Seattle Schools: Court's wrong turn

In an opinion replete with willful naiveté, rewriting of history and, as dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, "cruel irony," the U.S. Supreme Court has effectively declared the end of using race to integrate racially segregated schools here, in Louisville, Ky., and in much of the country. Since the Bush-stacked majority will likely rule the court for some time, schools, local governments and parents will have to employ the greatest creativity to continue efforts toward the civil right of good, diverse education for all.

There are, we choose to hope, the hints of a saving grace in the prevailing plurality opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts. No matter how much Roberts ignores fundamental realities about American society and the need for local officials to make decisions based on their understanding of conditions, the ideals he asserts can serve as something of a unifying factor. Racial discrimination, as he says, is wrong.

We would love to live in a world in which scattered, partial, often individual efforts at remedies had removed America as meaningfully as the court seems to believe from its days of comprehensive, governmental segregation. We have made progress in jobs, education and housing since the court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision began to unravel legal discrimination. But, wishes aside, the intervening time has hardly undone the effects of three centuries of legal arrangements, such as slavery and racially restrictive housing covenants, that violated every imaginable human right for minorities, especially African Americans.

Putting conservative ideology over reality, Roberts' opinion relies heavily on legalistic formulations when discussing Seattle Public Schools' diversity efforts. A dissent by Justice Stephen Breyer better details local conditions over time and shows the need to remedy a history of unequal opportunity and classrooms that were anything but diverse. Ideological blinders allow the majority to make much of the lack of any formal court decision requiring Seattle to take integration steps. In fact, the district had settled legal challenges. On the high court, where voluntarism otherwise might find favor, it's strange that a ruling undoes voluntary efforts to right wrongs.

The resegregation of some Seattle schools is part of a larger national trend. "Today," Breyer writes in an unblinking look at national realities, "more than one in six black children attends a school that is 99-100 percent minority." Even Justice Anthony Kennedy, who largely concurred with the Roberts opinion, warns that the majority may be requiring schools to ignore resegregation.

We implore district officials and parents to seek out options. Cities might adopt policies favoring affordable housing in absolutely every neighborhood. School boards, for instance, might use income rather than race as tiebreakers to preserve healthy amounts of both parental choice and diversity. They should certainly ensure that spending is redistributed to ensure equality of opportunity for all students.

Lemonade must be made of lemons. Saying the decision threatens Brown's promises, Breyer writes, "This is a decision that the court and the nation will come to regret."