July 01, 2007

THE conservative-dominated US Supreme Court voted narrowly last week to throw out a key plank of “affirmative action” programmes that seek a leg-up for black children in sought-after schools.

In the latest of a string of decisions overturning liberal causes, the nation's highest court found that schools cannot use race alone in deciding the mix of their student populations.

By five to four, the justices ruled in favour of white parents whose children were denied places at their nearest schools in Seattle and the Kentucky city of Louisville because of such admission policies.

“Simply because the school districts may seek a worthy goal doesn't mean that they are free to discriminate on the basis of race to achieve it,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority decision.

The decision could affect hundreds of US districts that try to give preference to black and other ethnic-minority children, if a school is over-subscribed and is deemed to have enough white children already.

Civil-rights groups were outraged at the ruling rendered by a Supreme Court that, under judges appointed by President George W. Bush, has tilted to the right.

Brenda Wright, legal director for the voting rights organisation Demos, said ethnic-minority children in poorer areas would be condemned to remain in depressed schools.

The “narrow Supreme Court majority has done a grave disservice not just to educational equity but to our democracy as a whole,” she said.

But backed by the Bush administration, the aggrieved parents argued that the admission policies were just as discriminatory as the racial segregation long enforced in southern schools after the abolition of slavery.

That segregation was struck down in the Supreme Court's historic “Brown vs

Board of Education” ruling of 1954, which helped set in train the landmark civil rights gains achieved in the 1960s.

In 2003, the Supreme Court narrowly upheld race-based admissions policies at the University of Michigan Law School, but said that race must be only one of several factors considered by school authorities.

That decision went through on the swing vote of liberal justice Sandra Day O'Conner, who was replaced last year by the conservative Samuel Alito. Chief Justice Roberts is another recent addition to the court on Bush's nomination.

Roberts wrote that permitting “racial balancing as a compelling state interest would justify the imposition of racial proportionality throughout American society,” contrary to the constitutional right to equal protection.

The court's only black justice, Clarence Thomas, a conservative opponent of affirmative action, backed the majority. “What was wrong in 1954 cannot be right today,” he wrote.

Justice Anthony Kennedy agreed with the ruling while stressing that race could still be used by school admissions boards “but other demographic factors, plus special talents and needs, should also be considered.” Liberal judge Stephen Breyer wrote in a dissenting opinion, however, that it was a “decision that the court and the nation will come to regret.” “The last half-century has witnessed great strides toward racial equality, but we have not yet realised the promise of 'Brown.' To invalidate the plans under review is to threaten the promise of 'Brown,'” he wrote. “The plurality's position, I fear, would break that promise.” —AFP