DIVERSITY

Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education,

Issues

Can school districts constitutionally use percentage-based range plans to assign students to public schools based on race in order to capture the benefits of educational diversity?

 

The Jefferson County Public School District in Jefferson County, Kentucky, requires that 15 to 50 percent of all students in each school be African-American. Petitioner Crystal Meredith claims that the district violated the Fourteenth Amendment when it rejected her application to enroll her son at a nearby school on the basis of race. To decide this case, the Supreme Court will have to determine whether racial diversity in K–12 public education is a compelling state interest and whether the district’s racial range mandate is narrowly tailored to further that interest. The decision will determine the extent to which schools are permitted to consider race in school assignment policies.

Questions as Framed for the Court by the Parties

  1. Should Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) and Regents of University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978) and Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003) be overturned and/or misapplied by the Respondent, the Jefferson County Board of Education to use race as the sole factor to assign students to the regular (non-traditional) schools in the Jefferson County Public Schools?
  2. Whether the race-conscious Student Assignment Plan with mechanical and inflexible quota systems of not less than 15% nor greater than 50% of African American students without individually or holistic review of any student, meets the Fourteenth Amendment requirement of the use of race which is a compelling interest narrowly tailored with strict scrutiny.
  3. Did the District Court abuse and/or exceed its remedial judicial authority in maintaining desegregative attractiveness in the Public Schools of Jefferson County, Kentucky?

Desegregation of Schools in Jefferson County

The backdrop for this case was set in 1954. In Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), the Supreme Court mandated the desegregation of public schools. Over subsequent decades, federal courts ordered school districts with institutionalized segregation plans to desegregate through a system of redistricting and busing. See Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Professors Sherri Lynn Johnson, Trevor Morrison, and Michael Heise for their insights into this case.

The Supreme Court will hear this case in tandem with a companion case, Parents Involved in Community Sch. v. Seattle Sch. District ,  which involves a student assignment plan that uses race as a tiebreaker to balance high schools that differ by more than 15 percent from the racial  make up  of the Seattle public school system.

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Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1*

Issues

Whether a school district’s decision to admit a student to a desegregated high school based on that student’s race, in an effort to achieve a racial balance within the school and therefore foster diversity in the educational setting, violates that student’s Equal Protection rights given by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Seattle School District No. 1 uses an “open choice” plan in which students rank their preferred schools. When a student’s first choice cannot be accommodated, the District uses race as a tiebreaker in order to achieve a desired racial balance in each individual school. Parents Involved in Community Schools, a non-profit organization, argues that the District’s policy amounts to unconstitutional racial balancing under the Supreme Court’s 2003 decisions in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) and Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003). The District, however, argues that its consideration of race is to further the compelling state interest of achieving the beneficial effects of racial diversity. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the District had a compelling state interest in achieving the benefits of racial diversity and that its plan was narrowly tailored. The Supreme Court will now review that determination in light of its Equal Protection decisions in Grutter and Gratz and is asked to decide whether racial diversity in high schools is a compelling state interest.

Questions as Framed for the Court by the Parties

  1. How are the Equal Protection rights of public high school students affected by the jurisprudence of Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), and Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003)?
  2. Is racial diversity a compelling interest that can justify the use of race in selecting students for admission to public high schools?
  3. May a school district that is not racially segregated and that normally permits a student to attend any high school of her choosing deny a child admission to her chosen school solely because of her race in an effort to achieve a desired racial balance in particular schools, or does such racial balancing violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

This case was brought by a non-profit organization, Parents Involved in Community Schools (“PICS”), representing parents of students in the Seattle School District (“District”) who objected to the school district’s use of race as a tiebreaker for admission to schools as violating the Equal Protection Clause.

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