High Court to Hear School Diversity Case

Sisters Audreyanna, 14, left, and Cassandra Cosby, 16, discuss desegregation at a high school football game Friday, Sept, 22, 2006, at Central High School Stadium in Louisville, Ky. The sisters say the idea of mixing students from around the county in different schools sounds like a good idea. They said school integration provides a social education along with an academic one. Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled is to hear oral arguments on lawsuits brought by parents in Louisville and Seattle who challenged voluntary school district policies that use race to help determine where children go to school. (AP Photo/Brian Bohannon) (Brian Bohannon - AP)

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court is diving into a debate over school diversity that is as old as Reconstruction-era efforts to integrate blacks into the mainstream and as new as the 5:35 a.m. start time on some buses carrying students across town in Louisville, Ky.

At a time of rising de facto segregation in public schools, the high court is to hear arguments Monday on lawsuits by parents in Louisville and Seattle who are challenging policies that use race to help determine where children go to school.

The school policies are designed to keep schools from segregating along the same lines as neighborhoods.

Educators, civil rights advocates, politicians and parents _ not to mention students _ are watching for a potential watershed ruling on what value the nation should place on diversity in the classroom, and at what price.

The answer may hinge on the court's newest member, Justice Samuel Alito, who replaced Sandra Day O'Connor in January.

A year ago, O'Connor and her colleagues refused to hear a similar school diversity challenge from Massachusetts. After Alito's arrival, the court surprised many observers by agreeing to hear the appeals from Louisville and Seattle. Federal appeals courts had ruled in favor of both school systems.

The challenges could prove among the most significant K-12 desegregation cases since the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 that banned racial segregation in public schools.

Civil rights advocates are not optimistic.

The new cases "put on the table, in a very clear way, the question of how far society, how far government, should go in terms of trying to promote diversity in education in America," said Ellis Cose, the author of a study on affirmative action.

"The core issue of whether the government should be in the business of helping to promote diversity in some way in education is at the heart of all these cases," he said.

The Bush administration is siding with parents against the school districts, arguing the policies are an unconstitutional, albeit well-meaning, "racial balancing" without a compelling justification. "A well-intentioned quota is still a quota," the administration said in a brief submitted on the Kentucky case.

Civil rights advocates say a ruling that bars schools from taking race into account would deal a devastating blow to the promotion of diverse schools.