HARTFORD Conn.
A new U.S. Supreme Court ruling could affect a decades-old Connecticut law requiring individual schools to reflect the demographics of their communities, state officials said Thursday.
The high court rejected integration plans in the Louisville, Ky., and Seattle school districts Thursday. The 5-4 ruling also curtails the practice of taking students' race into account when deciding which schools they will attend.
Connecticut officials said Thursday they were reviewing whether the ruling will affect a 1969 state law that requires districts to correct racial imbalances at schools within their borders.
"This ruling raises as many questions as it answers in terms of its effect on our state laws," Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said. "We're continuing our review intensively and in depth, because there may be other ramifications for this law and other legal issues."
The Supreme Court's decision Thursday said that taking students' race into account when assigning them to particular schools violates Constitutional guarantees of equal protection.
However, the ruling leaves the door open for the limited use of race to achieve diversity in schools an important codicil under which Connecticut's racial imbalance law might be remain acceptable, the state officials said.
Thomas Murphy, a spokesman for the state Department of Education, said its attorneys are reviewing the 180-page decision to determine what, if any, effect it would have here.
"It's too early to tell," he said. "We have to look carefully at it before we make any decisions or take any actions."
The 1969 Connecticut law says the proportion of minority students in any school must not be more than 25 percentage points above or below a district's overall average.
Six schools received warning letters this spring that their minority enrollments far exceeded the average minority enrollment in their districts. Twelve other districts also were cautioned that several schools in their borders were inching toward the tipping point.
