Did the Supreme Court Overturn Brown v. Board of Education?

In 1954, the United States Supreme Court issued the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling that racial segregation in the nation’s schools was illegal and ordered schools to end the practice. Earlier this summer, the court ruled that schools cannot consider race as a factor in efforts to maintain racial balance.

The school districts in Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Ky., had won lower court victories when their integration plans were challenged; the Supreme Court ruled against them. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s was the deciding vote in the 5-4 decision. This vote was more important than what meets the eye. We will return to this point shortly.

more insideHamline University law professor Joe Daly explained why this summer’s ruling does not overturn Brown v. Board of Education ruling: “A majority vote is when five of the justices agree in principle in the jurisprudence in the very basis of why they made a decision. A plurality vote is when five of the justices have … differing ways of looking at why they came to the same conclusion.

“Did this case overrule Brown v. Board of Education?” asked Daly. “My answer would be ‘no, it has not.’ Justice Kennedy’s swing vote to make it a plurality decision did not overrule the Brown decision.”

In short, if all five justices had reached their conclusion using the same reasoning, Brown v. Board of Education would be no more. As it is, however, the more recent ruling does call into question the desegregation plans already in place in schools across the country. Kennedy’s opinion, while leaving the door open to some integration practices, leaves the boundaries between what is allowable and what is not somewhat murky and is almost certain to invite more court challenges.

“Parts of the opinion by the Chief Justice imply an all-too-unyielding insistence that race cannot be a factor in instances when, in my view, it may be taken into account,” Kennedy’s opinion stated. “The plurality opinion is too dismissive of the legitimate interest government has in ensuring all people have equal opportunity regardless of their race.” What is not immediately clear is how the “legitimate government interest” should be defined.

With the new school year beginning this week, how will admission policies be affected in Twin Cities learning institutions?

Jill Cacy, assistant director of student placement in the St. Paul school district, said, “We have gotten away from using race as a determiner for selecting kids for school choice.We don’t use race and haven’t since 1999, so it really doesn’t have that big an impact in our day-to-day work in terms of placing students into schools.”

Margaret Weston, legal counsel for the Minneapolis public school system, said, “We do not use race as a criteria for placing students in any of our schools. Obviously, we will keep that in mind as we go forward, but we have not used race as a basis at all.”

Hamline University in St. Paul actively solicits diverse groups of prospective students. With that in mind, we asked Steve Bjork, associate vice president for admissions and career services, whether Hamline’s admissions practices would be affected. His answer was that the ruling would not hamper recruitment or admissions policies at all. “What we try to do is build the largest diverse pool of applicants that we can, and then from that, admit students based on their academic preparation,” Bjork said.

The University of Minnesota did not respond to requests for information by our press deadline.

Cross-posted at the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder