Michelle Hackman, Wall Street Journal, July 14, 2018

{snip}

Public school districts across the country have long wrestled with how to desegregate their schools in ways supported by the law, which forbids districts from using the race of individual students to determine their placement.

During the Obama administration, their efforts were directed by a set of federal guidelines detailing ways schools could take race into account, such as drawing zoning lines to include racially diverse neighborhoods.

Trump administration officials rescinded that document, along with six others relating to the use of race in college and university admissions, and replaced it with a Bush-era set of guidelines directing schools to adopt non-race-based measures to create diversity.

Despite the rollback, schools are still permitted under federal law to use race broadly as one factor when drawing up voluntary integration plans. In a recent statement, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, whose agency joined the Justice Department in removing the Obama guidelines, said Supreme Court precedent, not direction from the executive branch, should dictate schools’ actions.

{snip}

But the administration’s decision to rescind the guidelines signals its legal philosophy, and may indicate going forward that it will investigate complaints or join lawsuits against schools who do use race in their desegregation plans.

{snip}

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that districts could continue to use race in determining the makeup of their school populations as long as they didn’t select individual students solely on the basis of race.

{snip}

Retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy was the architect of the 2007 Supreme Court ruling that forms the basis of today’s law. That is prompting advocates on both sides to wonder about the result if another diversity or integration plan comes the court, given Justice Kennedy’s replacement by a more conservative justice, possibly nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Most school districts avoid the risk altogether by using factors other than race, such as students’ socioeconomic status, to integrate their schools. Research suggests that such methods, which the Trump administration is now encouraging, can yield racial diversity but less so than plans that explicitly consider race.

{snip}