Local public school officials in both cities use local choice programs to maintain integrated schools and prevent resegregation. The two cases, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, et al., filed by two individual students denied their first choices contend that local school officials depended too heavily on race as a factor in school assignment.

"Ample research has shown that minority students are more likely to thrive in integrated schools and achieve future success than their counterparts in majority minority schools," said National Urban League President Marc H. Morial. "Abolishing local choice programs will only represent a giant step backwards.

The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University has concluded that abolishing programs designed to ensure voluntary desegregation will only accelerate resegregation.

"It would be a fallacy to suggest that by not considering race at all - i.e., by ignoring de facto neighborhood segregation - the Seattle School District would somehow be acting in a 'race neutral' fashion when a return to a school system that does not take race into account would mean that the schools would be distinguished solely by race," the brief stated.

The opponents of these local choice programs, the brief further notes, pretend that "segregation does not exist and at the same time seeks a ruling from this Court that would almost ensure a return to segregation and racial inequality in Seattle's public schools."

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the two cases in early December, with a decision expected in June of 2007.

For a copy of the brief, click here.

For more information, contact Ricky Clemons at 212-558-5371 or rclemons@nul.org.