Opinion ID: 145702
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Applying the Legal Standard.A.Compelling Interest

Text: The principal interest advanced in these cases to justify the use of race-based criteria goes by various names. Sometimes a court refers to it as an interest in achieving racial diversity. Other times a court, like the plurality here, refers to it as an interest in racial balancing. I have used more general terms to signify that interest, describing it, for example, as an interest in promoting or preserving greater racial integration of public schools. By this term, I mean the school districts' interest in eliminating school-by-school racial isolation and increasing the degree to which racial mixture characterizes each of the district's schools and each individual student's public school experience. Regardless of its name, however, the interest at stake possesses three essential elements. First, there is a historical and remedial element: an interest in setting rightthe consequences of prior conditions of segregation. This refers back to a time when public schools were highly segregated, often as a result of legal or administrative policies that facilitated racial segregation in public schools. It is an interest in continuing to combat the remnants of segregation caused in whole or in part by these school-related policies, which have often affected not only schools, but also housing patterns, employment practices, economic conditions, and social attitudes. It is an interest in maintaining hard-won gains. And it has its roots in preventing what gradually may become the de facto resegregation of America's public schools. See Part I, supra, at 4; Appendix A, infra. See also ante, at 17 (opinion of KENNEDY, J.) (This Nation has a moral and ethical obligation to fulfill its historic commitment to creating an integrated society that ensures equal opportunity for all of its children). Second, there is an educational element: an interest in overcoming the adverse educational effects produced by and associated with highly segregated schools. Cf. Grutter, 539 U. S. , at 345 (GINSBURG, J., concurring). Studies suggest that children taken from those schools and placed in integrated settings often show positive academic gains. See, e.g., Powell, Living and Learning: Linking Housing and Education, in Pursuit of a Dream Deferred: Linking Housing and Education Policy 15, 35 (J. Powell, G. Kearney, & V. Kay eds. 2001) (hereinafter Powell); Hallinan, Diversity Effects on Student Outcomes: Social Science Evidence, 59 Ohio St. L. J. 733, 741-742 (1998) (hereinafter Hallinan). Other studies reach different conclusions. See, e.g., D. Armor, Forced Justice (1995). See also ante, at 15-17 (THOMAS, J., concurring). But the evidence supporting an educational interest in racially integrated schools is well established and strong enough to permit a democratically elected school board reasonably to determine that this interest is a compelling one. Research suggests, for example, that black children from segregated educational environments significantly increase their achievement levels once they are placed in a more integrated setting. Indeed in Louisville itself the achievement gap between black and white elementary school students grew substantially smaller (by seven percentage points) after the integration plan was implemented in 1975. See Powell 35. Conversely, to take another example, evidence from a district in Norfolk, Virginia, shows that resegregated schools led to a decline in the achievement test scores of children of all races. Ibid. One commentator, reviewing dozens of studies of the educational benefits of desegregated schooling, found that the studies have provided remarkably consistent results, showing that: (1) black students' educational achievement is improved in integrated schools as compared to racially isolated schools, (2) black students' educational achievement is improved in integrated classes, and (3) the earlier that black students are removed from racial isolation, the better their educational outcomes. See Hallinan 741-742. Multiple studies also indicate that black alumni of integrated schools are more likely to move into occupations traditionally closed to African-Americans, and to earn more money in those fields. See, e.g., Schofield, Review of Research on School Desegregation's Impact on Elementary and Secondary School Students, in Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education 597, 606-607 (J. Banks & C. Banks eds. 1995). Cf. W. Bowen & D. Bok, The Shape of the River 118 (1998) (hereinafter Bowen & Bok). Third, there is a democratic element: an interest in producing an educational environment that reflects the pluralistic society in which our children will live. Swann, 402 U. S., at 16. It is an interest in helping our children learn to work and play together with children of different racial backgrounds. It is an interest in teaching children to engage in the kind of cooperation among Americans of all races that is necessary to make a land of three hundred million people one Nation. Again, data support this insight. See, e.g., Hallinan 745; Quillian & Campbell, Beyond Black and White: The Present and Future of Multiracial Friendship Segregation, 68 Am. Sociological Rev. 540, 541 (2003) (hereinafter Quillian & Campbell); Dawkins & Braddock, The Continuing Significance of Desegregation: School Racial Composition and African American Inclusion in American Society, 63 J. Negro Ed. 394, 401-403 (1994) (hereinafter Dawkins & Braddock); Wells & Crain, Perpetuation Theory and the Long-Term Effects of School Desegregation, 64 Rev. Educational Research 531, 550 (1994) (hereinafter Wells & Crain). There are again studies that offer contrary conclusions. See, e.g., Schofield, School Desegregation and Intergroup Relations, in 17 Review of Research in Education 356 (G. Grant ed. 1991). See also ante, at 22-23 (THOMAS, J., concurring). Again, however, the evidence supporting a democratic interest in racially integrated schools is firmly established and sufficiently strong to permit a school board to determine, as this Court has itself often found, that this interest is compelling. For example, one study documented that black and white students in desegregated schools are less racially prejudiced than those in segregated schools, and that interracial contact in desegregated schools leads to an increase in interracial sociability and friendship. Hallinan 745. See also Quillian & Campbell 541. Cf. Bowen & Bok 155. Other studies have found that both black and white students who attend integrated schools are more likely to work in desegregated companies after graduation than students who attended racially isolated schools. Dawkins & Braddock 401-403; Wells & Crain 550. Further research has shown that the desegregation of schools can help bring adult communities together by reducing segregated housing. Cities that have implemented successful school desegregation plans have witnessed increased interracial contact and neighborhoods that tend to become less racially segregated. Dawkins & Braddock 403. These effects not only reinforce the prior gains of integrated primary and secondary education; they also foresee a time when there is less need to use race-conscious criteria. Moreover, this Court from Swann to Grutter has treated these civic effects as an important virtue of racially diverse education. See, e.g., Swann, supra, at 16; Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 458 U. S., at 472-473. In Grutter, in the context of law school admissions, we found that these types of interests were, constitutionally speaking, compelling. See 539 U. S., at 330 (recognizing that Michigan Law School's race-conscious admissions policy promotes cross-racial understanding, helps to break down racial stereotypes, and enables [students] to better understand persons of different races, and pointing out that the skills needed in today's increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints (internal quotation marks omitted; alteration in original)). In light of this Court's conclusions in Grutter, the compelling nature of these interests in the context of primary and secondary public education follows here a fortiori. Primary and secondary schools are where the education of this Nation's children begins, where each of us begins to absorb those values we carry with us to the end of our days. As Justice Marshall said, unless our children begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will ever learn to live together. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U. S. 717, 783 (1974) (dissenting opinion). And it was Brown, after all, focusing upon primary and secondary schools, not Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U. S. 629 (1950), focusing on law schools, or McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Ed., 339 U. S. 637 (1950), focusing on graduate schools, that affected so deeply not only Americans but the world. R. Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality, p. x (1975) (arguing that perhaps no other Supreme Court case has affected more directly the minds, hearts, and daily lives of so many Americans); Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education xxvii (2001) (identifying Brown as the most eagerly awaited and dramatic judicial decision of modern times). See also Parents Involved VII, 426 F. 3d, at 1194 (Kozinski, J., concurring); Strauss, Discriminatory Intent and the Taming of Brown, 56 U. Chi. L. Rev. 935, 937 (1989) (calling Brown the Supreme Court's greatest anti-discrimination decision); Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae in Brown, 347 U. S. 483; Dudziak, Brown as a Cold War Case, 91 J. Am. Hist. 32 (2004); A Great Decision, Hindustan Times (New Dehli, May 20, 1954), p. 5; USA Takes Positive Step, West African Pilot (Lagos, May 22, 1954), p. 2 (stating that Brown is an acknowledgment that the United States should set an example for all other nations by taking the lead in removing from its national life all signs