Opinion ID: 2630898
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Seattle

Text: In 1977, Seattle School District No. 1 enacted a resolution to combat de facto racial segregation in the school system resulting from the housing patterns in Seattle, Washington. ( Seattle, supra, 458 U.S. at p. 459.) The school district initially employed race-neutral voluntary measures; the steps taken, however, actually led to increased racial imbalance in the schools. ( Id. at p. 461.) The school district ultimately determined that mandatory reassignment of students was necessary if racial isolation in its schools was to be eliminated and thus implemented a program involving the extensive use of busing and mandatory reassignments in the elementary schools (the Plan). ( Ibid. ) After a failed attempt to enjoin the implementation of the Plan, Seattle residents who opposed its remedial measures drafted a statewide ballot measure designed to terminate the use of mandatory busing for purposes of racial integration. ( Seattle, supra, 458 U.S. at p. 462.) The proposed initiative, which ultimately passed with 66 percent of the vote, prohibited school boards from `requir[ing] any student to attend a school other than the school which is geographically nearest or next nearest the student's place of residence ... and which offers the course of study pursued by such student.' ( Id. at pp. 462-463.) While the initiative did not mention race or, busing for racial purposes, it contained a number of exceptions to its ban ( id. at p. 463), such that school districts were permitted to bus their students `for most, if not all,' of the nonintegrative purposes required by their educational policies. [Citation.] ( Id. at p. 471.) In light of these exceptions, the Supreme Court observed, it was clear that the measure was aimed solely at eliminating the remedy of desegregative busing in general, and ... the ... Plan in particular. ( Id. at p. 463.) [5] Three school districts sued the State of Washington in federal court, arguing the initiative violated the equal protection clause. ( Seattle, supra, 458 U.S. at p. 464.) The district court concluded the initiative constituted an impermissible racial classification in violation of the political structure doctrine because it forbade busing from being used as a remedy for racial segregation while permitting its use for all nonracial reasons. ( Id. at p. 465.) The Ninth Circuit affirmed, and the state and state officers appealed. ( Id. at p. 466.) The high court began by noting the equal protection clause guarantees racial minorities the right to full participation in the political life of the community. ( Seattle, supra, 458 U.S. at p. 467.) To that end, the Fourteenth Amendment not only protects minorities' right to vote and to enter into the political process in a reliable and meaningful manner, but also reaches `a political structure that treats all individuals as equals,' [citation], yet more subtly distorts governmental processes in such a way as to place special burdens on the ability of minority groups to achieve beneficial legislation. ( Ibid., italics added.) This political structure principle, the high court noted, was expressed and applied in Hunter and Lee v. Nyquist (W.D.N.Y 1970) 318 F.Supp. 710, summarily affd. sub. nom. Nyquist v. Lee (1971) 402 U.S. 935 [29 L.Ed.2d 105, 91 S.Ct. 1618]. [6] ( Seattle, at pp. 467-469.) From these cases (as well as from Justice Harlan's concurring opinion in Hunter, supra, 393 U.S. at pages 393-396), the Seattle court drew a simple but central principle ( Seattle, at p. 469): [L]aws structuring political institutions or allocating political power according to `neutral principles'such as the executive veto, or the typically burdensome requirements for amending state constitutions are not subject to equal protection attack, though they may `make it more difficult for minorities to achieve favorable legislation.' [( Hunter, supra, ] 393 U.S. at [p.] 394 [(conc. opn. of Harlan, J.).)] Because such laws make it more difficult for every group in the community to enact comparable laws, they `provid[e] a just framework within which the diverse political groups in our society may fairly compete.' ( Id., at p. 393.) Thus, the political majority may generally restructure the political process to place obstacles in the path of everyone seeking to secure the benefits of governmental action. But a different analysis is required when the State allocates governmental power nonneutrally, by explicitly using the racial nature of a decision to determine the decisionmaking process. ( Seattle, supra, 458 U.S. at p. 470.) Applying the political structure doctrine to the ballot measure, the Supreme Court concluded that, rather than attempting `to allocate governmental power on the basis of any general principle' [citation] ( Seattle, supra, 458 U.S. at p. 470), it impermissibly used the racial nature of an issue to define the governmental decisionmaking structure, and thus impose[d] substantial and unique burdens on racial minorities. ( Ibid. ) In so holding, the court conducted a two-part inquiry. It first inquired whether the initiative, despite its facial neutrality, singled out a racial issue for special treatment. ( Seattle, supra, 458 U.S. at p. 471.) While the initiative nowhere mentioned race or integration, the court had little difficulty finding it was nonetheless effectively drawn for racial purposes. ( Ibid. ) [7] As evidence, the court pointed to the fact that the exceptions in the initiative meant that only desegregative busing was prohibited, which was consistent with the proponents' statements during the campaign. (458 U.S. at p. 471.) It is beyond reasonable dispute, then, that the initiative was enacted `because of, not merely in spite of, its adverse effects upon' busing for integration. [Citation.] ( Ibid. ) In addition, the court noted that busing for integration is a racial issue that, at bottom inures primarily