U.S. against using race in assignments
The Bush administration is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down Jefferson County Public Schools' policy of factoring in race when assigning students.
In a legal brief filed this week, U.S. government lawyers argued that the district's voluntary integration plan fails two key constitutional tests, amounts to an illegal racial quota and unfairly burdens some students.
"The county has not demonstrated any compelling interest to justify its use of race," said the brief, which argued the policy violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
About 35 percent of the 97,000 students in the district are black.
The Bush administration brief will be part of the case file the Supreme Court will consider when it hears the appeal of Crystal Meredith, a Louisville parent who challenged the district's student-assignment policies in 2003.
It will be argued in tandem with a similar school desegregation case in Seattle during the Supreme Court session that begins this fall.
It's expected to produce a landmark decision on whether schools can voluntarily consider students' race in school assignments to maintain diversity.
Teddy Gordon of Louisville, Meredith's lawyer, said the U.S. government position "carries a lot of weight" with the court and highlighted the case's importance.
School district lawyer Frank Mellen said that the "friend of the court" brief was simply one of many for the justices to consider, and that its reasoning is flawed.
"We disagree; it does satisfy (the legal tests)," he said.
Raoul Cunningham, president of the Louisville chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, called the Bush administration's stance "disappointing. But it's not surprising, given the administration's hands-off approach in enforcing civil-rights laws."
Francisco Negrón Jr., the general counsel of the National School Boards Association, criticized the brief in part because it focuses on the government's duty to remedy the effects of past legal segregation -- but not "de facto" segregation that stems from socioeconomic or housing patterns.
That "shows how out of touch the federal government is with the needs of local school districts," Negrón said.
Michael Casserly, director of the Council of the Great City Schools in Washington, D.C., called the administration's stance "counterproductive for school districts trying to maintain a diverse and desegregated environment." He said it marked "a giant step backward."
Jefferson County Public Schools was under court-ordered desegregation more than two decades before a federal judge ruled in 2000 that the district had eliminated the vestiges of past discrimination.
A year later, Jefferson County voluntarily adopted an integration plan that allows some student choice while seeking to keep black enrollment at between 15 percent and 50 percent of the population at most schools.
A 2004 study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University found that Kentucky schools are the most integrated in the nation, largely because Jefferson County has maintained a desegregation plan. A 2001 district survey found that more than 80 percent of parents approved of the policy.
Supporters say integrated schools benefit students socially and academically. Without the policy, they say, some schools would rapidly resegregate.
But critics argue the district policy constitutes a discriminatory quota and hasn't eliminated racial achievement gaps.
"I don't think it's justified at all, said Destiny Preston, a Jefferson County Public Schools parent.
So far, Jefferson County's policy has been upheld by a federal judge and a federal appeals court.
But the Bush administration brief, also signed by the U.S. solicitor general, the U.S. Department of Education's top lawyer and two Department of Justice attorneys, argues that Jefferson County's plan does not pass two legal tests the courts have set for government classifications.
Plans must be "narrowly tailored" to achieve their goal, but the district's policy unfairly burdens "innocent third parties" by denying some students the school of their choice based solely on race, the brief said. The guidelines are "indistinguishable from a quota," it said.
The plan must also promote a "compelling government interest," a requirement that the brief argues isn't met, partly because the district's past intentional discrimination has been remedied.
And the plan has "nothing approaching the holistic, individualized consideration" of students that the court found important when it upheld race-conscious admissions in its landmark 2003 decisions involving the University of Michigan, which sought to promote diversity.
"School districts have an unquestioned interest in reducing minority isolation through race-neutral means," the brief said. "But the solution to addressing racial imbalance in communities or student bodies is not to adopt race-conscious measures."
U.S. District Judge John Heyburn II previously ruled that the district can justify maintaining integrated schools because it improves education and tolerance, and that the way it does so doesn't harm any group, since all schools have basically the same funding and curriculum.
The Bush administration filed a similar brief taking the same position in the Seattle case.
That case involves a district policy that let students pick among high schools and then relied on tiebreaking criteria, including one that looks at race, to decide who gets into schools that have more applicants than openings. Seattle has since stopped using the system, but a parent group that sued has continued its appeals.
