is within the broad discretionary powers of school authorities. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. But I can find no case in which this Court has followed Justice Thomas colorblind approach. [14], Neither school could plead this compelling interest, because "[w]e have emphasized that the harm being remedied by mandatory desegregation plans is the harm that is traceable to segregation, and that 'the Constitution is not violated by racial imbalance in the schools, without more. See post, at 62. The Washington Supreme Court determined that the State Civil Rights Act bars only preferential treatment programs where race or gender is used by government to select a less qualified applicant over a more qualified applicant, and not [p]rograms which are racially neutral, such as the [districts] open choice plan. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist., No. Our cases clearly reject the argument that motives affect the strict scrutiny analysis. Again, though, the school boards have no say in deciding whether an interest is compelling. The specific interest found compelling in Grutter was student body diversity in the context of higher education. Ibid. in No. Establishing a strong basis in evidence requires proper findings regarding the extent of the government units past racial discrimination. at 1171. Research suggests, for example, that black children from segregated educational environments significantly increase their achievement levels once they are placed in a more integrated setting. ?). Times, June 11, 2006 (quoting David Armor as commenting [w]e did find the [racial] achievement gap changing significantly and acknowledging that he did find a modest association for math but not reading in terms of racial composition and achievement, but theres a big state variation (emphasis added)). In respect to elementary schools, the plan first drew a neighborhood line around each elementary school, and it then drew a second line around groups of elementary schools (called clusters). Research J., No. The remedy, though, was limited in time and limited to the wrong. The plan required redrawing school attendance zones, closing 12 schools, and busing groups of students, selected by race and the first letter of their last names, to schools outside their immediate neighborhoods. Nor does any precedent indicate, as the plurality suggests with respect to Louisville, ante, at 29, that remedial interests vanish the day after a federal court declares that a district is unitary. Of course, Louisville adopted those portions of the plan at issue here before a court declared Louisville unitary. Moreover, in Freeman, this Court pointed out that in one sense of the term, vestiges of past segregation by state decree do remain in our society and in our schools. To Seattle School Dist. Accordingly, the plans are unconstitutional. Ante, at 67. See Reply Brief at 3. App. No. v. Brinkman, 433 U. S. 406, 413 (1977); Dayton Bd. 1, p.57 ([T]he people of Kansas . No. In this plurality opinion, Roberts wrote that the schools at issue contend that a racially diverse environment is beneficial for education and they submit this as the reason why they consider race alone in their school assignments. 2, App. Similarly, the segregationists made repeated appeals to societal practice and expectation. 1806, 20 U. S.C. 7231 et seq. (a)Because racial classifications are simply too pernicious to permit any but the most exact connection between justification and classification, Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U. S. 448, 537 (Stevens, J., dissenting), governmental distributions of burdens or benefits based on individual racial classifications are reviewed under strict scrutiny, e.g., Johnson v. California, 543 U. S. 499, 505506. Under the Supreme Court's precedents on racial classification in higher education, Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, race-based classifications must be directed toward a "compelling government interest" and must be "narrowly tailored" to that interest. It sought one law, one Nation, one people, not simply as a matter of legal principle but in terms of how we actually live. But to this the replication must be: Even so, measures other than differential treatment based on racial typing of individuals first must be exhausted. 05908, pp. When the actual racial breakdown is considered, enrolling students without regard to their race yields a substantially diverse student body under any definition of diversity. denied, 389 U. S. 847 (1967); Springfield School Comm. 1995). Observers claim that the Supreme Court's decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 4 See generally Seattle School Dist. The techniques that different districts have employed range from voluntary transfer programs to mandatory reassignment. Id., at 21. It is not simply one factor weighed with others in reaching a decision, as in Grutter; it is the factor. At some point, the discrete injury will be remedied, and the school district will be declared unitary. Crude measures of this sort threaten to reduce children to racial chits valued and traded according to one schools supply and anothers demand. Swann, supra, at 6; see also Green v. School Bd. Yet the school district does not explain how, in the context of its diverse student population, a blunt distinction between white and non-white furthers these goals. By limiting the School Districts use of race, it will be more difficult for it to cure these defects. The plurality, by contrast, does not acknowledge that the school districts have identified a compelling interest here. The debate is not one we need to resolve, however, because it is clear that the racial classifications employed by the districts are not narrowly tailored to the goal of achieving the educational and social benefits asserted to flow from racial diversity. in No. Student Choice and Project Renaissance, 1991 to 1996. What the dissent fails to understand, however, is that the color-blind Constitution does not bar the government from taking measures to remedy past state-sponsored discriminationindeed, it requires that such measures be taken in certain circumstances. As the panel majority in Parents Involved VI concluded: [T]he tiebreakers annual effect is thus merely to shuffle a few handfuls of different minority students between a few schoolsabout a dozen additional Latinos into Ballard, a dozen black students into Nathan Hale, perhaps two dozen Asians into Roosevelt, and so on. Neither of the programs before us today is compelled as a remedial measure, and no one makes such a claim. In the Jefferson County case, the District Court found that the school district had asserted a compelling interest in maintaining racially diverse schools, and that its plan was, in all relevant respects, narrowly tailored to serve that interest. To invalidate the plans under review is to threaten the promise of Brown. Nonetheless, Bakke was used to uphold the validity of affirmative action programs that fostered diversity in higher education for a quarter of a century. See Brief for Petitioner at 44. See Bustop, Inc. v. Los Angeles Bd. Id., at 25. 1 Hampton v. Jefferson Cty., Bd. See Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339, 343344 (1960) (admonishing that, in dealing with claims under broad provisions of the Constitution, which derive content by an interpretive process of inclusion and exclusion, it is imperative that generalizations, based on and qualified by the concrete situations that gave rise to them, must not be applied out of context in disregard of variant controlling facts). Fourteen of the districts nineteen non-vocational middle and high schools were close to totally black or totally white. [Footnote 17] One researcher has stated that the reviews of desegregation and intergroup relations were unable to come to any conclusion about what the probable effects of desegregation were [;] virtually all of the reviewers determined that few, if any, firm conclusions about the impact of desegregation on intergroup relations could be drawn. Schofield, School Desegregation and Intergroup Relations: A Review of the Literature, in 17 Review of Research in Education 356 (G. Grant ed. of Ed. Therefore, it is not nearly as apparent as the dissent suggests that increased interracial exposure automatically leads to improved racial attitudes or race relations. See, e.g., S. Carter, No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools 4950, 5356, 7173, 8184, 8788 (2001); A. Thernstrom & S. Thernstrom, No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning 4364 (2003); see also L. Izumi, They Have Overcome: High-Poverty, High-Performing Schools in California (2002) (chronicling exemplary achievement in predominantly Hispanic schools in California). Public Schools, 330 F.Supp. In this hearing en banc, the Ninth Circuit reversed itself yet again, ruling that the Seattle school districts admission program was narrowly tailored and constitutionally acceptable. At issue were efforts for voluntary school desegregation and integration in Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky. 1, p.5 (The Fourteenth Amendment precludes a state from imposing distinctions or classifications based upon race and color alone);[Footnote 20] see also In Memoriam: Honorable Thurgood Marshall, Proceedings of the Bar and Officers of the Supreme Court of the United States, X (1993) (remarks of Judge Motley) (Marshall had a Bible to which he turned during his most depressed moments.