Court to review race in high school admissions

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court said on
Monday it would decide whether race can be used as a
tie-breaking factor in public high school admissions, the first
time that President George W. Bush’s two appointees will rule
on a racial issue.

Taking up the politically charged issue in an election
year, the justices agreed to decide whether racial diversity
represented a compelling government interest that can justify
the use of race in selecting students for admission.

The high court was closely divided by a 5-4 vote in 2003,
the last time it confronted similar issues in a pair of rulings
that involved preferences for minorities in university
admissions decisions.

The public high school case from Seattle will test the
views of the court’s two newest members, Chief Justice John
Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, conservatives who were
appointed by Bush. The court also agreed to decide a second
case with similar issues involving the Louisville, Kentucky,
area.

As U.S. Justice Department lawyers in the early 1980s
during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, both Roberts and Alito
strongly opposed quotas and some affirmative action programs
designed to favor minorities.

Alito replaced the more moderate Justice Sandra Day
O’Connor, who wrote the majority opinion in 2003 that upheld
the University of Michigan’s program that favored minorities
who apply to its law school.

In the Seattle case, about 40 percent of the 46,000 public
school students are white and 60 percent are not. Students
state their preferences from among the 10 public high schools.

Since some schools are more popular and are oversubscribed,
the process involved the use of a “tiebreaker” system to decide
who gets in.

Admitted first are students who have a sibling at the
school. Next are students who bring the school in line with the
district’s overall racial mix. The next tiebreaker goes to
students who live the closest to the school.

A group of parents sued in 2000 and argued it was unfair
for the school district to consider race. A U.S. appeals court
disagreed and ruled by a 7-4 vote that the district has a
compelling interest to secure the educational and social
benefits of racial diversity.

Lawyers for the parents appealed to the Supreme Court. They
urged the justices to examine how the public high school
student’s constitutional rights to equal protection have been
affected by the Supreme Court’s rulings in 2003.

They said the Supreme Court had never decided a case
involving a school district’s voluntary use of race-based pupil
assignments for a purpose other than to remedy the effects of
past segregation.

The similar case from Kentucky involved racial guidelines
that keep black student enrollment at most schools between 15
and 50 percent to maintain diversity.

The high court will hear arguments in the two cases during
its upcoming term that begins in October, adding to its docket
that already contains another hot-button social issue dealing
with abortion.