Considering Fairness in Affirmative Action in Schools

Dec. 1, 2006 — -- When Crystal Meredith moved to Louisville, Ky., and tried to enroll her 5-year-old son in kindergarten a couple blocks from their house, officials pointed her elsewhere, to a school that was a 90-minute bus ride away.

A school that was closer to their home, officials told her, couldn't accept another white student like Joshua that year.

Meredith, a single mother, wasn't looking for a fight. After driving Joshua across town to school every day, she decided she'd bypassed the closer school long enough.

She sued and is now at the center of the most significant legal battle over race to reach the Supreme Court in years.

"Joshua was denied entrance to a school for no other reason than racial classification," said Teddy Gordon, Meredith's attorney. "There was room at the school. There were plenty of empty seats. This was a racial quota."

Meredith and other parents who sued the Louisville school district argue that the racial assignment plans amount to unconstitutional race discrimination.

The school district contends that it's not discriminating against anyone, but instead is trying to maintain racially balanced and integrated schools for the benefit of all.

The justices will hear arguments in the case on Monday, as well as in a similar case from Seattle.

The cases are the first major battle over race for the newly constituted Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, and they could set important guidelines for the use of racial preferences in the future.

Civil rights advocates say nothing less than integrated public education is at stake.

They say a ruling against the school districts would undermine the promise of Brown vs. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 decision that outlawed separate systems of education for black and white schoolchildren.

"The question before the Supreme Court now is whether it will be illegal or unconstitutional to voluntarily maintain school desegregation, school integration, in the 21st century," said Ted Shaw, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. "It is an easy question. It is what is left of Brown vs. Board of Education."