Sanity in Washington!! WASHINGTON The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday issued what is likely to be a landmark opinion -- ruling that race cannot be a factor in the assignment of children to public schools.

Finally, a fair and just ruling that effectively stops the busing of
students just so they can goto school with ..another race.



By Bill Mears
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday
issued what is likely to be a landmark opinion -- ruling that race
cannot be a factor in the assignment of children to public schools.

The court struck down public school choice plans in Seattle,
Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky, concluding they relied on an
unconstitutional use of racial criteria, in a sharply worded pair of
cases reflecting the deep legal and social divide over the issue of
race and education.

A conservative majority led by Chief Justice John Roberts said other
means besides race considerations should be used to achieve diversity
in schools.

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop
discrimination on the basis of race," he wrote.

More than a half-century after the high court outlawed segregation in
public schools, the justices were deeply divided over one
controversial outgrowth of that decision: what role race should play,
if any, in assigning students to competitive spots in elementary and
secondary schools. (Full story)

The cases from Kentucky and Washington state revisit past disputes
over race and education, stemming from the landmark 1954 Brown v.
Board of Education decision.

"Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not
go to school based on color of their skin. The school districts in
these cases have not carried the heavy burden of demonstrating that we
should allow this once again -- even for very different reasons,"
Roberts wrote.

He was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony
Kennedy and Samuel Alito.

But Kennedy held out hope for school systems that use race that their
criteria might be allowed in some narrow circumstances.

Reading his concurring opinion from the bench, Kennedy said, "This
nation has a moral and ethical obligation to fulfill its historic
commitment to creating an integrated society that ensures equal
opportunity for all its children.

"A compelling interest exists in avoiding racial isolation, an
interest that a school district, in its discretion and expertise, may
choose to pursue."

He added, "Crude measures of this sort [as illustrated in this case]
threaten to reduce children to racial chits valued and traded
according to one school's supply and another's demand."

And Thomas said, "Simply putting students together under the same roof
does not necessarily mean that the students will learn together or
even interact. Furthermore, it is unclear whether increased
interracial contact improves racial attitudes and relations."

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said the ruling is "going to rank
with the great decisions in the court's history, starting with Brown
v. Board of Education in 1954."

"What this court said was even though only a few slots were determined
by race, that's too many. You just simply can't consider race in
deciding which school kids go to," Toobin said.

"The swing vote, Justice Kennedy, said maybe you could possibly do it
sometimes. But clearly the message of the court majority here is that
race is out as a consideration in school assignments. And a lot of
districts still use it and are considering using it, and they're going
to have to change."

Those on both sides of the issue, as well as the Bush administration,
had hoped the Supreme Court would clarify when and to what lengths
state and local officials can go to promote diversity in K-12
education.

In a landmark case three years ago, the justices affirmed racial
quotas were unconstitutional but offered a limited, but nonetheless
powerful endorsement of affirmative action in higher education. The
Supreme Court has now ruled that legal standard does not apply in a
K-12 public school setting.

While supporters on both sides of the issue seemed to agree classroom
diversity is an important goal, differences remain over how to
maintain it without the real or perceived consequence that some
families may be unfairly discriminated against or inconvenienced.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said the majority "reverses
course and reaches the wrong conclusion. In doing so, it distorts
precedent, it misapplies the relevant constitutional principles, it
announces legal rules that will obstruct efforts by state and local
governments to deal effectively with the growing resegregation of
public schools, it threatens to substitute for present calm a
disruptive round of race-related litigation."

Stevens was joined by Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and
Stephen Breyer.

The Seattle and Louisville plans are voluntary, introduced in the
years after integration of schools in many areas was managed by the
courts. They were not designed as remedial efforts to achieve
diversity, but to maintain it, as a reflection of the larger
communities' racial makeup.

During oral arguments in December, hundreds of demonstrators -- many
of them African-American college students -- marched and chanted
outside the court in support of the affirmative action plans. Some
carried signs such as "Equal education, not segregation."

Louisville-area schools endured decades of federal court oversight
after schools there were slow to integrate. When that oversight ended
in the late 1990s, county officials sought to maintain integration,
requiring that most public schools have at least 15 percent and no
more than 50 percent African-American enrollment. The idea was to
reflect the whole of Jefferson County, which is 60 percent white and
38 percent black. Officials say their plan reflects not only the need
for diversity but also the desire of parents for greater school
choice.

A white parent, Crystal Meredith, sued, saying her child was twice
denied the school nearest their home and had to endure a three-hour
bus ride to a facility that was not their top choice. Many African-
American parents raised similar concerns.

In Seattle, public schools often rely on a "tiebreaker." Under the
plan, begun in 1998, families can send their children to any school in
their district. When there are more applicants than spaces available,
and when a school is not considered "racially balanced," race is one
of several "integration tiebreakers" used to achieve diversity.

A group primarily of white parents from two neighborhoods sued in
2001, saying about 200 students were not admitted to the schools of
their choice, preventing many from attending facilities nearest to
their homes.

One school at the center of the controversy is Franklin High. Half of
its roughly 1,500 students are Asian-American, a third are African-
American, and about 7 percent are Hispanic. White enrollment dropped
from 23 percent in 2000 to 10 percent last year.

The Seattle diversity plan was suspended while the appeals worked
their way through the courts.

From the justices' comments during oral arguments and in the various
written opinions, it was clear the legal sticking point was whether
those diversity efforts represented a "compelling government
interest."

The Bush administration supported the parents bringing suit against
the choice plans. Solicitor General Paul Clement told the justices the
two plans at issue represented "very stark racial quotas." He argued
they were a "clear effort to get the schools to mimic the overall
community" and that other "race-neutral" means to achieve classroom
diversity should be used.