NAACP officials express disappointment that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) will side with students who claim they were unconstitutionally discriminated against by public school system assignment plans in Seattle and Louisville because the plans took race into account in assigning students to schools.
The two school district plans, which sought to foster integration within schools, will be reviewed this fall by the U.S. Supreme Court. U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez recently informed NAACP President and CEO Bruce S. Gordon that the DOJ will submit a "friend of the court" brief supporting the challengers of the voluntary affirmative action plans.
"The Louisville and Seattle plans fully comply with the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because they ensure that poor and minority students are not confined to under-resourced schools," Gordon said. "National policymakers simply must summon the will to correctly address the systemic effects of race in communities across our nation, including in public schools."
NAACP General Counsel Dennis Courtland Hayes observed that the Bush Administration should acknowledge the compelling interest in school integration. "The DOJ and administration have missed yet another opportunity and have chosen to align themselves with a negative message of division and separation based on race," Hayes said. "Opponents of integration and diversity in public schools have gone down in defeat each time they have raised a challenge."
Louisville, a majority-white school district, has worked for more than 35 years to end segregation and to prevent black students from ending up in racially segregated, isolated, inferior schools. In Louisville, where 34 percent of the school age population is black, no single school including the magnet schools can be more than 50 percent black or less than 15 percent black.
The public school district in Seattle has growing Latino and Asian populations alongside a small black community. Local residents voluntarily instituted an integration program to ensure that its high schools reflect the diverse racial and ethnic mix of the city. Under Seattle's system, students are allowed to choose the high schools they prefer to attend.
When a high school has more applicants than classroom seats, the district uses a series of tiebreakers, including race, to decide who gets in. The 9th circuit court previously upheld Seattle's right to use race as one of the deciding factors.
Both cases are challenges to school integration plans that are based on the fundamental principles of Brown v. Board of Education decision that ended separate but equal provisions across the country and mandated integration of public schools. If these cases are heard by the Supreme Court and struck down, the legality of Brown v. Board of Education would effectively be struck down as well.
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