The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last Thursday to limit the use of race in public school integration programs will not halt integration entirely, but does create setbacks for communities aiming to promote diversity in public schools, says Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a Harvard law school professor.
“It will make people reluctant to bring forward claims [against segregation] for fear they will lack the evidence to make their claims legitimate,” Ogletree told the American Bar Association’s (ABA) National Conference for the Minority Lawyer on Friday.
When the decision came down, Ogletree was among a host of civil rights advocates, including three Brown v. Board of Education lawyers, who condemned the decision. But despite his opposition to the court’s ruling, Ogletree found an ally, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, in the 5-4 majority.
In a lecture Friday morning Ogletree praised Justice Kennedy’s concurring opinion in the case, which limited but did not exclude race as a factor in alleviating segregation in public school districts.
“Kennedy captures race in an amazing way,” Ogletree said. “Kennedy is skeptical of the way race is used in these programs, but he is adamant that race is still appropriate and necessary to desegregation.”
Ogletree’s remarks on Justice Kennedy were coupled by an op-ed he authored in Friday’s Boston Globe. In the op-ed, Ogletree called Justice Kennedy’s concurrence a “small, and welcome, affirmation” of the ruling in Brown, the 1954 landmark case that overturned segregation in public schools.
“Kennedy’s opinion refuses to embrace the four-person plurality that race cannot be considered in seeking to achieve educational equality,” Ogletree wrote. “Now it is up to lawyers, civil rights and educational advocates, school districts and school boards to craft original, creative, and constitutional remedies to combat racial isolation and foster diversity.”
