“It’s likely that a decision [against school integration] could lay the foundation for overturning Grutter,” he says.
Stanford’s Banks says the court could render a decision that sets a new standard over the use of race in K-12 while leaving the Grutter precedent intact. Such a decision might be limited only to districts that never had a history of racial segregation, such as in Seattle, and to districts that had been segregated but were at some point deemed to be desegregated, as was the case in Louisville.
School districts under court order to desegregate might be exempt from a ruling that would limit or even eliminate the use of race in school assignments, Banks contends. And under a strict system abolishing race as a factor in K-12 assignments, college and university academic outreach programs targeting minority high school students could very well face heavy scrutiny.
However, Banks believes it’s highly unlikely the court will go after higher education affirmative action on the basis of the Seattle and Louisville cases. “It would be an extreme move by them to overturn Grutter,” he says.
© Copyright 2005 by DiverseEducation.com
