WASHINGTON

School officials around the United States are considering how to proceed after a Supreme Court decision rejecting racial integration plans in two cities.

The 5-4 ruling prohibited plans in Seattle and Louisville, Kentucky, but did not entirely shut the door on using race as a factor when making decisions about what schools should look like.

Thursday's ruling brought complaints that it allegedly betrayed the Supreme Court's most acclaimed ruling the 53-year-old Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing segregated schools.

Justice Anthony Kennedy went along with the court's four most conservative members in rejecting the Louisville and Seattle plans. However, he stopped short of saying race can never be a component of school efforts to achieve diversity.

"A district may consider it a compelling interest to achieve a diverse student population," Kennedy said. "Race may be one component of that diversity."

But Kennedy's opinion had some proponents of the integration plans cheering.

"My overall view is that we dodged a bullet," said William Taylor, chairman of the Washington-based Citizens Commission on Civil Rights, who added that he expected a much more sweeping rejection of race as a factor in school district decision making.

Kennedy suggested race could be a factor in deciding where to build a new school and how to draw school attendance boundaries.

He also said districts should be able to find creative ways to achieve their goals without relying on widespread racial classification.

One idea gaining ground is for school officials to use family income as a way to integrate schools economically.

Since minorities are often more likely to be poorer then their white peers, this can produce racial integration, said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a liberal-leaning think tank in Washington. Importantly, he added, it wouldn't be scrutinized legally so long as it didn't rely on race.