Opinion ID: 145702
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Direct Precedent

Text: Two additional precedents more directly related to the plans here at issue reinforce my conclusion. The first consists of the District Court determination in the Louisville case when it dissolved its desegregation order that there was overwhelming evidence of the Board's good faith compliance with the desegregation Decree and its underlying purposes, indeed that the Board had treated the ideal of an integrated system as much more than a legal obligationthey consider it a positive, desirable policy and an essential element of any well-rounded public school education. Hampton II, 102 F. Supp. 2d, at 370. When the court made this determination in 2000, it did so in the context of the Louisville desegregation plan that the board had adopted in 1996. That plan, which took effect before 1996, is the very plan that in all relevant respects is in effect now and is the subject of the present challenge. No one claims that (the relevant portion of) Louisville's plan was unlawful in 1996 when Louisville adopted it. To the contrary, there is every reason to believe that it represented part of an effort to implement the 1978 desegregation order. But if the plan was lawful when it was first adopted and if it was lawful the day before the District Court dissolved its order, how can the plurality now suggest that it became unlawful the following day? Is it conceivable that the Constitution, implemented through a court desegregation order, could permit (perhaps require ) the district to make use of a race-conscious plan the day before the order was dissolved and then forbid the district to use the identical plan the day after? See id., at 380 (The very analysis for dissolving desegregation decrees supports continued maintenance of a desegregated system as a compelling state interest). The Equal Protection Clause is not incoherent. And federal courts would rightly hesitate to find unitary status if the consequences of the ruling were so dramatically disruptive. Second, Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 458 U. S. 457, is directly on point. That case involves the original Seattle Plan, a more heavily race-conscious predecessor of the very plan now before us. In Seattle School Dist. No. 1, this Court struck down a state referendum that effectively barred implementation of Seattle's desegregation plan and burden[ed] all future attempts to integrate Washington schools in districts throughout the State. Id., at 462-463, 483. Because the referendum would have prohibited the adoption of a school-integration plan that involved mandatory busing, and because it would have imposed a special burden on school integration plans (plans that sought to integrate previously segregated schools), the Court found it unconstitutional. Id., at 483-487. In reaching this conclusion, the Court did not directly address the constitutional merits of the underlying Seattle plan. But it explicitly cited Swann 's statement that the Constitution permitted a local district to adopt such a plan. 458 U. S., at 472, n. 15. It also cited to Justice Powell's opinion in Bakke, approving of the limited use of race-conscious criteria in a university-admissions affirmative action case. 458 U. S., at 472, n. 15 . In addition, the Court stated that [a]ttending an ethnically diverse school, id., at 473, could help prepare minority children for citizenship in our pluralistic society, hope-fully teaching members of the racial majority to live in harmony and mutual respect with children of minority heritage. Ibid. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). It is difficult to believe that the Court that held unconstitutional a referendum that would have interfered with the implementation of this plan thought that the integration plan it sought to preserve was itself an unconstitutional plan. And if Seattle School Dist. No. 1 is premised upon the constitutionality of the original Seattle Plan, it is equally premised upon the constitutionality of the present plan, for the present plan is the Seattle Plan, modified only insofar as it places even less emphasis on race-conscious elements than its predecessors. It is even more difficult to accept the plurality's contrary view, namely that the underlying plan was unconstitutional. If that is so, then all of Seattle's earlier (even more race-conscious) plans must also have been unconstitutional. That necessary implication of the plurality's position strikes the 13th chime of the clock. How could the plurality adopt a constitutional standard that would hold unconstitutional large numbers of race-conscious integration plans adopted by numerous school boards over the past 50 years while remaining true to this Court's desegregation precedent?