The question was originally brought up by the Ninth Circuit independently of the parties (377 F.3d 949 at 958) and the School District has now adopted that argument as its own before the Court. The U.S. Constitution in Article III 2 specifies the scope of matters on which the federal courts can issue decisions. We are not social engineers. If school authorities are concerned that the student-body compositions of certain schools interfere with the objective of offering an equal educational opportunity to all of their students, they are free to devise race-conscious measures to address the problem in a general way and without treating each student in different fashion solely on the basis of a systematic, individual typing by race. In the Seattle case, the District Court granted the school district summary judgment, finding, inter alia, that its plan survived strict scrutiny on the federal constitutional claim because it was narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest. of Education and National Center for Education Statistics Common Core data). It established that the decisions in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. 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. 294 F.3d 1084 (9th Cir. The only counter argument in the record is the Ninth Circuits resolution of the question. . This interest, the Court said, can be achieved by considering the student overall, not just his or her race, and the contribution he or she can make to the schools diversity. It is convinced that the happiness, the progress and the welfare of these children is best promoted in segregated schools); Brief for Appellees on Reargument in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1953, No. Upon realizing that the litigation would not be resolved in time for assignment decisions for the 20022003 school year, the Ninth Circuit withdrew its opinion, 294 F.3d 1084 (2002) (Parents Involved III), vacated the injunction, and, pursuant to Wash. Rev. See Brief for Respondents in No. Parents Involved in Cmty. 2 Id., at 151152; Hanawalt 3738; Seattle School Dist. Swann, supra, at 6; see also Green v. School Bd. 61, 39 Ill. 2d 593, 596598, 237 N.E. 2d 498, 500502 (1968), an Illinois decision, as evidence that state and federal courts had considered the matter settled and uncontroversial. Post, at 25. It is the height of arrogance for Members of this Court to assert blindly that their motives are better than others. 294 F.3d 1085 (9th Cir. While diversity may lend to a robust education, parents and students have their own opinions on what factors promote the best education possible. Is Seattle free on remand to say that its schools were de jure segregated, just as in 1956 a memo for the School Board admitted? 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). See, e.g., Freeman, supra, at 494. 1, pp. Brown v. Board of Education. The Constitution and our precedents require more. Revisited: Desegregation to Resegregation, 52 J. Negro Educ. See Johnson, supra, at 505 (We have insisted on strict scrutiny in every context, even for so-called benign racial classifications); Adarand, 515 U. S., at 227 (rejecting idea that benign racial classifications may be held to different standard); Croson, 488 U. S., at 500 (Racial classifications are suspect, and that means that simple legislative assurances of good intention cannot suffice). In 20002001, with the racial tiebreaker, it was 17.9 percent Asian-American, 13.3 percent African-American, 7 percent Latino, 58.4 percent Caucasian, and 3.4 percent Native-American. In my view the state-mandated racial classifications at issue, official labels proclaiming the race of all persons in a broad class of citizenselementary school students in one case, high school students in anotherare unconstitutional as the cases now come to us. 841340, pp. Even in the context of mandatory desegregation, we have stressed that racial proportionality is not required, see Milliken, 433 U. S., at 280, n. 14 ([A desegregation] order contemplating the substantive constitutional right [to a] particular degree of racial balance or mixing is infirm as a matter of law (internal quotation marks omitted)); Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. Evidence from the Segregated Schooling of African American Children, in Beyond Desegregation 209226 (M. Shujaa ed. "[31] He goes on to explain that he is skeptical that school boards will always have such good intentions in their race-based decisionmaking, for, as Madison said, "if men were angels, no government would be necessary.". The Seattle School District has begun providing transportation to students who live more than 2.5 miles from their assigned high school. 4 Memorandum Opinion and Order in Haycraft v. Board of Ed. The Current Lawsuit, 2003 to the Present. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469, 507 (1989); Bakke, 438 U. S., at 307 (opinion of Powell, J.) The agreement required the board to implement what became known as the Seattle Plan.. See The Federalist No. See Swann, 402 U. S., at 31. There, a Georgia school board voluntarily adopted a desegregation plan. Moreover, there is research-based evidence supporting, for example, that a ratio no greater than 50% minoritywhich is Louisvilles starting point, and as close as feasible to Seattles starting pointis helpful in limiting the risk of white flight. See Orfield, Metropolitan School Desegregation: Impacts on Metropolitan Society, in Pursuit of a Dream Deferred: Linking Housing and Education Policy 121, 125. Brief for Petitioner at 11. This Court upheld the plan, see McDaniel, 402 U. S., at 41, rejecting the parents argument that a person may not be included or excluded solely because he is a Negro or because he is white. Brief for Respondents in McDaniel, O. T. 1970, No. The Amendment sought to bring into American society as full members those whom the Nation had previously held in slavery. The United States Constitution dictates that local governments cannot make decisions on the basis of race. App. PICS argues, however, that the Seattle School District is doing just thatemploying racial balancing for the sole purpose of achieving racial diversity in its individual schools. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion of the court as to Parts I, II, III-A and III-C. Part I recounted the background of the plans of the two school boards. 662. 05915, p.7, n.4; Tr. . See Harrell, School Web Site Removed: Examples of Racism Sparked Controversy, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 2, 2006, p. B1. See post, at 62. See ante, at 3436. The District, however, argues that its consideration of race is to further the compelling state interest of achieving the beneficial effects of racial diversity. Section 4. But unlike the plurality, such a judge would also be aware that a legislature or school administrators, ultimately accountable to the electorate, could nonetheless properly conclude that a racial classification sometimes serves a purpose important enough to overcome the risks they mention, for example, helping to end racial isolation or to achieve a diverse student body in public schools. 14, 1. 2, p. 76 ([A] State has power to establish a school system which is capable of efficient administration, taking into account local problems and conditions). 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)). Bowen & Bok 155. Losing the Dream?, p. 30, fig. Id. Yet our tradition is to go beyond present achievements, however significant, and to recognize and confront the flaws and injustices that remain. v. Swann, 402 U. S. 43, 4546 (1971). The dissents appeal to stare decisis, post, at 65, is particularly ironic in light of its apparent willingness to depart from these precedents, post, at 3637. Three years after that decision was handed down, the Governor of Arkansas ordered state militia to block the doors of a white schoolhouse so that black children could not enter. 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. remanded for further proceedings. See School Comm. So it was, as the dissent observes, see post, at 1314, that Louisville classified children by race in its school assignment and busing plan in the 1970s. 05915, at 4, and it fails to explain the discrepancy. Consequently, regardless of the perceived negative effects of racial imbalance, I will not defer to legislative majorities where the Constitution forbids it. 05908, at 103a (describing application of racial tiebreaker based on current white percentage of 41 percent and current minority percentage of 59 percent (emphasis added)). See Brief for Petitioner at 2526. See Brief for Petitioner at 21. It was not long ago that people of different races drank from separate fountains, rode on separate buses, and studied in separate schools. Justice Kennedy asserts that the dissent must "brush aside two concepts of central importance" to uphold the racial classification in the case. This is confirmed by the fact that Seattle has been able to achieve a desirable degree of diversity without the greater emphasis on race that drawing fine lines among minority groups would require. See, e.g., Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303 (1880); Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356 (1886); Brown, 347 U. S. 483; Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967); Regents of Univ. . . [Footnote 5] Rejecting arguments comparable to those that the plurality accepts today,[Footnote 6] that court noted: It would be the height of irony if the racial imbalance act, enacted as it was with the laudable purpose of achieving equal educational opportunities, should, by prescribing school pupil allocations based on race, founder on unsuspected shoals in the Fourteenth Amendment. Id., at 698, 227 N.E. 2d, at 733 (footnote omitted). In particular, they use race-conscious criteria only to mark the outer bounds of broad population-related ranges. The Grutter Court expressly limited its holdingdefining a specific type of broad-based diversity and noting the unique context of higher educationbut these limitations were largely disregarded by the lower courts in extending Grutter to the sort of classifications at issue here. Bustop, addressing in the context of an emergency injunction application a busing plan imposed by the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, is similarly unavailing. . As well, there is precedent for finding jurisdiction in situations where the passage of time has prevented a direct remedy. To use race in this way is not to set a forbidden quota. See id., at 335 (Properly understood, a quota is a program in which a certain fixed number or proportion of opportunities are reserved exclusively for certain minority groups (quoting Croson, 488 U. S., at 496)). 