Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1
Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S. 701, also known as the PICS case, is a United States Supreme Court case which found it unconstitutional for a school district to use race as a factor in assigning students to schools in order to bring its racial composition in line with the composition of the district as a whole, unless it was remedying a prior history of de jure segregation. Chief Justice Roberts wrote in his plurality opinion that "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
At issue were efforts for voluntary school desegregation and integration in Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky. Both school districts voluntarily used racial classifications to achieve diversity and/or to avoid racial isolation through student assignment.
The Court recognized that seeking diversity and avoiding racial segregation in schools are compelling state interests. However, the Court struck down both school districts' assignment plans, finding that the plans were not sufficiently "narrowly tailored", a legal term that suggests that the means or method being employed is closely and narrowly tied to the ends.
The Parents Involved decision was a "split decision." The Court split 4–1–4 on key aspects of the case, with Justice Kennedy writing the swing vote opinion and agreeing with four Justices that the programs used by Seattle and Louisville did not pass constitutional muster, but Kennedy also found, along with four Justices, that compelling interests exist in avoiding racial isolation and promoting diversity. With respect to avoiding racial isolation, Kennedy wrote, "A compelling interest exists in avoiding racial isolation, an interest that a school district, in its discretion and expertise, may choose to pursue." He went on to say, "What the government is not permitted to do, absent a showing of necessity not made here, is to classify every student on the basis of race and to assign each of them to schools based on that classification."
According to Kennedy, "The cases here were argued upon the assumption, and come to us on the premise, that the discrimination in question did not result from de jure actions." That point was challenged in Justice Breyer's dissent. Justice Breyer questioned the utility "of looking simply to whether earlier school segregation was de jure or de facto in order to draw firm lines separating the constitutionally permissible from the constitutionally forbidden use of 'race-conscious' criteria." Justice Breyer noted, "No one here disputes that Louisville's segregation was de jure" and cites a 1956 memo where the Seattle School Board admitted its schools were de jure segregated as well. All of the dissenting Justices acknowledged that "the Constitution does not impose a duty to desegregate upon districts" if they have not practiced racial discrimination. However, the dissenters argued that the Constitution permits such desegregation even though it does not require it.
The 4–1–4 split makes PICS somewhat similar to the 1978 Bakke case, which held that affirmative action was unconstitutional in the case directly before the Court. Nonetheless, Bakke was used to uphold the validity of affirmative action programs that fostered diversity in higher education for a quarter of a century. To that end, in 2011, the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Justice jointly issued "Guidance on the Voluntary Use of Race to Achieve Diversity and Avoid Racial Isolation in Elementary and Secondary Schools", acknowledging the flexibility that school districts have in taking proactive steps to meet the compelling interests of promoting diversity and avoiding racial isolation within the parameters of current law.
Background
Seattle School District
The Seattle School District allowed students to apply to any high school in the District. Since certain schools often became oversubscribed when too many students chose them as their first choice, the District used a system of tiebreakers to decide which students would be admitted to the popular schools. The second most important tiebreaker was a racial factor intended to maintain racial diversity. If the racial demographics of any school's student body deviated by more than a predetermined number of percentage points from those of Seattle's total student population, the racial tiebreaker went into effect. At a particular school either whites or non-whites could be favored for admission depending on which race would bring the racial balance closer to the goal. No distinction was made between various categories of non-whites; Asian-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and African-Americans were all treated solely as "non-white" for purposes of the tiebreaker.A non-profit group, Parents Involved in Community Schools, sued the District, arguing that the racial tiebreaker violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Washington state law. The Western District of Washington dismissed the suit, upholding the tiebreaker. On appeal, a three-judge panel the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, but upon en banc rehearing the court affirmed the lower court decision.
Under the Supreme Court's precedents on racial classification in higher education, Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, race-based classifications must be directed toward a "compelling government interest" and must be "narrowly tailored" to that interest. Applying these precedents to K-12 education, the Circuit Court found that the tiebreaker scheme was not narrowly tailored. The District then petitioned for an en banc ruling by a panel of 11 Ninth Circuit judges. The en banc panel came to the opposite conclusion and upheld the tiebreaker. The majority ruled that the District had a compelling interest in maintaining racial diversity. Applying a test from Grutter, the Circuit Court also ruled that the tiebreaker plan was narrowly tailored, because 1) the District did not employ quotas, 2) the District had considered race-neutral alternatives, 3) the plan caused no undue harm to races, and 4) the plan had an ending point.
Jefferson County
This case is the last of a trilogy of cases against Jefferson County Public Schools, including McFarland v. Jefferson County Public Schools, and their use of race in assigning students to schools. The first case started in 1998 when five African American high school students sued JCPS to allow them to attend Central High School, a magnet school. The suit alleged that they were denied entrance because they were black. In 2000, Federal Judge John Heyburn, after finding that the JCPS school system did not need to be under a court-ordered desegregation policy, ruled that race could not be used for student assignment placement in the JCPS school system in regard to their magnet school programs. In 2004, he ruled the same for the traditional schools, but allowed the regular public schools to use race as the admission requirement. It is this part that went before the US Supreme Court as the other two cases were not appealed by JCPS.JCPS is the 26th largest school district in the United States. Students are assigned to school based on the race makeup of each school, no less than 15%, no more than 50%. Race is defined as Black and "Other". Asian, Hispanic, White, etc. are classified as "Other". Magnet and Traditional are exempt from this ratio per the 2000 and 2003 Court Order. Louisville's population is about 58% White; 38% Black, 2% Asian, 1.3% Hispanic.
Opinion of the Court
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion of the court as to Parts I, II, III-A and III-C.Part I recounted the background of the plans of the two school boards.
Part II dismissed the respondent's attempts to argue that Parents Involved lacks standing.
Part III A first reiterated that "when the government distributes burdens or benefits on the basis of individual racial classifications, that action is reviewed under strict scrutiny."
This is because "'racial classifications are simply too pernicious to permit any but the most exact connection between justification and classification.'" In order to survive strict scrutiny analysis, "a narrowly tailored plan" must be presented in order to achieve a "compelling government interest."
Roberts noted that prior Supreme Court cases had recognized two compelling interests for the use of race.
- First, "remedying the effects of past intentional discrimination."
- Second, "the interest in diversity in higher education", as upheld in Grutter v. Bollinger.
Part III C addressed the school districts' claim that "the way in which they have employed individual racial classifications is necessary to achieve their stated ends." Roberts replied that these classifications were clearly not necessary, since they had a "minimal effect" on student assignments. He contrasted this circumstance to Grutter, where "the consideration of race was viewed as indispensable" in more than tripling minority representation at the law school—from 4 to 14.5 percent. The districts have also failed to show that they considered methods other than explicit racial classifications to achieve their stated goals. Narrow tailoring requires "serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives", Grutter, supra, at 339, 123 S. Ct. 2325, 156 L. Ed. 2d 304, and yet in Seattle several alternative assignment plans—many of which would not have used express racial classifications—were rejected with little or no consideration. Jefferson County has failed to present any evidence that it considered alternatives, even though the district already claims that its goals are achieved primarily through means other than the racial classifications. By contrast, Croson notes that racial classifications are permitted only "as a last resort".
Part IV addressed Justice Breyer's dissent.