On the last day of the 2006-07 Term, the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the voluntary integration policies used by the Seattle and Louisville public schools.
As shouldn't be a surprise to anyone by now, the combined rulings in the cases were decided by the all-too-familiar 5-4 margin with Justice Kennedy concurring in the judgment by the conservative majority. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion, and in addition to Kennedy's, Justice Thomas wrote a separate concurrence as well (given his personal background, that could either be interesting or appalling, depending on what he has to say).
The opinions themselves, and relevant excerpts, should be available shortly and will be posted here in an update as soon as the justices finish reading from them. The dissents might actually take a while to get through. Update: The opinions are now available (warning: 185-page PDF). Smaller files of each separate opinion are linked at the bottom of the diary.)
For those who want to look into the backdrop to all this, here is the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund website with links to all the briefs submitted by parties and amici, as well as papers from the lower courts. And here is a useful summary of the two integration plans themselves.
From the initial post by Lyle Denniston over at SCOTUSblog:
The two school districts, Roberts wrote, have "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 Chief Justice, in his oral announcement of the ruling, insisted that the Court was remaining faithful to Brown v. Board of Education in barring public school districts from assigning students on the basis of race.
Here are some choice excerpts from the various opinions (more to follow as I go through this and other various analysts highlight their favorite portions).
From the conclusion of the majority opinion:
The parties and their amici debate which side is more faithful to the heritage of Brown, but the position of the plaintiffs in Brown was spelled out in their brief and could not have been clearer: [T]he Fourteenth Amendment prevents states from according differential treatment to American children on the basis of their color or race. [citations omitted] What do the racial classifications at issue here do, if not accord differential treatment on the basis of race? What do the racial classifications do in these cases, if not determine admission to a public school on a racial basis?
Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin. The school districts in these cases have not carried the heavy burden of demonstrating that we should allow this once again—even for very different reasons. For schools that never segregated on the basis of race, such as Seattle, or that have removed the vestiges of past segregation, such as Jefferson County, the way "to achieve a system of determining admission to the public schools on a nonracial basis," Brown II, 349 U.S., at 300-301, is to stop assigning students on a racial basis. The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.
In his very brief dissent, Justice Stevens concluded with this blistering remark:
The Court has changed significantly since it decided School Comm. of Boston in 1968 [a major busing case]. It was then more faithful to Brown and more respectful of our precedent than it is today. It is my firm conviction that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today's decision.
I think the technical term for that would be "bitchslap".
Here are separate PDF files of each portion of today's decision:
I conclude by suggesting that everyone read the final paragraphs of Breyer's dissent (at pp. 65-68, more than what I am quoting here), which reads very much like a political (rather than purely judicial) statement:
Finally, what of the hope and promise of Brown? For much of this Nation's history, the races remained divided. It was not long ago that people of different races drank from separate fountains, rode on separate buses, and studied in separate schools. In this Court's finest hour, Brown v. Board of Education challenged this history and helped to change it. For Brown held out a promise. It was a promise embodied in three Amendments designed to make citizens of slaves. It was the promise of true racial equality--not as a matter of fine words on paper, but as a matter of everyday life in the Nation's cities and schools. It was about the nature of a democracy that must work for all Americans. It sought one law, one Nation, one people, not simply as a matter of legal principle but in terms of how we actually live.
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The last half-century has witnessed great strides toward racial equality, but we have not yet realized the promise of Brown. To invalidate the plans under review is to threaten the promise of Brown. The plurality's position, I fear, would break that promise. This is a decision that the Court and the Nation will come to regret.
I must dissent.
Amen to that.