July 2007 - School Law "Issue of the Month"

DUFF, WHITE & TURNER, L.L.C.

Attorneys And Counselors At Law

SCHOOL LAW

"ISSUE OF THE MONTH"

July 2007

U.S. SUPREME COURT DECIDES STUDENT ASSIGNMENT CASES

On June 28, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its highly anticipated opinion involving the constitutionality of student assignment plans implemented by two separate school districts in Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Kentucky. In the combined case of Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, a divided Court ruled 5 to 4 that the voluntary plans were unconstitutional because they considered individual student race. The Court's majority opinion concluded that the districts "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."

The Seattle School District (Seattle) has never been under a court-ordered desegregation plan, but voluntarily adopted the high school assignment plan at issue in 1998. The plan allowed incoming ninth graders to request the high school they wished to attend. If too many students chose a particular school, Seattle used a "tiebreaker" system, beginning with whether a student had a sibling at that school. Seattle then considered whether the racial composition of the school was within 10 percentage points of Seattle's overall white/nonwhite racial makeup and, if not, student race was considered in order to "bring the school into balance." If a further tiebreaker was needed, Seattle considered a student's geographic proximity to the school.

Parents Involved in Community Schools (PICS), a group of parents of students who had been denied assignment to their chosen school on the basis of their race, brought suit against Seattle alleging that the student assignment plan violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and Washington state law. A federal court granted judgment to Seattle, concluding that the tiebreaker plan was "narrowly tailored" to serve a "compelling government interest." PICS appealed, and after a series of appellate reviews, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court's ruling.

The Jefferson County School District in Louisville, Kentucky (Jefferson) had been under a court-ordered desegregation plan until 2000, when a federal court dissolved the order and granted Jefferson what is known as "unitary status." In 2001, Jefferson voluntarily adopted a student assignment plan that allowed parents to request that kindergarteners, first-graders and new students be assigned to an elementary school within a particular cluster of schools. Based on Jefferson's black student population (approximately 34%), Jefferson required all non-magnet schools to maintain a black student enrollment of no less than 15% and no more than 50%. If a requested assignment would result in the school's enrollment falling outside this percentage range, the student would not be assigned to the requested school.

Crystal Meredith (Meredith) sought to enroll her kindergarten-age son in the Jefferson elementary school closest to her home. Because the requested school was at capacity, Meredith's son was assigned to another school in the same cluster. Meredith's request that her son be transferred to a different school was denied on the basis of the impact on the school's racial makeup. Meredith brought suit, asserting that the Jefferson's student assignment plan violated the Equal Protection Clause. A federal court found that Jefferson's assignment plan was "narrowly tailored" to serve a "compelling government interest." The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court's decision in favor of Jefferson.

PICS and Meredith each sought and were granted review of their cases by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court combined the two cases to examine whether the two student assignment plans were "narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest." The Court majority concluded that the two districts failed to establish that their plans were "narrowly tailored" to accomplish their stated goals of racial diversity, racial integration, and avoidance of racial isolation. The Court noted that the assignment plans had not resulted in any significant shift in students between schools in either of the two districts, and further, that neither district had shown there were no other viable methods for assuring the stated goals. In reaching its decision, the Court considered its earlier decision in the case of Grutter v. Bollinger, a 2003 decision which concluded that racial classifications could be used for higher education admission decisions, but only as part of a broader assessment of diversity and not solely in an effort to achieve racial balance. In the present case, the two districts' efforts to meet their stated goals looked only at individual student race, and only in terms of white/nonwhite or black/other, not at diversity among people, cultures, ideas and viewpoints, as was the case in Grutter.

Four of the five justices in the Court majority also concluded that the assignment plans' stated goals did not amount to a "compelling governmental interest." The fifth justice in the majority, Justice Kennedy, disagreed on that point, however, and issued a separate opinion concluding thatracial diversity in schools is a "compelling governmental interest." In his opinion, Justice Kennedy listed a number of permissible ways for school districts to pursue the goal of racial diversity without classifying individual students by race. These include selection of school sites, drawing of attendance boundaries, allocation of program resources, and targeted recruiting. Justice Kennedy's view on the issue of racial diversity as an educational goal, coupled with the views of the four dissenting justices, provide important guidance for school districts in terms of race-conscious methods of pursuing racial diversity.

In light of this Supreme Court decision, school districts should carefully examine any voluntarily adopted policies or plans that utilize individual student race classifications. Districts under a court-ordered desegregation plan, however, should adhere to the court order, even if the order requires consideration of an individual student's race in certain situations such as student transfers, until such time as the district seeks and obtains unitary status.

If you have any questions about what course of action your district may need to pursue with regard to any voluntary plans or desegregation orders, please feel free to contact this firm.