US Supreme Court rules school districts cannot consider race in integration plans

The decision in the consolidated cases of Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education is the most significant high court pronouncement on racial integration since 1954, when the Supreme Court held racially segregating public schools to be illegal in Brown v. School Board .

Yesterday’s decision immediately calls into question hundreds of integration plans currently in place throughout the United States. Because a school district cannot promote racial integration without taking its students’ racial characteristics into consideration, all school districts that do not immediately abandon their integration plans face the threat of protracted litigation.

The more long-term effect of the ruling will be to roll back school integration, which has already proven difficult to implement and maintain, reversing much of the democratic advance embodied in Brown and the concomitant civil rights struggles of the post-war era.