Opinion ID: 792253
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Necessity of the Plan and Race-Neutral Alternatives

Text: 87 Narrow tailoring also requires us to consider the necessity of the race-based plan or policy in question and whether there are equally effective, race-neutral alternatives. 88
89 The District argues that the compelling interests that it seeks are directly served by the race-based tiebreaker. The tiebreaker allows the District to balance students' and parents' choices among high schools with its broader compelling interests — achieving the educational and social benefits of diversity and the benefits specific to the secondary school context, and discouraging a return to enrollment patterns based on Seattle's racially segregated housing pattern. 90
91 When the District moved from its controlled choice plan to the current Plan, see supra Part I.A, it predicted that families would tend to choose schools close to their homes. Indeed, this feature was seen as a positive way to increase parental involvement. However, unfettered choice — especially with tiebreakers based on neighborhood or distance from a school — created the risk that Seattle's high school enrollment would again do no more than reflect its segregated housing patterns. See supra Part II.C.2. 92 It is this de facto residential segregation across a white/nonwhite axis that the District has battled historically and that it seeks to ameliorate by making the integration tiebreaker a part of its open choice Plan. 32 The District, mindful of both Seattle's history and future, appropriately places its focus here. In the 2001-02 school year, the integration tiebreaker operated in three high schools (that is, three high schools were oversubscribed and deviated by more than 15 percent from the ratio of white to nonwhite students district-wide). The integration tiebreaker served to alter the imbalance in the schools in which it operated in a minimally intrusive manner. The tiebreaker, therefore, successfully achieved the District's compelling interests. 93
94 Parents argue that the District paints with too broad a brush by distinguishing only between white and nonwhite students, without taking into account the diversity within the nonwhite group. However, the District's choice to increase diversity along the white/nonwhite axis is rooted in Seattle's history and current reality of de facto segregation resulting from Seattle's segregated housing patterns. The white/nonwhite distinction is narrowly tailored to prioritize movement of students from the north of the city to the south of city and vice versa. This white/nonwhite focus is also consistent with the history of public school desegregation measures throughout the country, as reflected in a current federal regulation defining [m]inority group isolation as a condition in which minority group children constitute more than 50 percent of the enrollment of the school, without distinguishing among the various categories included within the definition of minority group. 34 C.F.R. § 280.4(b); see Grutter, 539 U.S. at 316, 123 S.Ct. 2325 (noting that the law school sought to enroll a critical mass of minority students, a category that included African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans); Comfort, 418 F.3d at 22 (By increasing diversity along the white/nonwhite axis, the Plan reduced racial tensions and produced positive educational benefits. Narrow tailoring does not require that Lynn ensure diversity among every racial and ethnic subgroup as well. ) (emphasis added). 95
96 In Grutter, the Court explained that narrow tailoring require[s] serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives that will achieve the diversity the university seeks.  539 U.S. at 339, 123 S.Ct. 2325 (emphasis added). On the other hand, [n]arrow tailoring does not require exhaustion of every conceivable race-neutral alternative. Id. Furthermore, the Court made clear that the university was not required to adopt race-neutral measures that would have forced it to sacrifice other educational values central to its mission. Id. at 340, 123 S.Ct. 2325. Implicit in the Court's analysis was a measure of deference toward the university's identification of those values. 33 See id. at 328, 340, 123 S.Ct. 2325. Here, the record reflects that the District reasonably concluded that a race-neutral alternative would not meet its goals. 97
98 The record demonstrates that the School Board considered using a poverty tiebreaker in place of the race-based tiebreaker. It concluded, however, that this proxy device would not achieve its compelling interest in achieving racial diversity, and had other adverse effects. Although there was no formal study of the proposal by District staff, Board members' testimony revealed two legitimate reasons why the Board rejected the use of poverty to reach its goal of racial diversity. First, the Board concluded that it is insulting to minorities and often inaccurate to assume that poverty correlates with minority status. Second, for the group of students for whom poverty would correlate with minority status, the implementation would have been thwarted by high school students' understandable reluctance to reveal their socioeconomic status to their peers. 99 Because racial diversity is a compelling interest, the District may permissibly seek it if it does so in a narrowly tailored manner. We do not require the District to conceal its compelling interest of achieving racial diversity and avoiding racial concentration or isolation through the use of some clumsier proxy device such as poverty. See Comfort, 418 F.3d at 29 (Boudin, C.J., concurring). 100
101 Parents also assert that the District should have more formally considered an Urban League proposal, which did not eliminate the integration tiebreaker but merely considered it after other factors. The Urban League plan was a comprehensive plan seeking to enhance the quality of education in Seattle's schools by focusing on educational organization, teacher quality, parent-teacher interaction, raising curricular standards, substantially broadening the availability of specialized and magnet programs (which could attract a broader cross-section of students to undersubscribed schools) and supporting extra-curricular development. The plan proposed decreasing the School District's reliance on race in the assignment process by pairing neighborhoods with particular schools and creating a type of neighborhood/regional school model. Under the Urban League plan, preference initially would be given to students choosing a school in their paired region, and the existing racial tiebreaker would be demoted from second to third in the process of resolving any remaining oversubscription. The plan also suggested adding an eleventh high school. 102 Board members testified that they rejected the plan because of the high value the District places on parental and student choice. Moreover, given Seattle's segregated housing patterns, by prioritizing a neighborhood/regional school model where students are assigned to schools close to their homes, the Urban League plan did not sufficiently ensure the achievement of the District's compelling interests in racial diversity and avoidance of racial concentration or isolation. As one member of the School Board testified, [it] would become Controlled Choice all over again. That's basically what Controlled Choice was, [] a regional plan; it controlled your options by using regions or geography. It was therefore permissible for the District to reject a plan that neither comported with its priorities nor achieved its compelling interests. 103
