No easy solution: the Supreme Court strikes down a method of integration in U.S. schools.

Can a school district use race as a factor to create diversity among its students? This summer, in an eagerly awaited decision, the U.S. Supreme Court said no.

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The Court's decision on Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 settled cases from Washington State and Kentucky. In both places, school authorities had tried to get a minimum number of black students enrolled in each school. This meant that some white students could not get into their first-choice schools. Some white parents sued. They claimed that the schools' policies violated the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection for all Americans.

By a 5-to-4 vote, the Court agreed with the parents. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that the programs amounted to "discrimination on the basis of race."

Justice Stephen G. Breyer dissented (disagreed). Writing for the minority, Breyer said that the schools were trying to provide an equal education for all students. "This is a decision that the Court and the nation will come to regret," he wrote.

"The opinion is going to have a tremendous impact throughout the country," Kevin Brown, a professor at the University of Indiana Law School, told JS. "[It will] significantly restrict the ability to use race to integrate schools."

Is the Law Color-Blind?

Both the majority and minority claimed to be following the precedent (example) of Brown v. Board of Education. That landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision overturned rules in many places that had kept black students out of white public schools.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who joined the majority in the Parents case, wrote that the Brown ruling meant that the law should be "color-blind." Kevin Brown disagrees. "What Brown v. Board of Education really stood for was the sense that we should desegregate our society," he said.

Yet the professor sees a silver lining in one part of the Parents decision. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy supported the majority but wrote his own opinion. Race does matter in our society, Kennedy said. He worried that schools with few minority students would become "racially isolated." Kennedy invited school districts to come up with new, "narrowly tailored" plans to avoid this isolation.

Kevin Brown said that these methods might include using income instead of race to achieve greater diversity. Still, as Justice Kennedy wrote, "the problem before us defies [an easy] solution."