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Opening the school door to resegregation

   In his 2005 confirmation hearings, Chief Justice John Roberts repeatedly praised the values of judicial humility and stability. He told concerned senators how much he respected precedent and reassured them that he considered the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which said “separate but equal” classrooms were unconstitutional, settled law. So much for all that. In his majority decision Roberts eagerly and facilely threw out a precedent he and his fellow conservatives didn’t like, mocking Brown by distorting its meaning and taking away its force and spirit.
   An example of the distortion is the way he twisted the words of the lawyers who argued Brown — that “No state has any authority under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens” — to mean something they didn’t mean. So said Judge Robert Carter, the man who made the preceding statement, after Thursday’s decision. “All that race was used for at that point in time [the 1950s] was to deny equal opportunity to black people. It’s to stand that argument on its head to use race the way they use it now.”
   Given the history of discrimination against blacks in this country, the court’s policy has been that they are a “suspect class” and that laws which may have a discriminatory effect on them deserve strict scrutiny. The court has also held that to invalidate a law or policy there doesn’t have to be a discriminatory intent, just a discriminatory effect.
   Now, essentially, the court has returned to the standard that the discrimination must be invidious. And if a school system sees a problem with segregated housing patterns and wants to make sure that its schools are integrated, a worthy and important goal, it cannot, at least if it takes race into consideration. That’s true even when they are taking very modest steps, as the school districts in Seattle and Louisville were doing in these cases — or when they are voluntarily continuing with a desegregation plan that was once court-ordered, as Louisville was doing.
   The decision isn’t as bad as it could have been. That’s because, in a concurring opinion, Judge Anthony Kennedy severely criticized his fellow justices for their “all-too-unyielding insistence that race cannot be a factor ...”; and for being “too dismissive” of the goals of “avoiding racial isolation” and addressing “the problem of de facto resegregation of schooling.”
   It’s true that even with the best attempts by school districts, many schools, especially in urban communities, are heavily segregated. This decision will only make things worse.
   There could be ways around it, such as a diversity index that takes into account poverty or language proficiency. School districts should be assertive and creative, rather than be cowed by the decision and the prospect of litigation, or use them as an excuse to ignore the problem of racial isolation.
   A bad decision would be a tragic one if it were read to mean that minority schools don’t have to get, or can’t get, the funding they need to provide a quality education.  

  
  
  

Segregation will ALWAYS exist....folks move from areas to other areas to  find folks with the same kind of culture.....the $$ is 'strangled' (show me the $$ trail) when 'less important' jobs 'prevail'----ya never see the unions attacking this problem----they just show up to collect......no the union does not put food on your table, get you a better education, or care if you are hurt......the union prefers you dont think or speak for yourself---in which case it may be better to actually get out of the area and move somewhere else to provide for yourself and family.......