104 Parents additionally contend in this court that the District should have considered using a lottery to assign students to the oversubscribed high schools. As an initial matter, we note that Parents did not argue before the district court that a lottery was a workable race-neutral alternative that would achieve the Districts' compelling interests. Parents now argue on appeal, however, that a lottery would achieve the District's compelling interests without having to resort to the race-based tiebreaker. They ask us to assume that because approximately 82 percent of all students want to attend one of Seattle's oversubscribed schools, the makeup of this 82 percent, as well as that of the applicant pool for each school, mirrors the demographics of the District (60 percent white and 40 percent nonwhite). Employing this assumption, Parents also ask us to assume that a random lottery drawing from this pool would produce a student body in each of the oversubscribed schools that falls within the District's 15 percent plus or minus variance. These assumptions, however, are not supported — indeed, are undercut —by the factual record. For example, Superintendent Olchefske explained that District patterns indicate that more people choose schools close to home. That would mean that the pool of applicants would be skewed in favor of the demographic of the surrounding residential area. That is, the applicant pool for the north area oversubscribed high schools would have a higher concentration of white students and the applicant pool for the south area oversubscribed high school would have a higher concentration of nonwhite students. Thus, random sampling from such a racially skewed pool would produce a racially skewed student body. As one Board member testified, a lottery was not a viable alternative because [i]f applicants are overwhelmingly majority and you have a lottery, then your lottery — the pool of your lottery kids are going to be overwhelmingly majority. We have a diversity goal. 105 Although the District has the burden of demonstrating that its Plan is narrowly tailored, see Gratz, 539 U.S. at 270, 123 S.Ct. 2411, it need not exhaust[] every conceivable race-neutral alternative. Grutter, 539 U.S. at 339, 123 S.Ct. 2325. Parents' belated and bald assertion that a lottery could achieve the District's compelling interests, without any evidence to support their claim, fails to demonstrate that a lottery is a viable race-neutral alternative. See id. at 340, 123 S.Ct. 2325 (dismissing the race-neutral alternative of percentage plans, advocated by the United States in an amicus brief, because the United States [did] not . . . explain how such plans could work for graduate and professional schools); Comfort, 418 F.3d at 23 (noting that Lynn rejected the use of a lottery in place of the race-based tiebreaker and holding that Lynn must keep abreast of possible alternatives as they develop . . . but it need not prove the impracticability of every conceivable model for racial integration) (internal citation omitted). 106
107 The dissent posits variables the District could use instead of race, for example, embracing the San Francisco school district's approach as a possible model for integration that would meet the dissent's criteria. Bea, J., dissenting, infra. at 1218, n. 26. Perhaps San Francisco has experienced success (however that school district defines it) in its multi-variable plan — the details and evaluations of which are not in the record. The District is free to consider the San Francisco model when it engages in the annual review of its own Plan. However, even assuming that San Francisco's plan is working, that does not mean that it must be used by other cities in other states. Much can be gained from the various states employing locally appropriate means to achieve desirable ends. In our system, where states are considered laboratories to be used to experiment with myriad approaches to resolving social problems, we certainly should not punish one school district for not adopting the approach of another. Justice Brandeis said it well, 108 There must be power in the States and the Nation to remould, through experimentation, our economic practices and institutions to meet changing social and economic needs. . . . To stay experimentation in things social and economic is a grave responsibility. Denial of the right to experiment may be fraught with serious consequences to the Nation. It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country. 109 New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262, 311, 52 S.Ct. 371, 76 L.Ed. 747 (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting). 110 In sum, the District made a good faith effort to consider feasible race-neutral alternatives and permissibly rejected them in favor of a system involving a sibling preference, a race-based tiebreaker and a proximity preference. Over the long history of the District's efforts to achieve desegregated schools, it has experimented with many alternatives, including magnet and other special-interest programs, which it continues to employ, and race-conscious districting. But when a racially diverse school system is the goal (or racial concentration or isolation is the problem), there is no more effective means than a consideration of race to achieve the solution. Even Parents' expert conceded that, if you don't consider race, it may not be possible to offer an integrated option to students. . . . [I]f you want to guarantee it you have to consider race. As Superintendent Olchefske stated, when diversity, meaning racial diversity, is part of the educational environment we wanted to create, I think our view was you took that issue head on and used — you used race as part of the structures you developed. The logic is self-evident: When racial diversity is a principal element of the school district's compelling interest, then a narrowly tailored plan may explicitly take race into account. 34 Cf. Hunter v. Regents of Univ. of Cal., 190 F.3d 1061, 1067 (9th Cir.1999) (upholding as narrowly tailored the admissions policy of an elementary school — operated as a research laboratory — that explicitly considered race in pursuit of a racially balanced research sample).