Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007)

The U.S. Supreme Court decided its most recent school desegregation case in the 2007 case of Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. In a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court held that the voluntary desegregation plans in Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky, were unconstitutional because they were not narrowly tailored to meet a compelling interest. The Court's decision, while fractured in some areas, stands for at least four major principles in voluntary desegregation. First, when a school district relies on individual students' race to assign those individual students to a school, strict scrutiny applies. Strict scrutiny requires that the school demonstrate a compelling interest to justify its use of race and that the school's means are narrowly tailored to achieving that ...