The seattle and louisville school cases: There is no other way

Harvard Law Review

Volumn 121, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 158-183

  Wilkinson III, J Harvie ^a  

^a United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ^*

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EID: 38949143783     PISSN: 0017811X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Note

References (173)

1. 127 S. Ct. 2738 (2007).
2. Id. at 2789, 2797 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment).
3. Compare, e.g., Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 328 (2003) ("[W]e hold that the Law School has a compelling interest in attaining a diverse student body. The Law School's educational judgment that such diversity is essential to its educational mission is one to which we defer."), with Parents Involved,
4. S. Ct. at 2754 ("The present cases [involving elementary and secondary schools] are not governed by Grutter.").
5. Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
6. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Educ, 402 U.S. 1 (1971).
7. In Parents Involved, the parties seeking to achieve a greater degree of integration were the school districts. Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2746. In Brown and Swann, they were the plaintiff schoolchildren and their parents. Swann, 402 U.S. at 7;
8. Brown, 347 U.S. at 487.
9. Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2800 (Stevens, J., dissenting).
10. Id. at 2837 (Breyer, J., dissenting).
11. Editorial, Resegregation Now, N.Y. TIMES, June 29, 2007, at A26.
12. Eugene Robinson, Op-Ed., Standing in the Schoolhouse Door, WASH. POST, June 29, 2007, at A21.
13. The Louisville school district is approximately 34% black and 66% white. Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2749. The district's plan required "all nonmagnet schools to maintain a minimum black enrollment of 15%, and a maximum black enrollment of 50 percent."
14. Id. In Seattle District No. 1, the school population is approximately 41% white and 59% nonwhite.
15. Id. at 2747. That district's plan applied a racial tiebreaker when a school was oversubscribed and deviated more than ten (later fifteen) percentage points from the district's overall racial composition.
16. Id.
17. Many school districts do this already. See RICHARD D. KAHLENBERG, THE CENTURY FOUND. A NEW WAY ON SCHOOL INTEGRATION 2-4 & n.10, available at http://www.tcf.org/publications/education/ schoolintegration.pdf;
18. id. at 2 ("Today about forty American school districts, with some 2.5 million students, are known to employ socioeconomic status as a factor in student assignment.");
19. See also Amit R. Paley & Brigid Schulte, Court Ruling Likely to Further Segregate Schools, Educators Say, WASH. POST, June 30, 2007, at A4 (discussing a school district in Wake County, North Carolina, that utilizes socioeconomic status as a factor in student assignment).
20. See Webcast: Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Commencement Address at Georgetown University Law Center (May 21, 2006), available at http://www.law.georgetown.edu/webcast/eventDetail.cfm?eventID-144 ("If it is not necessary to decide more to dispose of the case, in my view, it is necessary not to decide more.");
21. See also Chief Justice Says His Goal Is More Consensus on Court, N.Y. TIMES, May 22, 2006, at A16.
22. See Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003).
23. Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2754.
24. Id. at 2757 (opinion of Roberts, C.J.).
25. Part IV, replying to Justice Breyer, took up nearly one-third of the opinion.
26. Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2768 (opinion of Roberts, C.J.).
27. Id. This statement wss a more forceful iteration of Judge Bea's comment from his dissenting opinion in the Ninth Circuit.
28. See Parents Involved in Cmty. Sch. v. Seattle Sch. Dist., No. 1, 426 F.3d 1162, 1222 (9th Cir. 2005) (en banc) (Bea, J., dissenting) ("The way to end racial discrimination is to stop discriminating by race.").
29. Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2791 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment).
30. Id. at 2834 (Breyer, J., dissenting).
31. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 559 (1896) (Harlan, J., dissenting).
32. Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978).
33. Id. at 407 (opinion of Blackmun, J.).
34. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003).
35. Id. at 343.
