Bush asks court to halt ‘racial balancing’ programs

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration has urged the Supreme Court to strike down voluntary school-integration programs that exclude some students because of their race.

Administration lawyers filed briefs this week in pending cases from Seattle and Louisville, Ky., on the side of white parents who are challenging “racial balancing” programs as unconstitutional.

The parents say the integration guidelines amount to racial discrimination and violate the Constitution’s guarantee of the equal protection of the laws. They lost in the lower courts, but the Supreme Court will hear their appeals in the fall.

In the briefs, Solicitor General Paul D. Clement urged the justices to rule that “the use of a racial classification to achieve a desired racial balance in public schools” is just as unconstitutional as old-fashioned racial segregation.

Louisville, which had a history of segregated schools, adopted integration guidelines in 2001 that said the enrollment in each elementary school should be at least 15 percent, but no more than 50 percent, black. In Meredith v. Jefferson County, Crystal Meredith, a white parent, sued when her son was prevented from attending the elementary school nearest his home.

The Seattle school board adopted integration guidelines for its 10 high schools, beginning with the 1998-99 school year. Officials said they hoped to preserve racial diversity and prevent segregation in the schools that mirrored racially segregated housing patterns.

In the case of Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle, a group of parents sued to challenge the guidelines after their children were denied enrollment in their first-choice high school because of race or ethnicity.

In the briefs filed this week, Clement urged the high court to resolve a lingering dispute over the meaning of the court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education. That 1954 ruling declared that segregated schools were “inherently unequal.”

For decades afterward, school districts across the nation adopted policies to bring about racial integration in their classrooms: Some set enrollment guidelines that prevented schools from becoming nearly all black or all white, while others have used magnet programs that consider a student’s race.

Clement, the Bush administration’s chief lawyer before the high court, said such programs should be struck down whenever they involve the use of a “racial classification” to decide who may enroll. The justices are expected to hear oral arguments in December.