and traces of racial intolerance, arrogance or discrimination). Hence, I am not surprised that JUSTICE KENNEDY finds that, a district may consider it a compelling interest to achieve a diverse student population, including a racially diverse population. Ante, at 17-18. The compelling interest at issue here, then, includes an effort to eradicate the remnants, not of general societal discrimination, ante, at 23 (plurality opinion), but of primary and secondary school segregation, see supra, at 7, 14; it includes an effort to create school environments that provide better educational opportunities for all children; it includes an effort to help create citizens better prepared to know, to understand, and to work with people of all races and backgrounds, thereby furthering the kind of democratic government our Constitution foresees. If an educational interest that combines these three elements is not compelling, what is? The majority acknowledges that in prior cases this Court has recognized at least two interests as compelling: an interest in remedying the effects of past intentional discrimination, and an interest in diversity in higher education. Ante, at 12, 13. But the plurality does not convincingly explain why those interests do not constitute a compelling interest here. How do the remedial interests here differ in kind from those at issue in the voluntary desegregation efforts that Attorney General Kennedy many years ago described in his letter to the President? Supra, at 19-20. How do the educational and civic interests differ in kind from those that underlie and justify the racial diversity that the law school sought in Grutter, where this Court found a compelling interest? The plurality tries to draw a distinction by reference to the well-established conceptual difference between de jure segregation (segregation by state action) and de facto segregation (racial imbalance caused by other factors). Ante, at 28. But that distinction concerns what the Constitution requires school boards to do, not what it permits them to do. Compare, e.g., Green, 391 U. S., at 437-438 (School boards . . . operating state-compelled dual systems have an affirmative duty to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a unitary system inw hich racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch), with, e.g., Milliken, 418 U. S., at 745 (the Constitution does not impose a duty to desegregate upon districts that have not been shown to have committed any constitutional violation). The opinions cited by the plurality to justify its reliance upon the de jure/de facto distinction only address what remedial measures a school district may be constitutionally required to undertake. See, e.g., Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U. S. 467, 495 (1992). As to what is permitted, nothing in our equal protection law suggests that a State may right only those wrongs that it committed. No case of this Court has ever relied upon the de jure/de facto distinction in order to limit what a school district is voluntarily allowed to do. That is what is at issue here. And Swann, McDaniel, Crawford, North Carolina Bd. of Ed., Harris, and Bustop made one thing clear: significant as the difference between de jure and de facto segregation may be to the question of what a school district must do, that distinction is not germane to the question of what a school district may do. Nor does any precedent indicate, as the plurality suggests with respect to Louisville, ante, at 29, that remedial interests vanish the day after a federal court declares that a district is unitary. Of course, Louisville adopted those portions of the plan at issue here before a court declared Louisville unitary. Moreover, in Freeman, this Court pointed out that in one sense of the term, vestiges of past segregation by state decree do remain in our society and in our schools. Past wrongs to the black race, wrongs committed by the State and in its name, are a stubborn fact of history. And stubborn facts of history linger and persist. 503 U. S., at 495. See also ante, at 15 (opinion of KENNEDY, J.). I do not understand why this Court's cases, which rest the significance of a unitary finding in part upon the wisdom and desirability of returning schools to local control, should deprive those local officials of legal permission to use means they once found necessary to combat persisting injustices. For his part, JUSTICE THOMAS faults my citation of various studies supporting the view that school districts can find compelling educational and civic interests in integrating their public schools. See ante, at 15-17, 23 (concurring opinion). He is entitled of course to his own opinion as to which studies he finds convincingalthough it bears mention that even the author of some of JUSTICE THOMAS' preferred studies has found some evidence linking integrated learning environments to increased academic achievement. Cf. ante, at 15-17 (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (citing Armor & Rossell, Desegregation and