36. U.S. CONST, amend. XIV, § 1.
37. 6o U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857).
38. 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
39. Even the brevity, the diplomacy, and the unanimity of Brown failed unfortunately to spare it from scathing attacks. See J. HARVIE WILKINSON III, FROM BROWN TO BAKKE: THE SUPREME COURT AND SCHOOL INTEGRATION: 1954-1978, at 29-35 (1979).
40. See generally MICHAEL J. KLARMAN, FROM JIM CROW TO CIVIL RIGHTS (2004);
41. RICHARD KLUGER, SIMPLE JUSTICE (rev. and expanded ed. 2004).
42. Gonzalez v. Carhart, 127 S. Ct. 1610, 1634 (2007).
43. See, e.g., Martha Coakley & Constance L. Rudnick, Editorial, Abortion and the Court, PATRIOT LEDGER (Quincy, Mass.), June 20, 2007, at 16;
44. Ellen Goodman, Editorial, Father Knows Best, Our Paternal Supreme Court, PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE, Apr. 27, 2007, at B 7;
45. Deborah Lesvy, Op-Ed., PHILA. DAILY NEWS, May 8, 2007, at 19;
46. Erin Syth Madison, Letter to the Editor, Justice Kennedy's Paternalism Insulting, CAPITAL TIMES (Madison, Wis.), May 1, 2007, at A7;
47. Cheryl T. Sabel, Supreme Court Reveals Its Disdain for Women's Rights, MOBILE REG., May 27, 2007, at D2.
48. See J. HARVIE WILKINSON III, ONE NATION INDIVISIBLE: HOW ETHNIC SEPARATISM THREATENS AMERICA 85-96 (1997) (discussing dangers of an inaccessible racial experience).
49. See Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Educ, 476 U.S. 267, 276 (1986) (plurality opinion) ("Societal discrimination, without more, is too amorphous a basis for imposing a racially classified remedy. ... [A]s the basis for imposing discriminatory legal remedies that work against innocent people, societal discrimination is insufficient and over expansive.").
50. See Editorial, The Good News on Race, WALL ST. J., Apr. 8, 2002, at A26.
51. Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2817 (Breyer, J., dissenting) (quoting Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 327 (2003)).
52. Id. at 2836.
53. See Bd. of Educ. of Kiryas Joel Vill. Sch. Dist. v. Grumet, 512 U.S. 687, 728 (1994) (Kennedy, J., concurring) ("The danger of stigma and stirred animosities is no less acute for religious line-drawing than for racial.").
54. See Grutter, 539 U.S. at 349 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part);
55. Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244, 281 (2003) (Thomas, J., concurring);
56. Missouri v. Jenkins, 515 U.S. 70, 114 (1995) (Thomas, J., concurring);
57. United States v. Fordice, 505 U.S. 717, 745 (1992) (Thomas, J., concurring);
58. cf. Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200, 240 (1995) (Thomas, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment) (involving government contracts).
59. See Grutter, 539 U.S. at 349-50 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (first omission in original) (quoting Frederick Douglass, What the Black Man Wants: An Address Delivered in Boston, Massachusetts, on 26 January 1865, in 4 THE FREDERICK DOUGLASS PAPERS 59, 68 (John W. Blassingame & John R. McKivigan eds., 1991)).
60. See Jenkins, 515 U.S. at 120-22 (Thomas, J., concurring).
61. Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2779 n.14 (Thomas, J., concurring).
62. Id. at 2787.
63. See Jenkins, 515 U.S. at 119-20 (Thomas, J., concurring).
64. See Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2777 (Thomas, J., concurring) ("[I]n the period 1918-1923, Dunbar graduates earned fifteen degrees from Ivy League colleges, and ten degrees from Amherst, Williams, and Wesleyan." (alteration in original) (quoting THOMAS SOWELL, EDUCATION: ASSUMPTIONS VERSUS HISTORY 29 (1986)) (intemsl quotation marks omitted)).
65. Jenkins, 515 U.S. at 122 (Thomas, J., concurring).
66. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 350 (2003) (Thomas, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
67. Id. at 373.
68. A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Justice Clarence Thomas in Retrospect, 45 HASTINGS LJ. 1405, 1429 (1994).
69. Michael deHaven Newsom, Clarence Thomas, Victim? Perhaps, and Victimizer? Yes -A Study in Social and Racial Alienation from African-Americans, 48 ST. LOUIS U. L.J. 327, 412 (2004).
70. Kevin Merida & Michael A. Fletcher, Supreme Discomfort, WASH. POST MAG., Aug. 4, 2002, at W08.
71. Judy Peres, Judge Thomas Enters a Plea for Tolerance of His Views, CHI. TRIB., July 30, 1998, at 1.
72. Randall Kennedy, Justice Thomas and Racial Loyalty, AM. LAW., Sept. 1998, at 91 (criticizing allegations of "racial disloyalty" and the ostracism of Justice Thomas).
