I expect the Bush Administration to call torture "coercive interrogation" and detainee suicide "self-injurious behavior," but I expect the Supreme Court to exercise a little more intellectual honesty in what it does. But the Supreme Court has followed the Bush Administration's cue of leaving law ostensibly in place while dismantling it into oblivion. Instead of just overturning the its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court added insult to injury by using the language of Brown to underpin a decision that ignores Brown's history, context and intent. It is a reductio ad absurdum to state, as Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. did, that the "way to stop discimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." Roberts is too smart to pretend he doesn't get it.
"Promote racial diversity but don't take race into account." That's essentially what the Supreme Court said yesterday in a divided decision that killed the ability of public school districts to use race to determine which schools students can attend--this covers everything from school districting plans, to recruiting students, to desegregation plans. In theory, this was just about striking down school integration plans in Louisville and Seattle (supported, BTW, by both black and white parents), but in wide-ranging, far flung, life-altering practice, it forbids schools from taking steps to maintain integrated schools.
Among the 24 cases this term in which the Supreme Court split 5 to 4--including explosive desicions gutting a key provision of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law and upholding a federal ban on a late-term abortion procedure--this is by far the most painful for me. My three kids go to D.C. public school. I love just reading through the school directory--Soledad, Quinn, Ravi, Sam, Shakeela, Neal, Lalita--the names are a reflection of the diversity of Janney Elementary, which I believe enhances the education of all the students. It will be tragic if that ends.
The decision insidiously undid the unanimouns Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which said that the Constitution forbids school systems from maintaining racially-segregated schools. The Court deliberately ignored precedent--so much for conservatives' professed commitment to judicial restraint and stare decisis (the legal principle of following precedent). And to add insult to injury, the Court invoked the language of the landmark 1954 decision to do so. Carry your umbrellas today. Thurgood Marshall is crying in heaven. Let's call yesterday's decision for what it is: the Supreme Court overturned Brown. And this will be the most enduring decision of Bush's sorry legacy.