Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District, No. 1

Opinion by Judge O’SCANNLAIN; Dissent by Judge GRABER

Following the Washington Supreme Court’s resolution of certified state-law questions, we must decide whether the use of race in determining which students will be admitted to oversubscribed high schools in Seattle, Washington, violates the federal Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

I

This opinion marks the fourth time a federal court has addressed the Seattle Public Schools’ use of an explicit “racial tiebreaker” in choosing which student applicants it will admit to the City’s most popular public high schools. See Parents Involved in Cmty. Schs. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 137 F.Supp.2d 1224 (2001) [Parents Involved I ], rev’d, 285 F.3d 1236 (9th Cir.2002) [Parents Involved II], withdrawn, 294 F.3d 1084 (9th Cir.2002), certifying questions, 294 F.3d 1085 (9th Cir. *954 2002) [Parents Involved III ]. We draw the following restatement of facts largely from Parents Involved II.

A

Seattle School District Number 1 (the “School District”) operates ten public high schools: Ballard, Chief Sealth, Cleveland, Franklin, Garfield, Ingraham, Nathan Hale, Rainier Beach, Roosevelt, and West Seattle. Four of these (Ballard,…

dissenting:

Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 , 74 S.Ct. 686 , 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954), required the integration of public schools “with all deliberate speed,” 349 U.S. 294, 301 , 75 S.Ct. 753 , 99 L.Ed. 1083 (1955), segregated schools remain in many communities, often as a result of segregated housing patterns. 1 Seattle has been no exception to the struggle to achieve and maintain integrated schools. After decades of more coercive efforts to counteract the effects of segregated housing patterns, Seattle School District No. 1 (“the District”) in 1998 adopted a high school assignment plan (“the Plan”) to maximize school choices for students and their families while continuing to ensure that integrated public schools are available to all. I respectfully dissent from my colleagues’ conclusion that the Plan is unconstitutional. 2 When understood in context, the Plan is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest in ensuring that all students in Seattle’s public high schools receive the educational benefits of an integrated learning environment.

The Supreme Court of the United States has never decided a case involving the consideration of race…