Each case will be argued separately, but they likely will be considered together, according to legal experts
In a legal brief filed this week, U.S. government lawyers argued that the district's voluntary integration plan fails two key constitutional tests, amounts to an illegal racial quota and unfairly burdens some students.
"The county has not demonstrated any compelling interest to justify its use of race," said the brief, which argued the policy violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
About 35 percent of the 97,000 students in the district are black.
The Bush administration brief will be part of the case file the Supreme Court will consider when it hears the appeal of Crystal Meredith, a Louisville parent who challenged the district's student-assignment policies in 2003.
It will be argued in tandem with a similar school desegregation case in Seattle during the Supreme Court session that begins this fall.
It's expected to produce a landmark decision on whether schools can voluntarily consider students' race in school assignments to maintain diversity.
Teddy Gordon of Louisville, Meredith's lawyer, said the U.S. government position "carries a lot of weight" with the court and highlighted the case's importance.
School district lawyer Frank Mellen said that the "friend of the court" brief was simply one of many for the justices to consider, and that its reasoning is flawed.
"We disagree; it does satisfy (the legal tests)," he said.
Raoul Cunningham, president of the Louisville chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, called the Bush administration's stance "disappointing. But it's not surprising, given the administration's hands-off approach in enforcing civil-rights laws."
Francisco Negrón Jr., the general counsel of the National School Boards Association, criticized the brief in part because it focuses on the government's duty to remedy the effects of past legal segregation -- but not "de facto" segregation that stems from socioeconomic or housing patterns.
That "shows how out of touch the federal government is with the needs of local school districts," Negrón said.
Michael Casserly, director of the Council of the Great City Schools in Washington, D.C., called the administration's stance "counterproductive for school districts trying to maintain a diverse and desegregated environment." He said it marked "a giant step backward."
Jefferson County Public Schools was under court-ordered desegregation more than two decades before a federal judge ruled in 2000 that the district had eliminated the vestiges of past discrimination.
A year later, Jefferson County voluntarily adopted an integration plan that allows some student choice while seeking to keep black enrollment at between 15 percent and 50 percent of the population at most schools.
A 2004 study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University found that Kentucky schools are the most integrated in the nation, largely because Jefferson County has maintained a desegregation plan. A 2001 district survey found that more than 80 percent of parents approved of the policy.
Supporters say integrated schools benefit students socially and academically. Without the policy, they say, some schools would rapidly resegregate.
But critics argue the district policy constitutes a discriminatory quota and hasn't eliminated racial achievement gaps.
"I don't think it's justified at all, said Destiny Preston, a Jefferson County Public Schools parent.
So far, Jefferson County's policy has been upheld by a federal judge and a federal appeals court.
But the Bush administration brief, also signed by the U.S. solicitor general, the U.S. Department of Education's top lawyer and two Department of Justice attorneys, argues that Jefferson County's plan does not pass two legal tests the courts have set for government classifications.
Plans must be "narrowly tailored" to achieve their goal, but the district's policy unfairly burdens "innocent third parties" by denying some students the school of their choice based solely on race, the brief said. The guidelines are "indistinguishable from a quota," it said.
The plan must also promote a "compelling government interest," a requirement that the brief argues isn't met, partly because the district's past intentional discrimination has been remedied.
And the plan has "nothing approaching the holistic, individualized consideration" of students that the court found important when it upheld race-conscious admissions in its landmark 2003 decisions involving the University of Michigan, which sought to promote diversity.
"School districts have an unquestioned interest in reducing minority isolation through race-neutral means," the brief said. "But the solution to addressing racial imbalance in communities or student bodies is not to adopt race-conscious measures."
U.S. District Judge John Heyburn II previously ruled that the district can justify maintaining integrated schools because it improves education and tolerance, and that the way it does so doesn't harm any group, since all schools have basically the same funding and curriculum.
The Bush administration filed a similar brief taking the same position in the Seattle case.
That case involves a district policy that let students pick among high schools and then relied on tiebreaking criteria, including one that looks at race, to decide who gets into schools that have more applicants than openings. Seattle has since stopped using the system, but a parent group that sued has continued its appeals.
Each case will be argued separately, but they likely will be considered together, according to legal experts