Parents Involved in Comm’ty Schools v. Seattle School Dist.

Opinion No. 05-908

Decided: 06/28/07

Summarized By: Norton T. Gappy

The United States Supreme Court has decided that assigning students to public schools based on race alone is not a compelling state interest when the school is not under a desegregation decree.

Respondents in this case are school districts that used racial categories to assign students to schools. In the first case, parents brought suit against the Seattle School District (Seattle) for denying their children admission to certain schools based on their race. That district classified students as “white” or “nonwhite.”  That case went back and forth between the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the
Washington Supreme Court, until the case went to the United States Supreme Court (the Court).  The second case was in Kentucky, where Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville (Jefferson) classified their students as “black” or “other.” A parent who could not enroll her child in the nearest school based on his race brought suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, which ruled that the schools asserted a compelling state interest. The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed. The Court then consolidated the two cases.  The Court first stated that both cases have standing because students in both school districts remain susceptible to school assignments based solely on race. The Court then applied strict scrutiny to hold that qualifying students for school assignments based on race alone was not a compelling state interest when the schools were not under a desegregation decree. (Seattle was never segregated or under a desegregation decree, and Jefferson was no longer under a desegregation decree) The cases were reversed and remanded.