Supreme Court overturns race-based school admissions Nick Juliano

Published: Thursday June 28, 2007 Print This Email This In a narrowly divided opinion handed down Thursday, the Supreme Court overturned school district policies that made race a factor in admissions, CNN reported. The 5-4 decision backed parents in Seattle and Louisville who argued that their children were unfairly denied positions in "magnet" public schools because of their race. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which found the school districts failed to show that classifying students on the basis of race was the only way to maintain racial diversity. "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," Roberts wrote, according to SCOTUSblog. The decision could affect racial integration plans in hundreds of school districts, according to the Associated Press. In another 5-4 decision released Thursday, the court ruled Texas cannot execute a mentally ill prisoner. Scott Panetti was convicted of murdering his in-laws 15 years ago, but his lawyers argued he should not face the death penalty because he does not understand why he is facing that punishment. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in that case. Justices found the Eighth Amendment prohibited putting to death 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," according to the Associated Press. Thursday's decisions represented the extent to which Kennedy remains a pivot-point on the court. In the death penalty case, he sided with the court's liberal wing -- Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg, David Souter, John Paul Stevens and Stephen Bryer. In the school decision he wrote a concurring opinion joining with conservative Justices Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito. Although Kennedy upheld the majority decision that the Seattle and Louisville school districts went too far in using race as a factor, he did not eliminate all possibilities it could be a factor in the future.



