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Supreme court rejects school integration policy

Given the makeup of the court, this decision was no surprise, but the reasoning is bizarre. John Roberts had the nerve to cite Brown v Board of Education in support of the majority decision, utterly reversing the intent of that landmark ruling. He also said a program directed to racial balance is prohibited by equal protection! This is from the Guardian

Supreme court rejects school integration policy

Richard Adams in Washington
Friday June 29, 2007

Guardian Unlimited
The US supreme court signalled its shift to the right yesterday in a decision that undermines a landmark legal ruling of the civil rights era that outlawed segregation in schools.

By a narrow 5-4 decision, the court ruled against two state school districts that used pupils’ race in making admissions decisions designed to promote racial diversity.

By disallowing racial diversity as a legal criteria, the court dealt a blow to the court’s famous Brown v Board of Education decision in 1954, that outlawed discrimination in government schools and led eventually to the dismantling of formal segregation in America’s south.

The majority included Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justice Samuel Alito, who were appointed to the country’s most powerful court by President Bush last year, confirming liberal fears that the court had taken a swing to the right.

The votes of the two new judges were joined by the conservative justices, Antonia Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The crucial swing vote was provided by Anthony Kennedy, who has increasingly identified his rulings with the other four.

Justice Roberts’s majority opinion echoed that of Brown versus Board of Education, stating: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race.”

The formal announcement of the ruling was followed by unusual scenes in the court. While the chief justice read out the majority opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer visibly grimaced.

Justice Breyer delivered the minority opinion, and included a stinging rebuke to the majority in a sign of the growing divide between liberal and conservative justices.

The decision, he said, “undermines Brown’s promise of integrated primary and secondary education that local communities have sought to make a reality.”

“This is a decision that the court, and the nation, will come to regret,” he added.

The court’s longest serving justice, 87-year-old John Paul Stevens, appointed by President Gerald Ford in 1975, also denounced the decision in unusually pointed remarks.

“There is a cruel irony in the chief justice’s reliance on our decision in Brown v Board of Education,” said Justice Stevens.

“It is my firm conviction that no member of the court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today’s decision,” he wrote.

It is a cruel irony, but standard practice for defenders of sexism and racism to stand logic on its head, reversing the intent of the language of those who fought sexism and racism. In a society that did not discriminate against women and minorities, there would be no need for affirmative action. These justices deny there is a problem with discrimination, so they see no need for affirmative action to remedy a problem that in their eyes has been solved. In their eyes, affirmative action is reverse discrimination, unfair to white males. This reasoning only serves to perpetuate white male privileges and keep women and minorities down, fighting over crumbs.

There is a way around this ruling, to substitute income for race as a criteria for affirmative action, but I predict this court will find a way to rule that unconstitutional as well.

This entry was posted by Aletha (Archived) on Saturday, June 30th, 2007 at 2:07 am

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