Kennedy Holds Powell’s Position
The justice who holds the seat once occupied by Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote the controlling opinion in yesterday’s Supreme Court decision striking down two school integration plans.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joined the five-justice majority in striking down programs used in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., area schools. Seattle used race as a tie-breaker and Louisville limited transfers based on race.
But Kennedy departed from the chief justice’s majority opinion to say that schools could devise narrowly tailored programs to promote diversity and address racial isolation and de facto resegregation, Linda Greenhouse writes for the New York Times.
Acceptable programs could use race in determining school attendance zones, choosing sites for new schools, and directing resources to special programs, he said.
Exactly 29 years ago, Powell announced his concurring opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, which struck down quotas but allowed race to be used as a factor in university admissions.
Theodore Shaw, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, drew parallels between the Powell and Kennedy opinions in an interview with Tony Mauro of Legal Times.
“The more we look at Justice Kennedy’s opinion, the more clear it is that there is an opening” for measures to prevent resegregation of schools, he told Mauro.
