Legal Experts Await Supreme Court’s Ruling
On Race-Conscious Admissions in Public Schools
By Christina Asquith
NEWS ANALYSIS
Does a Black student improve educationally by sitting next to a White student in class? Should local school boards force their communities to integrate?
These controversial and compelling questions are among those being debated as the U.S. Supreme Court deliberates over the school desegregation plans in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle.
Those issues, however, are not likely to be the ones that will decide the court’s vote, which many observers expect will come down against the school districts.
For the five conservative justices who make up the majority of the court — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito Jr., Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — the primary question is whether the consideration of race in school assignments violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. In the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, the answer was “yes.” And so the justices will probably say the answer should be “yes” again today. The only difference is who is being helped and who is being harmed, say opponents of the school district desegregation plans.