Resegregation in the Public Schools, in Beyond the Color Line 239 (A. Thernstrom & S. Thernstrom eds. 2002); Brief for Armor et al. as Amici Curiae, with Rosen, Perhaps Not All Affirmative Action is Created Equal, N. Y. Times, June 11, 2006 (quoting David Armor as commenting `[w]e did find the [racial] achievement gap changing significantly ' and acknowledging that he `did find a modest association for math but not reading in terms of racial composition and achievement, but there's a big state variation' (emphasis added)). If we are to insist upon unanimity in the social science literature before finding a compelling interest, we might never find one. I believe only that the Constitution allows democratically elected school boards to make up their own minds as to how best to include people of all races in one America. B. Narrow Tailoring I next ask whether the plans before us are narrowly tailored to achieve these compelling objectives. I shall not accept the school board's assurances on faith, cf. Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 920 (1995), and I shall subject the tailoring of their plans to rigorous judicial review. Grutter, 539 U. S., at 388 (KENNEDY, J., dissenting). Several factors, taken together, nonetheless lead me to conclude that the boards' use of race-conscious criteria in these plans passes even the strictest tailoring test. First, the race-conscious criteria at issue only help set the outer bounds of broad ranges. Cf. id., at 390 (KENNEDY, J., dissenting) (expressing concern about narrow fluctuation band[s]). They constitute but one part of plans that depend primarily upon other, nonracial elements. To use race in this way is not to set a forbidden quota. See id., at 335 (Properly understood, a `quota' is a program in which a certain fixed number or proportion of opportunities are `reserved exclusively for certain minority groups' (quoting Croson, 488 U. S., at 496)). In fact, the defining feature of both plans is greater emphasis upon student choice. In Seattle, for example, in more than 80% of all cases, that choice alone determines which high schools Seattle's ninth graders will attend. After ninth grade, students can decide voluntarily to transfer to a preferred district high school (without any consideration of race-conscious criteria). Choice, therefore, is the predominant factor in these plans. Race is not. See Grutter, supra, at 393 (KENNEDY, J., dissenting) (allowing consideration of race only if it does not become a predominant factor). Indeed, the race-conscious ranges at issue in these cases often have no effect, either because the particular school is not oversubscribed in the year in question, or because the racial makeup of the school falls within the broad range, or because the student is a transfer applicant or has a sibling at the school. In these respects, the broad ranges are less like a quota and more like the kinds of useful starting points that this Court has consistently found permissible, even when they set boundaries upon voluntary transfers, and even when they are based upon a community's general population. See, e.g., North Carolina Bd. of Ed. v. Swann, 402 U. S. 43, 46 (1971) (no absolute prohibition against [the] use of mathematical ratios as a starting point); Swann, 402 U. S., at 24-25 (approving the use of a ratio reflecting the racial composition of the whole school system as a useful starting point, but not as an inflexible requirement). Cf. United States v. Montgomery County Bd. of Ed., 395 U. S. 225, 232 (1969) (approving a lower court desegregation order that provided that the [school] board must move toward a goal under which `in each school the ratio of white to Negro faculty members is substantially the same as it is throughout the system,' and immediately requiring [t]he ratio of Negro to white teachers in each school to be equal to the ratio of Negro to white teachers in . . . the system as a whole). Second, broad-range limits on voluntary school choice plans are less burdensome, and hence more narrowly tailored, see Grutter, supra, at 341, than other race-conscious restrictions this Court has previously approved. See, e.g., Swann, supra, at 26-27; Montgomery Co. Bd. of Ed., supra, at 232. Indeed, the plans before us are more narrowly tailored than the race-conscious admission plans that this Court approved in Grutter. Here, race becomes a factor only in a fraction of students' non-merit-based assignmentsnot in large numbers of students' merit-based applications. Moreover, the effect of applying race-conscious criteria here affects potentially disadvantaged students less severely, not more severely, than the criteria at issue in Grutter. Disappointed students are not rejected from a State's flagship graduate program; they simply attend a different one of the district's many public schools, which in aspiration and in fact are substantially equal. Cf. Wygant, 476 U. S., at 283. And, in Seattle, the disadvantaged student loses at most one year at the high school of his choice. One will search Grutter