US court strikes racial diversity school programmes

Public schools cannot use race to decide where students attend classes, the US Supreme Court ruled on Thursday in a significant civil rights decision that may affect millions of students nation-wide.
By a 5-4 vote on the last day of its term, the court's conservative majority struck down voluntary programs adopted in Seattle and Louisville, Kentucky, to attain racial diversity in public school classrooms.
The ruling added to a string of decisions this term in which President George W. Bush's two appointees - Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito - have shifted the court sharply to the right on divisive social issues like abortion and student free-speech rights.
"The principle that racial balancing is not permitted is one of substance, not semantics," Roberts wrote for the majority. "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
The court's four liberal members said in a bitter dissent that the ruling threatened the Supreme Court's historic Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 that outlawed racial segregation in the nation's public schools.
"The last half century has witnessed great strides toward racial equality, but we have not yet realised the promise of Brown," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote. "This is a decision that the court and the nation will come to regret."
He said resegregation of schools is on the rise and that the ruling took away at least one tool that some districts now consider vital. The Supreme Court addressed similar issues in 2003 when it ruled by 5-4 that racial preferences can be used in university admission decisions. But since then, Alito replaced the author of that opinion, the more moderate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
Toberts and Alito were joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas, the court's only black member, who wrote a separate opinion emphasizing his view that the US Constitution is "colorblind."
It marked the first time the court had addressed a school district's voluntary use of race-based pupil assignments for a purpose other than to remedy the effects of past segregation.
In one case, Seattle used race as a tie-breaking factor in deciding who gets into certain public high schools when too many students seek admission.
School officials there aim for each school to have about 40 percent white students and 60 percent racial minorities, reflecting the city's overall racial composition.
In the other case, the Louisville area school district used similar racial guidelines to keep black student enrolment at most elementary, middle and high schools between 15 percent and 50 percent.
The court majority struck down both programs - a position the Bush administration had recommended. Democrats and civil rights groups denounced the decision. "Once again, the Roberts court has shown its willingness to erode core constitutional guarantees," New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, a 2008 Democratic presidential candidate, said.
Opponents of the programs applauded the ruling. "Now, an estimated 1,000 school districts around the country that are sending the wrong message about race to kids will have to stop," said Sharon Browne of Pacific Legal Foundation.
The ruling produced five separate opinions totalling more than 160 pages. In his opinion agreeing with parts of the majority ruling, Kennedy said public schools may use ways, other than racial classifications of students, to foster diversity, such as the drawing of school boundary lines.