to the benefit of the minority, and is designed for that purpose. ( Seattle, supra, 458 U.S. at pp. 471-472, italics added.) While so concluding, the court acknowledged that racial minorities, as well as those in the majority, could be counted among both the proponents and opponents of the ballot measure, just as both racial minority and majority members benefited from diverse schools. ( Id. at p. 472.) But neither of these factors serves to distinguish Hunter, for we may fairly assume that members of the racial majority both favored and benefited from Akron's fair housing ordinance. [Citations.] ( Ibid. ) [I]t is enough that minorities may consider busing for integration to be `legislation that is in their interest.' [Citation.] Given the racial focus of [the initiative], this suffices to trigger application of the Hunter doctrine. ( Id. at p. 474, first italics added.) For the second part of its inquiry, the high court considered whether the practical effect of [the ballot measure] is to work a reallocation of power of the kind condemned in Hunter. ( Seattle, supra, 458 U.S. at p. 474, italics added.) In concluding the initiative did so, the court noted that the ballot measure removes the authority to address a racial problemand only a racial problemfrom the existing decisionmaking body, in such a way as to burden minority interests. ( Ibid. ) After passage of the measure, those seeking to address school segregation had to seek relief from the state legislature or from the statewide electorate; by comparison, those wishing to effect any other nonracial school reassignment or educational policy needed only petition their local school board. ( Ibid. ) Thus, the changed political structure expressly requires those championing school integration to surmount a considerably higher hurdle than persons seeking comparable legislative action. As in Hunter, then, the community's political mechanisms are modified to place effective decisionmaking authority over a racial issue at a different level of government. ( Seattle, at p. 474.) [8] In concluding the initiative had worked an impermissibly nonneutral alteration of the political structure, the court considered, and rejected, arguments raised by Justice Powell's dissent and the defendants. Justice Powell argued this case was unlike Hunter because the political system [of Washington] has not been redrawn or altered. ( Seattle, supra, 458 U.S. at p. 498 (dis. opn. of Powell, J.).) The majority dismissed this distinction as facile, pointing out [t]he evil condemned by the Hunter Court was not the particular political obstacle of mandatory referenda imposed by the Akron charter amendment; it was, rather, the comparative structural burden placed on the political achievement of minority interests. ( Id. at pp. 474-475, fn. 17, italics added.) [9] In both cases, the power to enact racial legislation was relocated to a more distant level, the citywide electorate in Hunter and the statewide electorate or the state legislature in Seattle. (458 U.S. at pp. 474-475, fn. 17.) [10] The court also rejected the defendants' contention that the ballot measure merely constituted a permissible intervention by the state in its own school system. ( Seattle, supra, 458 U.S. at pp. 475-476.) While it acknowledged that Washington had plenary authority over its education system, the court pointed out that [t]he issue here ... is not whether Washington has the authority to intervene in the affairs of local school boards; it is, rather, whether the State has exercised that authority in a manner consistent with the Equal Protection Clause. ( Id. at p. 476.) Having previously chosen to vest decisionmaking authority of the type at issue here in local school boards ( id. at pp. 477-480), the ballot measure worked a major reordering of the State's educational decisionmaking process.... After [the] passage of [the ballot measure], authority over all but one of those areas remained in the hands of the local board. By placing power over desegregative busing at the state level, then, [the initiative] plainly `differentiates between the treatment of problems involving racial matters and that afforded other problems in the same area.' [Citation.] ( Id. at pp. 479-480, italics added.) [11] Moreover, the court noted, while voters are free to merely repeal unpopular legislation at the ballot box, the initiative went further. ( Seattle, supra, 458 U.S. at p. 483.) It burdens all future attempts to integrate Washington schools in districts throughout the State, by lodging decisionmaking authority over the question at a new and remote level of government. ( Ibid., italics added.) This new political structure imposes direct and undeniable burdens on minority interests. `If a governmental institution is to be fair, one group cannot always be expected to win,' [citation]; by the same token, one group cannot be subjected to a debilitating and often insurmountable disadvantage. ( Id. at p. 484.) The high court ultimately concluded strict scrutiny applied to the initiative because, when the political process or the decisionmaking mechanism used to address racially conscious legislationand only such legislationis singled out for peculiar and disadvantageous treatment, the governmental action plainly `rests on distinctions based on race.' [Citation.] ( Seattle, supra, 458 U.S. at p. 485, fn. omitted.) It continued, when the State's allocation of power places unusual burdens on the ability of racial groups to enact legislation specifically designed to overcome the `special condition' of prejudice, the governmental action seriously `curtail[s] the operation of those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect minorities.' [( United States v. Carolene Products Co. (1938) 304 U.S. 144, 153, fn. 4 [82 L.Ed. 1234, 58 S.Ct. 778].)] ( Seattle, at p. 486.) The court thus concluded the initiative violated the Fourteenth Amendment and was invalid. ( Seattle, at p. 487.) [12]