73. Clarence Thomas, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American: Searching for Real Solutions to Racial Hatred (July 29, 1998), in 64 VITAL SPEECHES OF THE DAY 708, 711-12 (1998).
74. Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2816-19 (Breyer, J., dissenting).
75. Id. at 2783-86 (Thomas, J., concurring).
76. Id. at 2787.
77. See Kennedy, supra note 54, at 91 (noting that Thomas is considered a "race traitor" by his most bitter detractors).
78. KLARMAN, supra note 31, at 298.
79. KLUGER, supra note 31, at 209.
80. JACK BASS, UNLIKELY HEROES 114-15 (1981).
81. See Laurence H. Tribe, The Curvature of Constitutional Space: What Lawyers Can Learn from Modern Physics, 103 HARV. L. REV. 1, 10 (1989) (noting that the merely "observing state may itself have played a major role in shaping the world it observes").
82. 109 U.S. 3 (1883).
83. Id. at 13-14. The Court also held that the legislation fell outside the scope of Congress's power under the Thirteenth Amendment because the discrimination at issue was not a badge or incident of slavery.
84. Id. at 20-25.
85. Id. at 25.
86. See, e.g., Jeffrey M. Jones, Race, Ideology, and Support for Affirmative Action, GALLUP POLL TUESDAY BRIEFING, Aug. 23, 2005 (finding that 72% of blacks favor affirmative action while 21% oppose).
87. Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2780 (Thomas, J., concurring).
88. Id. at 2793 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment).
89. See id. at 2788.
90. See id. at 2755-59, 2761-68 (opinion of Roberts, C.J.).
91. See Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188, 193 (1977);
92. see also Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 325 (2003) (quoting Marks, 430 U.S. at 193).
93. Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2792 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment).
94. Id. at 2793.
95. Grutter, 539 U.S. at 337.
96. Id. at 389 (Kennedy, J., dissenting).
97. See Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2788 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment);
98. Grutter, 539 U.S. at 387 (Kennedy, J., dissenting); Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003);
99. Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200 (1995);
100. City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469, 518 (1989) (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment).
101. Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2788 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment).
102. Id. at 2796.
103. See id. at 2794-96.
104. 438 U.S. 265, 269 (1978) (opinion of Powell, J.).
105. Id. at 317-18.
106. Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2791, 2794 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment).
107. Id. at 2793, 2797.
108. Id. at 2793.
109. Id. at 2794.
110. Id.
111. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 327 (2003) (citing Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339, 343-44 (1960)).
112. Id. at 329.
113. See Morse v. Frederick, 127 S. Ct. 2618, 2622 (2007) (majority opinion of Roberts, C.J.);
114. id. at 2636-38 (Alito, J., concurring, joined by Kennedy, J.);
115. id. at 2644-45 (Stevens, J., dissenting, joined by Souter and Ginsburg, JJ.).
116. See Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2789-90 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment).
117. Id. at 2789.
118. Id. at 2790.
119. For a thoughtful defense of Justice Powell's approach, both in 1978 and the present day, see John C. Jeffries, Jr., Bakke Revisited, 2003 SUP. CT. REV. 1, 18-22.
120. Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2791 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment).
121. Id. at 2792.
122. Press Release, U.S. Census Bureau News, Minority Population Tops 100 Million (May 17, 2007), available at http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/ www/releases/archives/population/010048.html.
123. U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Interim Projections by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin tbl.1a (Mar. 18, 2004), http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/ usinterimproj/natprojtaboia.pdf.
124. See Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2796-97 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment) (rejecting views that the use of race should be a permissible means on the ground of its efficiency).
125. Id. at 2800 (Stevens, J., dissenting).
