Upcoming Supreme Court Cases Could Write Final Chapter in Brown v. Board of Education

On Dec. 4, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in two cases involving race-conscious school assignments, "Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education" and "Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1." The question central to both is whether school districts may use race as a factor in assigning students to public elementary and secondary schools in order to create or maintain racially integrated schools.

 "These are likely to be the two most important cases on the docket this term, and they could be the final chapter in the legacy of ‘Brown v. Board of Education' in American society," says Duke University professor Neil Siegel, who characterizes the plans in question as "voluntary integration plans" distinct from affirmative action programs.

 "These plans don't give members of one race a systematic advantage over members of another race in a competitive process of evaluation," says Siegel, an assistant professor of law and political science. "They involve assignments within school districts where everyone is guaranteed a spot. Assignments are competitive in the sense that people want certain schools, but the districts do not evaluate student merit, aptitude or talents in making assignments."

 With a student population in Jefferson County, Ky., that is 34 percent black and 60 percent white, the plan under review dictates that, with a few exceptions, all public schools in the district have no less than 15 percent and no more than 50 percent African-American students. "The district seeks to give all students the benefit of an education in a racially integrated school, and to maintain community commitment to the entire school system," Siegel says.

The Seattle plan under consideration is an "open choice" plan that aims to ensure that the racial distribution of each of the district's oversubscribed high schools roughly reflects the district's overall demographic of 60 percent minority and 40 percent white. Entering ninth graders can choose any high school, but if the school is oversubscribed and deemed to be racially imbalanced (meaning the makeup of the student body differs by more than 15 percent from the racial makeup of the school district as a whole), then a race-based tiebreaker is triggered, Siegel explains.

"This kind of race-consciousness has the potential to ameliorate a ‘balkanizing' status quo, one in which segregated communities produce segregated schools," he says. "One reason is the expressive message that the government sends when it uses race in ways that are limited and that avoid imposing significant burdens on individual students and families - -- the expressive message of integration. This has been called the ‘moral ideal of Brown,' the aspiration to be a country whose people learn and work together, not apart along racial and ethnic lines."