in vain for similarly persuasive evidence of narrow tailoring as the school districts have presented here. Third, the manner in which the school boards developed these plans itself reflects narrow tailoring. Each plan was devised to overcome a history of segregated public schools. Each plan embodies the results of local experience and community consultation. Each plan is the product of a process that has sought to enhance student choice, while diminishing the need for mandatory busing. And each plan's use of race-conscious elements is diminished compared to the use of race in preceding integration plans. The school boards' widespread consultation, their experimentation with numerous other plans, indeed, the 40-year history that Part I sets forth, make clear that plans that are less explicitly race-based are unlikely to achieve the board's compelling objectives. The history of each school system reveals highly segregated schools, followed by remedial plans that involved forced busing, followed by efforts to attract or retain students through the use of plans that abandoned busing and replaced it with greater student choice. Both cities once tried to achieve more integrated schools by relying solely upon measures such as redrawn district boundaries, new school building construction, and unrestricted voluntary transfers. In neither city did these prior attempts prove sufficient to achieve the city's integration goals. See Parts IA and IB, supra, at 6-18 . Moreover, giving some degree of weight to a local school board's knowledge, expertise, and concerns in these particular matters is not inconsistent with rigorous judicial scrutiny. It simply recognizes that judges are not well suited to act as school administrators. Indeed, in the context of school desegregation, this Court has repeatedly stressed the importance of acknowledging that local school boards better understand their own communities and have a better knowledge of what in practice will best meet the educational needs of their pupils. See Milliken, 418 U. S., at 741-42 (No single tradition in public education is more deeply rooted than local control over the operation of schools; local autonomy has long been thought essential both to the maintenance of community concern and support for public schools and to quality of the educational process). See also San Antonio Independent School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 1, 49-50 (1973) (extolling local control for the opportunity it offers for participation in the decisionmaking process that determines how . . . local tax dollars will be spent. Each locality is free to tailor local programs to local needs. Pluralism also affords some opportunity for experimentation, innovation, and a healthy competition for educational excellence); Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U. S. 97, 104 (1968) (Judicial interposition in the operation of the public school system of the Nation raises problems requiring care and restraint. . . . By and large, public education in our Nation is committed to the control of state and local authorities); Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294, 299 (1955) (Brown II) (Full implementation of these constitutional principles may require solution of varied local school problems. School authorities have the primary responsibility for elucidating, assessing, and solving these problems; courts will have to consider whether the action of school authorities constitutes good faith implementation of the governing constitutional principles). Experience in Seattle and Louisville is consistent with experience elsewhere. In 1987, the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights studied 125 large school districts seeking integration. It reported that most districts-92 of them, in factadopted desegregation policies that combined two or more highly race-conscious strategies, for example, rezoning or pairing. See Welch 83-91. Having looked at dozens of amicus briefs, public reports, news stories, and the records in many of this Court's prior cases, which together span 50 years of desegregation history in school districts across the Nation, I have discovered many examples of districts that sought integration through explicitly race-conscious methods, including mandatory busing. Yet, I have found no example or model that would permit this Court to say to Seattle and to Louisville: Here is an instance of a desegregation plan that is likely to achieve your objectives and also makes less use of race-conscious criteria than your plans. And, if the plurality cannot suggest such a modeland it cannotthen it seeks to impose a narrow tailoring requirement that in practice would never be met. Indeed, if there is no such plan, or if such plans are purely imagined, it is understandable why, as the plurality notes, ante, at 27, Seattle school officials concentrated on diminishing the racial component of their districts' plan, but did not pursue eliminating that element entirely. For the plurality now to insist as it