126. See the marvelous tribute to the American flag in Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 437 (1989) (Stevens, J., dissenting).
127. 448 U.S. 448, 532 (1980) (Stevens, J., dissenting).
128. parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2752;
129. id. at 2758 (opinion of Roberts, C.J.).
130. Id. at 2798 n.4 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (emphasis omitted).
131. See id. at 2800-42 (Breyer, J., dissenting) (including two appendices).
132. Id. at 2834.
133. Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200, 227 (1995).
134. city of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469 (1989).
135. Id. at 528 (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment).
136. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 337 (2003).
137. See id. at 334 (quoting Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 317 (1978)).
138. At the heart of the two dominant jurisprudential interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment lies a basic tension between collective and individual rights. In Parents Involved, the dissent's decision to pursue a group perspective rather than an individual one creates a tension with the commitment to an intensely personal approach in such well-known decisions as Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003),
139. and Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
140. Those who embrace the groupcentric view of the Amendment in this case would resolve the tension through a distinction between public and private spheres of activity. Those who would embrace the individualized view in Parents Involved would resolve their own apparent conflict -preferring an individualized approach in this case but not in Lawrence or Roe -through a combination of text and history. That is to say, the words of the Fourteenth Amendment confer no general right of privacy but do confer a right on the part of the individual to be free from discrimination on the basis of race. The conflict may not be a comfortable one for either camp. (Of course, a pure libertarian or pure statist might perceive no tension at all.) But inasmuch as the meaning of our greatest constitutional amendments is to enhance personal dignity and freedom by securing certain rights from state infringement, it would be most unfortunate to forsake that purpose in the face of a plain textual commitment to it.
141. Croson, 488 U.S. at 525 (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment).
142. See Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2746, 2749, 2752.
143. Id. at 2820 (Breyer, J., dissenting).
144. Id. at 2824 (quoting Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U.S. 467, 495 (1992)) (internal quotation mark omitted).
145. Id.
146. 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
147. Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2826 (Breyer, J., dissenting).
148. Id. at 2833;
149. See also James E. Ryan, Voluntary Integration: Asking the Right Questions, 67 OHIO ST. L.J. 327, 338-39, 345 (2006).
150. Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2767 (opinion of Roberts, C.J.) (quoting City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469, 493 (1989) (plurality opinion)) (internal quotation mark omitted).
151. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 388 (2003) (Kennedy, J., dissenting).
152. Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2821, 2834, 2836 (Breyer, J., dissenting).
153. Id. at 2821, 2824, 2834, 2836.
154. Id. at 2835 (quoting Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717, 783 (1974) (Marshall, J., dissenting)) (internal quotation marks omitted).
155. Id. at 2822 (quoting Grutter, 539 U.S. at 330) (internal quotation msrk omitted).
156. Id. at 2836
157. (quoting id. at 2797 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment)).
158. Id. at 2810.
159. See, e.g., id. at 2802, 2810-11, 2813-14, 2823-24.
160. Id. at 2823 (emphasis omitted).
161. See id. at 2824.
162. Id. at 2820.
163. Id.
164. Id. st 2821 (quoting Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Educ., 402 U.S. 1, 16 (1971)).
165. See id. at 2817-19 (quoting Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 327 (2003)).
166. Grutter, 539 U.S. at 332.
167. See Parents Involved, 127 S. Ct. at 2822 (Breyer, J., dissenting).
168. See id. at 2831-33.
169. See id. at 2759-60 (majority opinion).
170. Id. at 2828 (Breyer, J., dissenting).
171. See id. at 2760 (majority opinion).
172. Id. at 2829 (Breyer, J., dissenting).
173. Id. at 2835-36.