LAUSD TO STICK TO 1980S PLAN ON RACE NO IMMEDIATE EFFECT SEEN FROM COURT RULING.

Byline: HARRISON SHEPPARD

Sacramento Bureau

In a move expected to spur Los Angeles Unified and other districts across the country to re-evaluate racial-integration programs, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday restricted the use of race in assigning students to schools.

The 5-4 ruling from Washington, D.C., leaves the door open for the limited use of race to achieve diversity in schools, but some decried the decision as a step toward weakening landmark integration reforms of five decades ago.

Analysts also said the sharply split decision in two cases, affecting students assigned to schools in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle, could imperil similar plans in hundreds of districts nationwide.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials said they are still reviewing the cases with outside legal counsel but believe the decision should have no immediate effect on the district's current integration plan.

LAUSD General Counsel Kevin Reed said the district is operating under a court-ordered plan, dating back to 1982, that has already been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Reed called the LAUSD situation fundamentally different from the situations in Louisville and Seattle schools, not operating under court-ordered plans when they were sued.

"First, the majority of the court reaffirmed that race can play a role in student admissions in public schools," Reed said. "Five justices said race can play a role. Second, the case did not reach the issue of whether a court-ordered desegregation plan under a state constitution will be held to this standard or some other standard.

"Without definitive answers on that question, we are not in a position to say we need to change anything tomorrow."

The district's integration plan, determined in Crawford v. LAUSD, consists primarily of two elements. The first requires the district to maintain racial balance in its 162 magnet programs -- meaning no more than 30 percent to 40 percent of students are non-Hispanic whites.

It also allows a student who lives near a school that is considered racially segregated to enroll in an integrated school in another location, with the district providing voluntary busing.

The only caveat, Reed acknowledged, is that an outside group could argue that the new decision does apply to the LAUSD and file a lawsuit demanding changes.

The Pacific Legal Foundation already has a pending lawsuit against the district to overturn aspects of its integration plan. That suit, however, is based on Proposition 209, approved by California voters in 1996, seeking to end affirmative action in the state.

Paul Beard, a senior staff attorney for the foundation, said the group is weighing whether the new Supreme Court decision might affect that case.

If it does not have a direct legal bearing, he said, it at least reaffirms some of the ideas behind the group's suit.

"I think it does vindicate the principal behind Proposition 209 -- that racial balancing is not an appropriate means for achieving any kinds of goals the school district might have," Beard said.

"As far as the legal arguments are concerned, it won't have an impact directly on the case, because we are suing only under Proposition 209, and our state law thankfully is more protective than federal law on this issue."

In the Supreme Court cases Thursday, parents had filed suit to overturn integration plans in the districts. In siding with the parents, Chief Justice John Roberts said the court believed "the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

But Justice Stephen Breyer, in a dissent joined by the other liberals on the court, said Roberts' opinion undermined the promise of integrated schools the court laid out 53 years ago in its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

"To invalidate the plans under review is to threaten the promise of Brown," Breyer said.

Justice Clarence Thomas, the court's only black, wrote a separate opinion endorsing the ruling and taking issue with the dissenters' view of Brown.

"What was wrong in 1954 cannot be right today," Thomas said. "The plans before us base school assignment decisions on students' race. Because 'our Constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,' such race-based decision making is unconstitutional."

The Louisville case grew out of complaints from parents whose children were not allowed to attend schools of their choice.

Crystal Meredith, a white, single mother, sued after the school system turned down a request to transfer her 5-year-old son, Joshua Ryan McDonald, to a school closer to home.

Louisville's schools spent 25 years under a court order to eliminate the effects of state-sponsored segregation. After a federal judge freed the Jefferson County, Ky., school board that oversees Louisville from his supervision, the board decided to keep much of the court-ordered plan.

The Seattle school district said it used race as one of many factors in determining which high schools students attend, and relied on it only at the end of the process. Seattle suspended its program after parents sued.

Kathleen Brose, mother of a white Seattle student who sued the district, said she felt vindicated by the decision.

"We're against discrimination. ... There's just other things they can do without discriminating."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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