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IN THIS ISSUE

Table of Contents

Letter from the President: Connecting the Dots

Notes on the Right: The Enduring Importance of Strategy

EJS December 8 Fundraiser Features Harriet Tubman Jazz Oratorio

Vote Yes on 89: 'Clean Money' Initiative

First California, Now Michigan: Putting Race up for a Vote

Supreme Court to Revisit Brown v. Board in School Cases

EJS, CTA Look at Unconscious Bias in Schools

U.N. Committee Criticizes Racism in U.S.

New Voting Rights Act Under Attack

A First Look at the Roberts Court

Latina/o Law Student Symposium

Foundations Support EJS Efforts to Balance Racial Justice Debate

Farewell from our Irmas Fellow

Staff News and Notes

Newsletter Editors:
Elaine Elinson
Miguel Gavaldón

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Supreme Court to Revisit Brown v. Board of Education in School Integration Cases

By Kimberly Thomas Rapp

In the second term of the Roberts Court, the United States Supreme Court will review two voluntary school integration plans that have far-reaching implications for the future of the nation’s schools.  “Although the cases originate in two different regions of the country, Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Kentucky, they share a common issue,” explained EJS President Eva Paterson.   “In both cases, the U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to applaud or vilify school districts for taking steps to ensure that our children are not educated in racial isolation.  School districts must be free to follow in the learned footprints of Brown v. Board of Education towards equalized learning opportunities for all students within their districts,” she added.

The Equal Justice Society is part of the Caucus for Structural Equity that filed an amicus brief supporting the local school districts’ efforts to promote diverse schools and avoid a return to racial segregation.  The Caucus is a collaboration of leading legal and social science scholars and policy oriented non-profit organizations with expertise in the structural and institutional dynamics underlying racial exclusions and formulating policies that promote racial equity.

Our amicus brief urges the Court to uphold the constitutionality of the efforts of local districts to eradicate segregation and preserve integration.  The Caucus highlights that stare decisis (a legal doctrine of following the rules or principles of previous judicial decisions) requires the Court to reject ill-conceived arguments by petitioners that Brown requires districts to employ a “colorblind” approach to racial integration.  We argue that Brown and a long line of Supreme Court precedents recognize the need for school districts to “use limited race-conscious means to achieve and preserve integration… [because] [w]here the goal [i]s integration, color conscious means [a]re not only constitutional but necessary….”  

More than fifty years ago, in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools is inherently harmful.  Since that time, social policies and other Court decisions have supported actions taken by school boards towards preserving integration and equalizing learning opportunities for all of its students.

In 2001, the school board in the Louisville case, Meredith v. Jefferson City Board of Education (No. 05-915), developed a school assignment plan to maintain integrated schools after being released from a federal court decree that mandated an integrated school system for the last twenty-five years.  The plan required schools to have an enrollment of black students between fifteen percent (15%) and fifty percent (50%) of the school population.  Prior to consideration of a student’s race, a myriad of other factors, such as place of residence, school capacity, program popularity, random draw, and the student’s choice, had a significant effect on the student’s school assignment.  A student’s race could determine whether the student received their first, second or third school choice.

Since 1998, the school district in the Seattle matter, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District (No. 05-908), employed an “open choice” policy to assign students to its ten public high schools.  Under this policy, students and parents were free to choose their preferred high school.  However, since certain high schools were more popular than others, the district implemented a tiebreaker plan to determine which students would get priority assignments in popular schools.  First, the district admitted students with siblings already attending the school.  Next, a student’s race was considered only if the school’s racial makeup deviated more than 15% in either direction from the district wide average of 60% students of color and 40% white students.  In that instance, the student was admitted if the student’s race would help bring the school close to the district average.  A third tiebreaker implemented made admittance determinations based on geographic proximity to the school and a random lottery was employed as a final option.

“These community programs do not violate the Fourteenth Amendment; on the contrary they fulfill the promise of the Constitution for the students in their districts,” said Paterson.  “The purpose of the Equal Protection Clause is to bring us together as a nation of diverse peoples – that’s exactly what the Louisville and Seattle parents and educators are doing:  providing a vision of unity and cooperation for their children that we can all be proud of.”

On Monday, December 4,  the Court is expected to hear oral argument on whether these school assignment policies are constitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

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