Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1
551 U.S. 701, 127 S.Ct. 2738, 168 L.Ed.2d 508 (2007)
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Rule of Law:
A public school district that has not been found to be segregated by law, or that has been declared unitary, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by classifying students by race and using that classification as a determinative factor in assigning them to particular schools to achieve racial balance.
Facts:
- Seattle School District No. 1, which had never operated legally segregated schools, adopted a high school assignment plan that used a student's race as a tiebreaker for admission to oversubscribed schools.
- The Seattle plan's racial tiebreaker was triggered if a school's racial composition deviated more than 10% from the district's overall white/nonwhite ratio, giving preference to students whose race would bring the school closer to that ratio.
- Jill Kurfirst's son, Andy Meeks, was denied assignment to Seattle's Ballard High School and its special biotechnology program specifically because of the racial tiebreaker.
- Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Kentucky, had operated under a court-ordered desegregation decree until 2000, when a federal court declared it had achieved 'unitary' status, ending the decree.
- After the decree was dissolved, Jefferson County adopted a new student assignment plan that required all nonmagnet schools to maintain a black student enrollment between 15% and 50%.
- Under the Jefferson County plan, student assignments and transfer requests were denied if they would negatively affect a school's compliance with these racial guidelines.
- Crystal Meredith's son, Joshua McDonald, was denied a transfer to a kindergarten closer to his home because the transfer would have an 'adverse effect on desegregation compliance' at his assigned school.
Procedural Posture:
- In the Seattle case, Parents Involved in Community Schools sued the school district in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
- The District Court granted summary judgment to the school district, upholding its plan.
- A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the trial court, but the Ninth Circuit, sitting en banc, then affirmed the trial court's ruling in favor of the school district.
- In the Jefferson County case, Crystal Meredith sued the school district in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky.
- The District Court found the district's plan to be constitutional.
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the District Court's decision.
- The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to hear both cases together.
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Issue:
Does a public school district's student assignment plan that classifies students by race and uses that classification as a determinative factor to achieve racial balance violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?
Opinions:
Majority - Chief Justice Roberts
Yes, a public school district's plan that uses race as a determinative factor for assignments to achieve racial balance violates the Equal Protection Clause. All governmental racial classifications must be analyzed under strict scrutiny, requiring they be narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest. The districts' asserted interests are not compelling. The interest in remedying past intentional discrimination does not apply because Seattle was never de jure segregated and Louisville was declared unitary. The diversity interest recognized in Grutter v. Bollinger is inapplicable because it was specific to higher education and required a holistic, individualized review, whereas these plans use race in a mechanical, nonindividualized way. The districts' true goal is outright racial balancing, an objective this Court has repeatedly condemned as 'patently unconstitutional.' The plans are not narrowly tailored because the districts failed to give serious, good faith consideration to workable race-neutral alternatives. The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.
Concurring - Justice Kennedy
Yes, these specific plans violate the Equal Protection Clause as presented. While the plurality's reasoning is too broad and dismissive, these plans are unconstitutional. A school district may have a compelling interest in avoiding racial isolation and achieving a diverse student population. However, the means chosen by Seattle and Jefferson County are not narrowly tailored. They rely on crude, mechanical, and classwide racial classifications that reduce children to racial chits. The government is not permitted to classify every student by race and assign them to schools on that basis, absent a showing of necessity not made here. Race-conscious measures that do not rely on individual racial classifications—such as strategic site selection, drawing attendance zones with general recognition of demographics, and targeted recruiting—may be permissible.
Concurring - Justice Thomas
Yes, these plans are unconstitutional. The Constitution is colorblind and prohibits all governmental race-based decisionmaking. The plans do not serve a compelling interest because they are not remedying past segregation, and the asserted educational and civic benefits of racial balancing are tenuous and not cognizable constitutional interests. The dissent's arguments for deference to local school boards, practical consequences, and social expectations are reminiscent of the arguments advanced by segregationists in Brown v. Board of Education. Permitting racial classifications to bring races together is constitutionally indistinguishable from using them to keep races apart.
Dissenting - Justice Stevens
No, the plans do not violate the Equal Protection Clause. There is a cruel irony in the Chief Justice's reliance on Brown v. Board of Education, a decision intended to help Black children, not to block voluntary integration efforts. There is a fundamental and constitutionally significant difference between racial classifications designed to include and those designed to exclude and stigmatize. The Court's rigid, one-size-fits-all application of strict scrutiny is a mistake and rewrites the history of one of the Court's most important decisions.
Dissenting - Justice Breyer
No, the plans do not violate the Equal Protection Clause. For 50 years, precedent starting with Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Ed. has permitted local, democratically-elected school boards to voluntarily use race-conscious measures to achieve integrated schools. The interest in overcoming segregation and achieving diversity is compelling, encompassing remedial, educational, and democratic elements. These plans are narrowly tailored, representing the culmination of decades of experience and community consultation, and they use race in a more limited way than past, more burdensome methods like forced busing. The majority's decision reverses settled law, strips local officials of a necessary tool to combat resegregation, and breaks the promise of Brown.
Analysis:
This decision significantly restricts the ability of K-12 public schools to use race-conscious student assignment plans to foster diversity. The controlling opinion is Justice Kennedy's concurrence, which establishes a narrow path for future school diversity efforts. While the plurality opinion suggests a nearly absolute bar on using race, Kennedy's view allows that avoiding racial isolation can be a compelling interest. However, he forbids the use of crude, individual racial classifications, mandating that schools must first exhaust race-neutral alternatives and may only consider race-conscious approaches (like school siting or attendance zone drawing) that do not result in the differential treatment of individual students based on a racial label.