does, ante, at 27-28, that these school districts ought to have said so officially is either to ask for the superfluous (if they need only make explicit what is implicit) or to demand the impossible (if they must somehow provide more proof that there is no hypothetical other plan that could work as well as theirs). I am not aware of any case in which this Court has read the narrow tailoring test to impose such a requirement. Cf. People Who Care v. Rockford Bd. of Ed. School Dist. No. 205, 961 F. 2d 1335, 1338 (CA7 1992) (Easterbrook, J.) (Would it be necessary to adjudicate the obvious before adopting (or permitting the parties to agree on) a remedy . . . ?). The plurality also points to the school districts' use of numerical goals based upon the racial breakdown of the general school population, and it faults the districts for failing to prove that no other set of numbers will work. See ante, at 18-20. The plurality refers to no case in support of its demand. Nor is it likely to find such a case. After all, this Court has in many cases explicitly permitted districts to use target ratios based upon the district's underlying population. See, e.g., Swann, 402 U. S., at 24-25; North Carolina Bd. of Ed., 402 U. S., at 46; Montgomery County Bd. of Ed., 395 U. S., at 232. The reason is obvious: In Seattle, where the overall student population is 41% white, permitting 85% white enrollment at a single school would make it much more likely that other schools would have very few white students, whereas in Jefferson County, with a 60% white enrollment, one school with 85% white students would be less likely to skew enrollments elsewhere. Moreover, there is research-based evidence supporting, for example, that a ratio no greater than 50% minority which is Louisville's starting point, and as close as feasible to Seattle's starting pointis helpful in limiting the risk of white flight. See Orfield, Metropolitan School Desegregation: Impacts on Metropolitan Society, in Pursuit of a Dream Deferred: Linking Housing and Education Policy 121, 125. Federal law also assumes that a similar target percentage will help avoid detrimental minority group isolation. See No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Title V, Part C, 115 Stat. 1806, 20 U. S. C. §7231 et seq. (2000 ed., Supp. IV); 34 CFR §§280.2, 280.4 (2006) (implementing regulations). What other numbers are the boards to use as a starting point? Are they to spend days, weeks, or months seeking independently to validate the use of ratios that this Court has repeatedly authorized in prior cases? Are they to draw numbers out of thin air? These districts have followed this Court's holdings and advice in tailoring their plans. That, too, strongly supports the lawfulness of their methods. Nor could the school districts have accomplished their desired aims ( e.g., avoiding forced busing, countering white flight, maintaining racial diversity) by other means. Nothing in the extensive history of desegregation efforts over the past 50 years gives the districts, or this Court, any reason to believe that another method is possible to accomplish these goals. Nevertheless, JUSTICE KENNEDY suggests that school boards: may pursue the goal of bringing together students of diverse backgrounds and races through other means, including strategic site selection of new schools; drawing attendance zones with general recognition of the demographics of neighborhoods; allocating resources for special programs; recruiting students and faculty in a targeted fashion; and tracking enrollments, performance, and other statistics by race. Ante, at 8. But, as to strategic site selection, Seattle has built one new high school in the last 44 years (and that specialized school serves only 300 students). In fact, six of the Seattle high schools involved in this case were built by the 1920's; the other four were open by the early 1960's. See generally N. Thompson & C. Marr, Building for Learning: Seattle Public Schools Histories, 1862-2000 (2002). As to drawing neighborhood attendance zones on a racial basis, Louisville tried it, and it worked only when forced busing was also part of the plan. See supra, at 12-14. As to allocating resources for special programs, Seattle and Louisville have both experimented with this; indeed, these programs are often referred to as magnet schools, but the limited desegregation effect of these efforts extends at most to those few schools to which additional resources are granted. In addition, there is no evidence from the experience of these school districts that it will make any meaningful impact. See Brief for Respondents in No. 05-908, p. 42. As to recruiting faculty on the basis of race, both cities have tried, but only as one part of a broader program. As to tracking enrollments, performance and other statistics by race, tracking reveals the problem; it does not cure it. JUSTICE KENNEDY sets forth two additional concerns related to narrow tailoring. In respect to Louisville, he says first that officials stated (1) that kindergarten