16, 18. It is no answer to say that these cases can be distinguished from Brown because Brown involved invidious racial classifications whereas the racial classifications here are benign. . 1, supra. 05-908 v. SEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. While the County had been under a desegregation order from 1975 to 2000, this order had been dissolved when a federal judge found that it had largely solved the problem of segregated schools. They are based upon numerous sources, which for ease of exposition I have cataloged, along with their corresponding citations, at Appendix B, infra. The dissents persistent refusal to accept this distinctionits insistence on viewing the racial classifications here as if they were just like the ones in McDaniel, devised to overcome a history of segregated public schools, post, at 47explains its inability to understand why the remedial justification for racial classifications cannot decide these cases. I have explained why I do not believe the Constitution could possibly find compelling the provision of a racially diverse education for a 23-year-old law student but not for a 13-year-old high school pupil. in No. To do so provides further reason to believe that the pluralitys approach is legally unsound. We construe Brown as endorsing Mr. Justice Harlans classical statement in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, 539: Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens). The pluralitys position, I fear, would break that promise. 264, 399400 (1821) (Marshall, C. It added magnet programs at two high schools. 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. More specifically, the Court stated that race could be used as a plus, but not in such a way that isolates the applicant from the pool of those being considered. If so, its interpretation threatens to produce divisiveness among minority groups that is incompatible with the basic objectives of the Fourteenth Amendment. It was then more faithful to Brown and more respectful of our precedent than it is today. It has failed to explain why, in a district composed of a diversity of races, with fewer than half of the students classified as white, it has employed the crude racial categories of white and non-white as the basis for its assignment decisions. Although much depends on the outcome, the rationale of the Court is equally important in this case and to the future policy of public schools. Conversely, to take another example, evidence from a district in Norfolk, Virginia, shows that resegregated schools led to a decline in the achievement test scores of children of all races. 05908, pp. And it used busing to transport the students to their new assignments. As a result of this Courts insistence on strict scrutiny of that policy, but see id., at 538547, inmates in the California prisons were killed. In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle (2007), the United States Supreme Court found that the school district was using race in an unconstitutional manner in its assignment plan. Properly analyzed, though, these plans do not fall within either existing category of permissible race-based remediation. 32, Exh. 1986) (citing Swann and North Carolina Bd. In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle (2007), the United States Supreme Courtfound that the school district was using race in an unconstitutional manner in its assignment plan. There must be at least 15 percent nonwhite students under Jefferson Countys plan; in Seattle, more than three times that figure. While we do not suggest that greater use of race would be preferable, the minimal impact of the districts racial classifications on school enrollment casts doubt on the necessity of using racial classifications. The Equal Protection Clause is not incoherent. [R]acial paternalism and its unintended consequences can be as poisonous and pernicious as any other form of discrimination. Adarand, supra, at 241 (opinion of Thomas, J.). Breyer, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg, JJ., joined. It was the promise of true racial equalitynot as a matter of fine words on paper, but as a matter of everyday life in the Nations cities and schools. Respondent school districts voluntarily adopted student assignment plans that rely on race to determine which schools certain children may attend.

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