Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District #1
Last week the United States Supreme Court issued a decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District #1. This decision is worthy of consideration. In looking at policies established in schools in Seattle and Louisville, Jefferson County, Kentucky, the Court rejected the formulas which used race as a classification in assigning students to particular schools.
The opinion is interesting in and of itself, but the fascinating thing about the opinion for Mississippians is that it implies that when desegregation decrees under which school districts have operated have been dissolved by the Court, action taken after the dissolution of the decree appears not to fall into the category of “remedying effects of past intentional discrimination”, thus these actions are no longer compelling governmental interests which demand strict scrutiny by courts.
Virtually all Mississippi public schools began operating under desegregation decrees in the late ’60s and early ’70s. While many school districts continue to operate under the desegregation decree (the Starkville School District, for instance), others have affirmatively sought dissolution of the decrees. When a desegregation decree is dissolved by the appropriate court, the court is indicating that the district has remedied effects of past intentional discrimination. Thus, the responsibility of strict scrutiny does not devolve on a court considering subsequent actions of the district.
Why have we been busing children for 50 years? And what happens to Brown v. Board of Education? The Equal Protection clause prevents states from according deferential treatment of American children on the basis of their color or race. This clause, as applied by the Warren Court in 1954, created the mandate for desegregation in public schools in America. This clause, as applied in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District #1, has mandated that race cannot be relied on as an arbiter of diversity in America’s public schools unless there is no method available other than individual racial classification to elicit and achieve the school district’s articulated policy.