Seattle's "Open Choice" policy faces criticism

Supreme Court Case focuses on Race in schools Blog #5

The Seattle “open choice” program, meant to help promote racial balance, has been refuted by the Supreme Court. Michael Madden, the school district lawyer is having some difficulty trying to convince members of the Supreme Court that the current system is the best system. Madden argued that the Seattle school system is doing what is required under the narrowly tailored legislation; they are not denying admissions to any student. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and Justice Antonin Scalia were not impressed with this answer and seemed to think that such an argument was still selective because it was not available to every student who applied.
The “open choice” policy looks to place students given their proximity to a school, whether or not they have siblings at the school, and their race. The plan is designed to overcome the effects of segregated housing patterns in its ten high schools. Unfortunately this plan does not seem to avoid narrow-tailoring problems. Also, the plan is not only facing criticism in the Supreme Court. Parents have challenged the plan stating that minorities are being denied admission to schools without individual consideration.
The suggestion that race has limited the admissions of minority students to different schools brings to mind the well known Brown vs. the Board of Education. The Supreme Court combined five cases under the heading of Brown vs. Board of Education, the namesake being Oliver Brown of Kansas. The cases include Belton v. Gebhart (Delaware), Brown v. Board of Education (Kansas), Briggs v. Elliot (South Carolina), Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia), and Bolling v. C. Melvin Sharpe (Washington, DC). These cases all took place in 1950 and 1951. The five cases dealt with segregation in schools and many were linked with the NAACP.