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. It was not the inequality of the facilities but the fact of legally separating children on the basis of race on which the Court relied to find a constitutional violation in 1954. Rather, this Court must assess independently the nature of the interest asserted and the evidence to support it in order to determine whether it qualifies as compelling under our precedents. 1986) (citing Swann and North Carolina Bd. Properly analyzed, though, these plans do not fall within either existing category of permissible race-based remediation. in No. Jefferson County has articulated a similar goal, phrasing its interest in terms of educating its students in a racially integrated environment. App. Some schools are more popular than others. By 1991, the board had concluded that assigning elementary school students to two or more schools during their elementary school years had proved educationally unsound and, if continued, would undermine Kentuckys newly adopted Education Reform Act. 1 See generally Seattle School Dist. . The plans initial busing requirements were extensive, involving the busing of 23,000 students and a transportation fleet that had to operate from early in the morning until late in the evening. For typical students, the plan meant busing for several years (several more years for typical black students than for typical white students). says nothing about the ultimate validity of any particular law. Id., at 229230 (internal quotation marks omitted). He concluded by saying that the current Court has greatly changed and that previously: "[I]t wasmore faithful to Brown and more respectful of our precedent than it is today. Grutter, 539 U. S., at 345 (Ginsburg, J., concurring). Held:The judgments are reversed, and the cases are remanded. Justice Kennedy sets forth two additional concerns related to narrow tailoring. In respect to Louisville, he says first that officials stated (1) that kindergarten assignments are not subject to the race-conscious guidelines, and (2) that the child at issue here was denied permission to attend the kindergarten he wanted because of those guidelines. Even today, two of our wisest federal judges have rejected such a wooden reading of the Equal Protection Clause in the context of school integration. The Chief Justice finally concludes his opinion by answering some of the issues raised by Justice Stephen Breyer in his dissent. 05908, at 7. Purportedly benign race-based decisionmaking suffers the same constitutional infirmity as invidious race-based decisionmaking. This Court has carved out a narrow exception to that general rule for cases in which a school district has a history of maintaining two sets of schools in a single school system deliberately operated to carry out a governmental policy to separate pupils in schools solely on the basis of race.[Footnote 4] See Swann, 402 U. S., at 56. The dissent appears to pin its interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause to current societal practice and expectations, deference to local officials, likely practical consequences, and reliance on previous statements from this and other courts. Student Choice and Project Renaissance, 1991 to 1996. 1 1991 Memorandum 14, 711 (Stipulated Exh. [Footnote 9] The Sixth Circuit affirmed in a per curiam opinion relying upon the reasoning of the District Court, concluding that a written opinion would serve no useful purpose. McFarland v. Jefferson Cty. See 448 U. S., at 539. B1, B5. The racial makeup of the school population amounted to 43% white, 24% black, and 23% Asian or Pacific Islander, with Hispanics and Native Americans making up the rest. The plans here are not tailored to achieving a degree of diversity necessary to realize the asserted educational benefits; instead the plans are tailored, in the words of Seattles Manager of Enrollment Planning, Technical Support, and Demographics, to the goal established by the school board of attain-ing a level of diversity within the schools that approximates the districts overall demographics. App. 6. This is a fatal flaw under the Courts existing precedent. Jenkins, supra, at 121 (Thomas, J., concurring); cf. Thus, more nonwhite students (107, 27, and 82, respectively) who selected one of these three schools as a top choice received placement at the school than would have been the case had race not been considered, and proximity been the next tiebreaker. Due to a variety of factorssome influenced by government, some notneighborhoods in our communities do not reflect the diversity of our Nation as a whole. 1. 05915, at 97. To School Committee of Boston? One will search Grutter in vain for similarly persuasive evidence of narrow tailoring as the school districts have presented here. of Oral Arg. Brief for Petitioner at 3536. However, if the Court decides that Grutter and Gratz apply in the secondary education context, school districts will still be able to use race as a factor, but in a different way than it is used in the Seattle School Districts plan: race could only be used as a plus in the evaluation of the applicants potential to contribute to the overall diversity of the school. See also Reply Brief for Appellees in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1953, No. 2001) (hereinafter Powell); Hallinan, Diversity Effects on Student Outcomes: Social Science Evidence, 59 Ohio St. L.J. . See Hallinan & Williams, Interracial Friendship Choices in Secondary Schools, 54 Am. Id. Can we really be sure that the racial theories that motivated Dred Scott and Plessy are a relic of the past or that future theories will be nothing but beneficent and progressive? See Bush v. Vera, 517 U. S. 952, 958 (1996) (plurality opinion) (Strict scrutiny does not apply merely because redistricting is performed with consciousness of race. See also Bakke, 438 U.S., at 312, 313, 98 S. Ct. 2733, 57 L. E. 2d 750 (opinion of Powell, J.).". The next Term, we accordingly stated that full compliance with Brown I required school districts to achieve a system of determining admission to the public schools on a nonracial basis. Brown II, 349 U. S., at 300301 (emphasis added). The district assigns students to nonmagnet schools in one of two ways: Parents of kindergartners, first-graders, and students new to the district may submit an application indicating a first and second choice among the schools within their cluster; students who do not submit such an application are assigned within the cluster by the district. United States v. Montgomery County Bd. Reg. The histories also make clear the futility of looking simply to whether earlier school segregation was de jure or de facto in order to draw firm lines separating the constitutionally permissible from the constitutionally forbidden use of race-conscious criteria. It is well established that when a governmental policy is subjected to strict scrutiny, the government has the burden of proving that racial classifications are narrowly tailored measures that further compelling governmental interests. Johnson, supra, at 505 (quoting Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peńa, 515 U. S. 200, 227 (1995)). R. Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black Americas Struggle for Equality, p. x (1975) (arguing that perhaps no other Supreme Court case has affected more directly the minds, hearts, and daily lives of so many Americans); Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education xxvii (2001) (identifying Brown as the most eagerly awaited and dramatic judicial decision of modern times). Today, almost 50 years later, attitudes toward race in this Nation have changed dramatically. For at least two reasons, however, it is wrong to place the remediation of segregation on the same plane as the remediation of racial imbalance. To make race matter now so that it might not matter later may entrench the very prejudices we seek to overcome. 693, 227 N.E.2d 729. All of those plans represent local efforts to bring about the kind of racially integrated education that Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954), long ago promisedefforts that this Court has repeatedly required, permitted, and encouraged local authorities to undertake. Andy suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia, but had made good progress with hands-on instruction, and his mother and middle school teachers thought that the smaller biotechnology program held the most promise for his continued success. The Jefferson County, Ky., district was subject to a desegregation decree until 2000, when the District Court dissolved the decree after finding that the district had eliminated the vestiges of prior segregation to the greatest extent practicable. 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. 05915, at 38. The Court in Grutter expressly articulated key limitations on 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 uphold race-based assignments in elementary and secondary schools. "But the district vigorously defends the constitutionality of its race-based program, and nowhere suggests that if this litigation is resolved in its favor it will not resume using race to assign students. Each respondent has failed to provide the necessary support for the proposition that there is no other way than individual racial classifications to avoid racial isolation in their school districts. In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978), relied on by the Court in Gratz, Justice Powell, in a plurality opinion, stated that preferring members of one group for no reasons other than race or ethnic origin is discrimination for its own sake, and therefore unlawful. ; see also post, at 61. In neither city did these prior attempts prove sufficient to achieve the citys integration goals. See Parts IA and IB, supra, at 618. 2 Memorandum of Agreement between Seattle School District No. When questioned about the close timing, Gordon stated that all the District had to do was "push a button" to change things over to a plan compliant with the Court's ruling. See, e.g., Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U. S. 899, 909910 (1996) ([A]n effort to alleviate the effects of societal discrimination is not a compelling interest); Croson, supra, at 498499; Wygant, 476 U. S., at 276 (plurality opinion) (Societal discrimination, without more, is too amorphous a basis for imposing a racially classified remedy); id., at 288 (OConnor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) ([A] governmental agencys interest in remedying societal discrimination, that is, discrimination not traceable to its own actions, cannot be deemed sufficiently compelling to pass constitutional muster). See Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356, 373374 (1886). Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. Second, since this Courts decision in Brown, the law has consistently and unequivocally approved of both voluntary and compulsory race-conscious measures to combat segregated schools. Accord, post, at 61 (At a minimum, the pluralitys views would threaten a surge of race-based litigation. 149 through 154 (Dec. 8, 2003). In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law). 2d 358, 359, 363, 370, 377 (WD Ky. 2000) (Hampton II). of Boston v. Board of Education, 352 Mass. 05915, at 159, 147. A 1987 Civil Rights Commission Study of 125 school districts in the Nation demonstrated the breadth and variety of desegregation plans: The [study] documents almost 300 desegregation plans that were implemented between 1961 and 1985. The first is the difference between de jure and de facto segregation; the second, the presumptive invalidity of a States use of racial classifications to differentiate its treatment of individuals. The districts also vary in their racial compositions and levels of segregation. 5. . But the Seattle schools had never been segregated by law; and the Kentucky schools, though previously segregated by law, had their desegregation decree dissolved by a District Court in 2000 on the finding the school district had "eliminated the vestiges associated with the former policy of segregation and its pernicious effects". A compelling interest exists in avoiding racial isolation, an interest that a school district, in its discretion and expertise, may choose to pursue. See Hallinan, Diversity Effects on Student Outcomes: Social Science Evidence, 59 Ohio St. L.J. v. Swann, 402 U. S. 43, 45 (1971), this Court, citing Swann, restated the point. ices Office, District Summaries 19992005, available at At the same time, transport from house to school involved extensive busing, with about half of all students attending a school other than the one closest to their home. in No. 3, p.1617 (It is by such practical considerations based on experience rather than by theoretical inconsistencies that the question of equal protection is to be answered (quoting Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. New York, 336 U. S. 110 (1949))); Brief for Appellees on Reargument in Davis v. County School Board, O.T. 1953, No. Id., at 462. . App. 1, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Parents_Involved_in_Community_Schools_v._Seattle_School_District_No._1&oldid=1137632337. 1 L. Kohn, Priority Shift: The Fate of Mandatory Busing for School Desegregation in Seattle and the Nation 2730, 32 (Mar. See, e.g., Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967) (marriage); New Orleans City Park Improvement Assn. 05915, at 31. In 1996, the school board adopted the present plan, which began in 1999. But the solutions mandated by these school districts must themselves be lawful. Eleven other States require local boards to deny transfers that are Brief for Respondent at 1617. The District Court granted summary judgment to the school district, finding that state law did not bar the districts use of the racial tiebreaker and that the plan survived strict scrutiny on the federal constitutional claim because it was narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest. First, the school districts plans serve compelling interests and are narrowly tailored on any reasonable definition of those terms. The only counter argument in the record is the Ninth Circuits resolution of the question. of Education and National Center for Education Statistics Common Core data). In many such instances, the contentious force of legal challenges to these classifications, meritorious or not, would displace earlier calm); post, at 65 (Indeed, the consequences of the approach the Court takes today are serious. ment one would expect to find if black achievement were contin-