Okay can someone help me please??

Question

I need to know..this judgement from the Supreme Court?? I'm not understanding it. Was people wanting a ruling saying that kids should go to certain public schools because of there race?? As in putting blacks in one school and whites in another?? Can someone explain! And if thats the case??!!! Why??? Wasn't all that the opposite in the 50s and 60s???

Well thats just wrong i think personal...to make kids in public school be of more than one race send kids to a school miles away instead of the one right there....to me thats not right...for all kids....

Answer 1

You are right! In the 50s and 60s the Supreme Court ruled just the opposite saying that desegregation required students of all races to be balanced in public schools.

My only guess (and its only a guess) is that the Supreme Court has finally determined that the previous ruling was not a good one. Its obvious it did not work. With "White Flight" and with some individuals being perpetually poor, segregation will always occur. I think the Supreme Court has finally determined that this separation is not a race thing, its an economic thing. The poor with a lower tax base will always be subjected to lower performing students and schools.

The Supreme Court and School districts can do what they want to even the playing field, but its impossible to make everybody economically equal. Also, with these lower economic areas, the other reality is that most students don't care and are doomed to continued poverty. When basketball, rap and going to clubs is more important than education, they don't want to learn. And, those that try and be good students are put down by their peers.

Answer 2

Many schools are segregated essentially because the neighborhoods where the schools are are segregated. In other words, if a school is built in an area where almost all the residents are of one race, almost all the students will be of that race.

The programs being used encouraged, and in some cases required, that students go to a school not the closest to their own home, in order to have some whites in schools located in minority areas, and some minority students in schools located in white areas. That is what the Supreme Court ruled against, paving the way for widespread de facto school segregation.

Answer 3

The issue is whether it was ok to consider race when trying to make schools MORE diverse. Now, it turns out, you can't.

Answer 4

Supreme Court Rejects Public School Integration Plans
Thursday, June 28, 2007

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected school diversity plans that take account of students' race in two major public school districts but left the door open for using race in limited circumstances.

The decision in cases affecting schools in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle could imperil similar plans in hundreds of districts nationwide, and it further restricts how public school systems may attain racial diversity.

The court split, 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts announcing the court's judgment. The court's four liberal justices dissented.

Yet Justice Anthony Kennedy would not go as far as the other four conservative justices, saying in a concurring opinion that race may be a component of school district plans designed to achieve diversity.

To the extent that Roberts' opinion can be interpreted to foreclose the use of race in any circumstance, Kennedy said, "I disagree with that reasoning."

He agreed with Roberts that the plans in Louisville and Seattle violated constitutional guarantees of equal protection.

The two school systems in Thursday's decisions employ slightly different methods of taking students' race into account when determining which school they will attend.

Federal appeals courts had upheld both plans after some parents sued. The Bush administration the parents' side, arguing that racial diversity is a noble goal but can be sought only through race-neutral means.

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, which encompasses Louisville, from his supervision, the board decided to keep much of the court-ordered plan in place to prevent schools from re-segregating.

The lawyer for the Louisville system called the plan a success story that enjoys broad community support, including among parents of white and black students.

The Seattle school district said it used race as one among many factors, relied on it only in some instances and then only at the end of a lengthy process in allocating students among the city's high schools. Seattle suspended its program after parents sued.

The opinion was the first on the divisive issue since 2003, when a 5-4 ruling upheld the limited consideration of race in college admissions to attain a diverse student body. Since then, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who approved of the limited use of race, retired. Her replacement, Justice Samuel Alito was in the majority that struck down the school system plans in Kentucky and Washington.

The Supreme Court also blocked the execution of a Texas killer whose lawyers argued that he should not be put to death because he is mentally ill.

Scott Louis Panetti shot his in-laws to death 15 years ago in front of his wife and young daughter.

Panetti knows what he did, but believes that he is on death row because he preaches the word of God, his lawyers say.

Panetti's lawyers wanted the court to determine that people who cannot understand the connection between their crime and punishment because of mental illness may not be executed.

The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution bars "the execution of a person who is so lacking in rational understanding that he cannot comprehend that he is being put to death because of the crime he was convicted of committing," they said in court papers.