HARTFORD Conn.
A new U.S. Supreme Court ruling could affect a decades-old Connecticut law requiring individual schools to reflect the demographics of their communities, state officials said Thursday.
The high court rejected integration plans in the Louisville, Ky., and Seattle school districts Thursday. The 5-4 ruling also curtails the practice of taking students’ race into account when deciding which schools they will attend.
Connecticut officials said Thursday they were reviewing whether the ruling will affect a 1969 state law that requires districts to correct racial imbalances at schools within their borders.
“This ruling raises as many questions as it answers in terms of its effect on our state laws,” Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said. “We’re continuing our review intensively and in depth, because there may be other ramifications for this law and other legal issues.”
The Supreme Court’s decision Thursday said that taking students’ race into account when assigning them to particular schools violates Constitutional guarantees of equal protection.
However, the ruling leaves the door open for the limited use of race to achieve diversity in schools an important codicil under which Connecticut’s racial imbalance law might be remain acceptable, the state officials said.
