Washington – The Supreme Court agreed Monday to rule on what measures, if any, public school systems may use to maintain racial balance in individual schools.
The eventual decision on whether they can take race into account could affect hundreds of school systems in all areas of the country. The court accepted challenges to plans in Louisville, Ky., where the schools were once racially segregated by law, and in Seattle, where segregation was never official but was widespread due to residential patterns.
Federal appeals courts upheld both plans, which offer students a choice of schools while considering race in deciding which transfers to allow. Variations of this approach are common and have been under legal attack around the country.
The Supreme Court’s decision to add the cases to the calendar for its next term, a step that was controversial within the court and unanticipated outside it, plunged the court into one of the country’s deepest constitutional debates.
The action came three years after the court upheld a racially conscious admissions plan at the University of Michigan Law School. Writing for the majority in that 5-4 decision, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor suggested that, at least in higher education, affirmative action might be necessary for another 25 years.
The new cases do not ask the court to revisit that decision, and the justices are unlikely to do so. But the implications are far-reaching nonetheless. The eventual decision, roughly a year from now, could not only set the court’s path in this area but could shape the climate in which government policies with respect to race will be debated.
One difference between the 2002 decision and the new cases is that while the University of Michigan sought to use affirmative action in order to achieve a measure of racial balance, the school districts are trying to maintain such a balance.
In December, with O’Connor still on the court, the justices turned down a challenge to a racially conscious student assignment plan in the public schools of Lynn, Mass. That plan, which a federal appeals court had upheld, is basically indistinguishable from the plans at issue in the new cases.
What has changed is the court’s membership, with the retirement in January of O’Connor and her replacement by Justice Samuel Alito.
One lawyer involved in the challenges to the Seattle and Louisville plans, Sharon Browne of the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, expressed the view that this change made the difference. “I think the writing’s on the wall, or at least I hope it is,” she said Monday.
The Seattle plan applies only to the city’s 10 high schools and considers race as one of many factors in approving a student’s preference. In Louisville, a white parent sued when a request to attend a certain kindergarten was denied because the school was trying to maintain enough blacks to meet policy.