assignments are not subject to the race-conscious guidelines, and (2) that the child at issue here was denied permission to attend the kindergarten he wanted because of those guidelines. Both, he explains, cannot be true. He adds that this confusion illustrates that Louisville's assignment plan (or its explanation of it to this Court) is insufficiently precise in respect to who makes the decisions, over-sight, the precise circumstances in which an assignment decision will be made; and which of two similarly situated children will be subjected to a given race-based decision. Ante, at 4. The record suggests, however, that the child in question was not assigned to the school he preferred because he missed the kindergarten application deadline. See App. in 05-915, p. 20. After he had enrolled and after the academic year had begun, he then applied to transfer to his preferred school after the kindergarten assignment dead-line had passed, id., at 21, possibly causing school officials to treat his late request as an application to transfer to the first grade, in respect to which the guidelines apply. I am not certain just how the remainder of JUSTICE KENNEDY's concerns affect the lawfulness of the Louisville program, for they seem to be failures of explanation, not of administration. But Louisville should be able to answer the relevant questions on remand. JUSTICE KENNEDY's second concern is directly related to the merits of Seattle's plan: Why does Seattle's plan group Asian-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Native-Americans, and African-Americans together, treating all as similar minorities? Ante, at 6-7. The majority suggests that Seattle's classification system could permit a school to be labeled diverse with a 50% Asian-American and 50% white student body, and no African-American students, Hispanic students, or students of other ethnicity. Ante, at 6; ante, at 15-16 (opinion of the Court). The 50/50 hypothetical has no support in the record here; it is conjured from the imagination. In fact, Seattle apparently began to treat these different minority groups alike in response to the federal Emergency School Aid Act's requirement that it do so. Siqueland 116-117. See also Hanawalt 31; Pub. L. 95-561, Tit. VI (1978) (prescribing percentage enrollment requirements for minority students); Siqueland 55 (discussing HEW definition of minority). Moreover, maintaining this federally mandated system of classification makes sense insofar as Seattle's experience indicates that the relevant circumstances in respect to each of these different minority groups are roughly similar, e.g., in terms of residential patterns, and call for roughly similar responses. This is confirmed by the fact that Seattle has been able to achieve a desirable degree of diversity without the greater emphasis on race that drawing fine lines among minority groups would require. Does the plurality's view of the Equal Protection Clause mean that courts must give no weight to such a board determination? Does it insist upon especially strong evidence supporting inclusion of multiple minority groups in an otherwise lawful government minority-ssistance program? If so, its interpretation threatens to produce divisiveness among minority groups that is incompatible with the basic objectives of the Fourteenth Amendment. Regardless, the plurality cannot object that the constitutional defect is the individualized use of race and simultaneously object that not enough account of individuals' race has been taken. Finally, I recognize that the Court seeks to distinguish Grutter from these cases by claiming that Grutter arose in `the context of higher education.' Ante, at 16. But that is not a meaningful legal distinction. I have explained why I do not believe the Constitution could possibly find compelling the provision of a racially diverse education for a 23-year-old law student but not for a 13-year-old high school pupil. See supra, at 46-48. And I have explained how the plans before us are more narrowly tailored than those in Grutter. See supra, at 45. I add that one cannot find a relevant distinction in the fact that these school districts did not examine the merits of applications individual[ly]. See ante, at 13-15. The context here does not involve admission by merit; a child's academic, artistic, and athletic merits are not at all relevant to the child's placement. These are not affirmative action plans, and hence individualized scrutiny is simply beside the point. The upshot is that these plans' specific features(1) their limited and historically-diminishing use of race, (2) their strong reliance upon other non-race-conscious elements, (3) their history and the manner in which the districts developed and modified their approach, (4) the comparison with prior plans, and (5) the lack of reasonably evident alternativestogether show that the districts' plans are narrowly tailored to achieve their compelling goals. In sum, the districts' race-conscious plans satisfy strict scrutiny and are therefore lawful.