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Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1
Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, a case decided by the United States Supreme Court in 2007, established the Seattle School District's racial tiebreaker plan as unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It established that the decisions in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger applied to public high school students.[1][2]
Background
The Seattle School District allowed students to apply to any high school. Because the schools had limited capacity, the district had established a tiebreaker admissions system. In the event that too many students applied to a single high school, a series of tiebreakers would be used to determine admissions. Of the factors considered in the tiebreaker, race was the second most important, as the district sought to promote racial diversity in the schools. This tiebreaker went into effect when a particular school had a racial demographic deviating from the overall racial demographic of the public school population. Applicants of the race that would bring the population closer to this balance were given priority.[3][4]
Parents Involved in Community Schools, a nonprofit group, sued the district on June 18, 2000. They argued that the racial tiebreaker violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Washington state law. The district court dismissed the case, upholding the racial tiebreaker as constitutional. In June 2005, the decision was reversed in the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. On further appeal, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear the case on June 5, 2006.[3][5][6]
Meredith v. Jefferson County
- See also: Meredith v. Jefferson County
The Jefferson County school system in Kentucky maintained a system of racial balance of the public school population, with schools not allowed to have an enrollment of black students less than 15 percent or greater than 50 percent of its student population. A group of parents sued the school district, arguing that the system violated the Equal Protection Clause. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case on June 5, 2006. It was argued and decided alongside Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1.[7]
Decision
On June 28, 2007, the Supreme Court declared the tiebreaker plan unconstitutional. The majority held that the system of dividing the students into two groups and not giving individualized consideration did not fit the strict scrutiny requirements for consideration of race in admissions. While the majority acknowledged that the Supreme Court had upheld racial diversity as a compelling government interest before, it held that the facts of the case did not mean this case was governed under the decision in Grutter v. Bollinger. The majority opinion was delivered by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy, and Samuel Alito.[1][3][4]
Roberts wrote the following for the majority opinion:[1]
| “ | The principle that racial balancing is not permitted is one of substance, not semantics. Racial balancing is not transformed from “patently unconstitutional” to a compelling state interest simply by relabeling it “racial diversity.”[8] | ” |
| —Chief Justice John Roberts | ||
Justice Stephen Breyer dissented, joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The dissent argued that the majority opinion ignored the context of the case and that, "it announces legal rules that will obstruct efforts by state and local governments to deal effectively with the growing resegregation of public schools, it threatens to substitute for present calm a disruptive round of race-related litigation, and it undermines Brown’s promise of integrated primary and secondary education that local communities have sought to make a reality."[9]
See also
- Grutter v. Bollinger
- Meredith v. Jefferson County
- Affirmative action in Washington
- Affirmative action in Kentucky
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Justia.com, "Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1," accessed July 16, 2015
- ↑ Oyez.org, "PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS v. SEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1," accessed July 16, 2015
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedoyez - ↑ 4.0 4.1 PBS, "How the Supreme Court Shaped School Segregation," July 15, 2014
- ↑ The New York Times", "Justices Limit the Use of Race in School Plans for Integration," June 29, 2007
- ↑ law.berkeley.edu, "The Story of Parents Involved in Community Schools," accessed July 20, 2015
- ↑ Oyez.org, "MEREDITH v. JEFFERSON COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION," accessed July 15, 2015
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ law.cornell.edu, " PARENTS INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY SCHOOLS v.SEATTLE SCHOOL DIST. NO. 1," accessed Juley 15, 2015
