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Page Number: 151.0

12  STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT 

AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

The  desegregation  cases  that  followed  Brown  confirm 
that  the  ultimate  goal  of  that  seminal  decision  was  to
achieve a system of integrated schools that ensured racial
equality of opportunity, not to impose a formalistic rule of
race-blindness.  In  Green  v.  School  Bd.  of  New  Kent  Cty., 
391 U. S. 430 (1968), for example, the Court held that the 
New Kent County School Board’s “freedom of choice” plan,
which allegedly allowed “every student, regardless of race, 
. . . ‘freely’ [to] choose the school he [would] attend,” was in-
sufficient to effectuate “the command of [Brown].”  Id., at 
437,  441–442.  That  command,  the  Court  explained,  was 
that schools dismantle “well-entrenched dual systems” and 
transition “to a unitary, nonracial system of public educa-
tion.”  Id., at 435–436.  That the board “opened the doors of 
the  former  ‘white’  school  to  [Black]  children  and  the
[‘Black’] school to white children” on a race-blind basis was 
not enough.  Id., at 437.  Passively eliminating race classi-
fications did not suffice when de facto segregation persisted. 
Id.,  at  440–442  (noting  that  85%  of  Black  children  in  the 
school system were still attending an all-Black school).  In-
stead, the board was “clearly charged with the affirmative
duty to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert 
to a unitary system in which racial discrimination would be 
eliminated root and branch.”  Id., at 437–438.  Affirmative 
steps, this Court held, are constitutionally necessary when
mere formal neutrality cannot achieve Brown’s promise of
racial equality.  See Green, 391 U. S., at 440–442; see also 
North  Carolina  Bd.  of  Ed.  v.  Swann,  402  U. S.  43,  45–46 
(1971)  (holding  that  North  Carolina  statute  that  forbade 
the use of race in school busing “exploits an apparently neu-
tral  form  to  control  school  assignment  plans  by  directing 
that  they  be  ‘colorblind’;  that  requirement,  against  the 
background of segregation, would render illusory the prom-
ise  of  Brown”);  Dayton  Bd.  of  Ed.  v.  Brinkman,  443  U. S. 
526, 538 (1979) (school board “had to do more than abandon