Race Based Interest

Race Based Interests

The Bill of Rights incorporates the first ten Amendments in the United States Constitution to help prevent infringement of American citizens’ civil rights. This would lay an establishment of equality, liberty, and freedom for all its citizens. The 14th Amendment was drafted to be important in maintaining American citizens’ right to equal opportunity and to ensure them equal protection of the laws by defending the citizens from unjust state regulations. The Rock Island School District is a community of residents with diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds that are separated fundamentally along racial lines in the district’s neighborhoods. One neighborhood is mainly white while the other two are primarily Latino and African American. The Rock Island School Board needed to select a site for a new high school to achieve racial diversity that reflects the demographics of the residents within the district’s community. The Concerned Parents group, whom strongly opposes the School Board’s decision, did not consider the proposal narrowly tailored and therefore not a compelling state interest since race is being used as a primary factor in deciding where the school is going to be built. The Concerned Parents group criticizes the proposal as being unlawful to take race into consideration for determining the new school site selection because there is no history of legal segregation, de jure segregation present and the school is trying to achieve racial balancing within the district by using race as the only alternative. However, the School Board’s proposal in taking race into consideration to determine where the school should be built is constitutional and it abides the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment because it is a compelling state interest and is narrowly tailored asserting that it would address emerging patterns of re-segregation and provide the educational benefits of integration. Here, the terms compelling state interest and narrowly tailored are part of the strict scrutiny test which determines if considering race is constitutional or not. In order for race to be a compelling state interest there has to be good reasons to achieve that interest. For race to also pass the strict scrutiny test, it must be narrowly tailored, meaning that all alternatives are examined and only then can it be considered carefully in solving the problem with no fixed quota present.

The Concerned Parents group argues that a state compelling interest can be justified only by remedying past discrimination. In the precedent case, Parents Involved v. Seattle School District No. 1, Justice Kennedy clarifies that “school districts that had engaged in de jure segregation had an affirmative constitutional duty to desegregate; those that were de facto segregated did not” (256). The Rock Island district had no prior de jure discrimination and, therefore, fails to pass using race as lawful to determine the location of the new school. Using the case Brown v. Board of Education, the parents argue that the case dealt with legalized school segregation and outlawed it. This argument demonstrates that School Boards are able to consider race when segregation occurred due to government policy or law. The Concerned Parents group expands upon their argument that the school board’s proposal is unconstitutional because they can not command legal segregation while it is based on de facto segregation. The school does not display any evidence that there is a history of legal segregation hence there is no specific past to be fixed; therefore, there is no just cause to force desegregation when there were no government policies in effect. The School Board is not in a position where they are permitted to consider race constitutionally in remedying de facto segregation. The Constitution can justify school authorities to desegregate under de jure segregation, but for de facto it is unconstitutional to take any authoritative action by the school, thus it does not satisfy as being a compelling state interest.

In contrast, the Rock Island School Board argues that their proposal is a compelling state interest to prevent patterns of re-segregation and have an integrated school since the neighborhoods within the community are separated mainly along racial lines. According to Brown v. Board of Education, the 14th Amendment of the Equal Protection Clause acquires integrated schools regardless of legal segregation or not because “separate but equal” schools based on race is not essentially equal. Students are able to obtain equal educational opportunities and equal protection under the 14th amendment since discrimination on the basis of race will not be an issue in an integrated school. The Concerned Parents agree that schools are allowed to formulate policies to deal with de jure segregation and not de facto. De facto segregation being accepted and not dealt with is not something neither the government nor the School Board should tolerate. In Parents Involved v. Seattle School District No. 1, Justice Kennedy states that the Constitution does not require school districts “to ignore the problem of de facto resegregation in schooling” and does not command for local school authorities to “accept the status quo of racial isolation in schools” (254). If nothing is done by school boards then segregation in school districts throughout communities will be present and can cause harmful and damaging effects of racial isolation in schools. In the precedent case Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice O’ Connor stated “But we have never held that the only governmental use of race that can survive strict scrutiny is remedying past discrimination” (210). School authorities are allowed to use race permitted by the Constitution as a policy that would help alleviate any evident risks of de facto segregation in their schools which is a compelling state interest. School authorities are given broad authority to formulate educational policies to ensure they have an integrated school. Justice Breyer states that the “absence of a court order to desegregate does not mean that a school board cannot exceed minimum requirements in order to promote school integration” (267). Considering race in this proposal is not illegitimate because the school board is pursuing a goal important enough to warrant its use and it is not constitutionally forbidden for school authorities to voluntarily alleviate de facto segregation (267). For the Equal Protection Clause to be applied to every student, an integrated school is required so that it can include and not exclude anyone particularly on the basis of their race. Integration is also a compelling state interest because