By The Editors

The California Court of Appeals today upheld the Berkeley public schools student assignment plan that aims to create a diverse student population in each of the city’s schools by taking into account the demographic character of the neighborhoods where students live. The plan, which was supported by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), which filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the Court of Appeals, assigned students to elementary schools on the basis of their family’s residential location and parental educational level, family income and race and/or ethnicity.

John Payton, LDF President and Director-Counsel called the ruling “an important victory for those who understand the importance of a diverse learning environment and believe that opportunity should be equally afforded to all.”

The Court’s opinion got to the point right away, stating: “We conclude that the particular policy challenged here — which aims to achieve social diversity by using neighborhood demographics when assigning students to schools — is not discriminatory. The challenged policy does not use racial classifications; in fact, it does not consider an individual student’s race at all when assigning the student to a school. Instead, the assignment policy looks at the student’s residential neighborhood, and considers the average household income in the neighborhood, the average education level of adults residing in the neighborhood, and the racial composition of the neighborhood as a whole. Every student within a given neighborhood receives the same treatment, regardless of his or her individual race. We find that educators who include a general recognition of the demographics of neighborhoods in student assignments, without classifying a student by his or her race, do not ‘discriminate against, nor grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race.’”

The Court of Appeals had heard oral arguments in the case on March 16, responding to a challenge of the plan by the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation. The Foundation represented the American Civil Rights Foundation, which is led by Ward Connerly, a well-known opponent of race-based school desegregation. LDF was part of a coalition of civil rights groups that included the ACLU of Northern California, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and the ACLU of Southern California.

Read the decision in full (PDF).