Meredith V. Jefferson County Board of Education

Meredith V. Jefferson County Board Of Education

Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court prohibited assigning students to public schools solely for the purpose of achieving racial integration and declined to recognize racial balancing as a compelling state interest. In a 5-4 decision delivered by Chief Justice John Roberts, five justices held that the School Boards did not present any "compelling state interest" that would justify the assignment of school seats on the basis of race. Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy filed a concurrence that presented a more narrow interpretation, stating that schools may use "race conscious" measures to achieve diversity in schools but that the schools at issue in this case did not use a sufficiently narrow tailoring of their plans to sustain their goals. Four justices dissented from the Court's conclusions.

None of the nine Supreme Court justices disputed that, as Justice Kennedy put it, the case was "argued on the assumption...that the discrimination in question did not result from de jure actions." This made the case different from Brown v. Board of Education. All of the dissenting justices acknowledged that "the Constitution does not impose a duty to desegregate upon districts," if the districts have not practiced racial discrimination. However, the dissenters argued that the Constitution permits such desegregation even though it does not require it.