Court Opinion

ID: 9439962
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 07:02:53.87002+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:26:51.575197
License: Public Domain

BOUDIN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Judge Selya’s opinion demonstrates that the school committee plan under attack here does involve racial preference, whatever the complexity of the plan and subtlety in expression. Yet, this court concluded more than a decade ago that purposeful discrimination had ended so far as assignments were concerned and that the school committee was proceeding in good faith. See Morgan v. Nucci, 831 F.2d 313, 326 n. 19 (1st Cir.1987). To survive, the school committee’s plan must serve a compelling state interest and be narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. Croson, 488 U.S. at 505-08, 109 S.Ct. 706; Wygant, 476 U.S. at 274, 106 S.Ct. 1842.
The foremost interest urged by the school committee is diversity, a ground that may or may not prove “compelling” to the Supreme Court. But even if diversity were an adequate ground, it has not been shown that this plan is necessary to achieve it. The record shows that minorities will be included in BLS in substantial numbers without the plan. Op. at 797-98. If some specific higher level is needed to achieve diversity of views and backgrounds, this haá not been demonstrated in the record.
The alternative interest urged on this record is that the plan is necessary to remedy the residual effects' of admitted past discrimination. The remnants on which the school committee relies are supposed teacher attitudes, specifically, a lower expectation of achievement by minorities in the Boston public schools. These attitudes are said to be linked backward in time to mind-sets developed during a regime of purposeful discrimination and forward to explain poorer performance by minority public-school students on the tests necessary for entry into the elite public schools. The remedy is the racial preference embodied in the plan.
In theory, low expectations could be caused by past discrimination and could have some effect on current performance. But here the quality of the supporting evidence is far from overwhelming. In this ease, there is no study of Boston schools, only one for Kansas City; and the evidence as to Boston, while offered through experts, is largely based on general statements or anecdote. It is open to question whether such evidence can withstand Croson’s requirement of a “searching judicial inquiry.” Croson, 488 U.S. at 493, 109 S.Ct. 706.
In all events, the plan fails to meet the Supreme Court’s narrow tailoring requirement. The plan is clearly overbroad when judged by the past-discrimination rationale; it provides preferences to minority groups that were never discriminated against by the Boston School authorities or affected by lowered expectations of public school teachers *810(Asians and private school African-American applicants in particular). See Croson, 488 U.S. at 506, 109 S.Ct. 706; Wygant, 476 U.S. at 284 n. 13, 106 S.Ct. 1842. There is some reason to think that African-American private school applicants rather than public school students, may well be the principal beneficiary of the preferences created by the plan.
There is also no indication that the plan will do anything to alter the expectations of public-school teachers, which are claimed to be the source of the residual discrimination. One of the school committee’s own experts, asked to say whether or how the plan would resolve this problem, was unable to supply an answer. Op. at 807. Another school committee expert, answering a direct question from the judge as to whether the plan’s racial preference “attacked the problem of teacher attitude,” essentially conceded that it did not. Tr. 6-126 to -127. These admissions suggest a further misfit between plan and remedy.
Finally, because the plan does not address the supposed cause of the problem, teacher attitudes formed in the ancien regime, the same arguments now urged to sustain the plan will be available for the indefinite future. Teachers retire slowly and themselves teach those who succeed them. The plan thus creates just the kind of “timeless” racial preferences of concern to the Supreme Court. Wygant, 476 U.S. at 276, 106 S.Ct. 1842; see Croson, 488 U.S. at 498, 505, 109 S.Ct. 706; cf. United States v. Paradise, 480 U.S. 149, 178, 107 S.Ct. 1053, 94 L.Ed.2d 203 (1987).
None of these defects of fit is surprising because, at bottom, the plan is not seriously suited to be a temporary measure to remedy low teacher expectations that are the supposed remnants of discrimination. It is instead a thoughtful effort to assist minorities historically disadvantaged while, at the same time, preserving the essentially competitive character of the schools in question. So viewed, there is no misfit between problem and remedy; the only misfit is with Croson’s requirements for the use of racial preferences, requirements that only the Supreme Court can relax.