In Landmark Ruling, Supreme Court Strikes Down Voluntary Desegregation in Public Schools

In a landmark decision Thursday, the Supreme Court voted against voluntary desegregation plans. The narrow 5-4 ruling rejected using race as a criteria for assigning students for different schools. It rejected integration plans for school districts in Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Kentucky and supported white parents from both cities whose children had been denied admission to schools nearest to them because of their diversity policies.

The majority decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts says: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Dissenting Supreme Court judges criticized the decision as betraying the promise of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that outlawed segregation in public schools. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote: “There is a cruel irony in the Chief Justice's reliance on our decision in Brown v. Board of Education... The Chief Justice rewrites the history of one of this Court's most important decisions.” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote: “This is a decision that the Court and the nation will come to regret.”

Ted Shaw joins us now from Washington, DC.

Ted Shaw . Director of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund. Four years ago he was lead counsel for a coalition of African American and Latino students in the University of Michigan undergraduate affirmative action admissions case. That year the Supreme Court ruled in favor of diversity as a compelling state interest and recognized race as one factor in the admissions process.

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