The nation now has some hope that one day the unconstitutional practice of racial discrimination will end. We must recognize, however, that the nation is still a long way from that end. Comments in the dissenters’ opinions clearly show determination to continue the social engineering.

Even in the encouraging opinion articulated by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. we recognize that loopholes still remain. Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion that the school assignment practices unfairly denied students their choice of schools because of race, said school authorities had failed to provide the necessary support for the proposition that there is no other way than individual racial classification to avoid racial isolation in the districts. This would indicate that even Roberts agrees that the social engineering practice of achieving some level of racial/ethnic diversity can be sought under some circumstances.

Additionally, Justice Anthony Kennedy, also concurring in the majority ruling, said that race may be a component of a district’s plans designed to achieve diversity.

Kathleen Brose who heads the Seattle parent group that took the case to the Supreme Court reports that the Seattle School District is now saying that they won because of Kennedy’s opinion that they can still consider race, even though they can’t use the racial tiebreaker anymore.

Unless a district’s assignment practices are totally race-neutral, they are unconstitutional. Period. Until the practice of considering race is totally ended, we remain a nation divided, and our freedoms as U.S. citizens will hinge in some fashion upon our ancestral backgrounds. Justice Roberts did correctly point out, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race.”

So long as we have justices on the Supreme Court whose opinions defy the U.S. Constitution and so long as we have elected representatives in Congress who refuse to limit the courts under our system of checks and balances, and, most important, so long as constituents do not demand their elected representatives bring an end to the unconstitutional practices, victory still eludes us.

In his dissent Justice Breyer insists that the Court has understood that the Constitution permits local communities to adopt desegregation plans even when it does not require them to do so. Breyer notes that the Court has approved what is called “narrowly tailored” plans in the past that are no less race-conscious than the Seattle and Jefferson County plans in their efforts to integrate the schools.

Breyer is party to the deliberate (or ignorant) equating of integration (racial balancing) and desegregation. The fact that previous decisions of the Supreme Court were unconstitutional does not require the Court to continue to defy the Constitution.

It is to our nation’s shame that government agencies in every branch of government have practiced race-conscious social engineering and that the Supreme Court of our nation has allowed it, even required it.

As Justice Thomas points out, “Every time government uses racial criteria to ‘bring the races together,’ someone gets excluded, and the person excluded suffers an injury solely because of his or her race.” Thomas points out that exclusion based solely on race is precisely the sort of government action that pits the races against one another, exacerbates racial tension and provokes resentment among those who believe they have been wronged by the government’s use of race.

In 1954 the Supreme Court in the case of Brown v. Bd. of Ed. of Topeka, ruled that segregated schools are unconstitutional. Sane Americans cheered the ruling assuming the decision referred to deliberate state-sponsored racial assignment to deliberately segregate the schools. But for more than a half century the decision has been twisted to include a lack of what social engineers deem a proper level of racial/ethnic diversity in each school, thus promoting assignment based on race instead of ending it.

Education is the function of public schools, not social engineering.

The practice of considering race and ethnicity in school assignment has devastated thousands of school districts and killed the vital environment of the neighborhood school. The neighborhood school is no longer the hub of a community. Thus parents are denied vital parental involvement in and monitoring of the schools their children attend. School pride and community interest and support has been struck down. The practice has devastated communities where parents once worked together for good discipline. It has kept students who attend school together from being able to easily socialize and work together after school hours. It has wasted billions upon billions of tax dollars and precious (and expensive) fuel and has subjected students to traffic dangers and diesel fumes on buses. It has caused untold inconvenience for both parents and students.

The National Association for Neighborhood Schools (NANS) cheers the June 28 Supreme Court ruling which is a victory for Seattle and Jefferson County parents. The ruling no doubt will make use of race as a factor in school assignment more difficult to justify as more and more groups across the nation hopefully seek to end the practice and as, hopefully, more and more school districts will seek to avoid the practice. We would be amiss, however, if we did not stress the lingering opportunity for racial control of assignment.

We would also be amiss if we did not point out the long road ahead of ridding individual states and school districts of diversity requirements necessitating racial/ethnic consideration in school assignment.

We definitely must point out the need to return to the neighborhood school concept in all of the nation’s school districts.

The cases before the Court were Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education.

Concurring in the majority opinion were Chief Justice John Roberts who wrote the majority opinion and Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy.

Dissenting were Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens.

(See also "Important New Information"