Race-Linked Enrollment Policy In Seattle Struck Down

By Mark Walsh

The Seattle school district must stop using race as a factor in assigning students to popular high schools, because the policy violates a 1998 state ballot measure prohibiting racial preferences in school admissions, a federal appeals court ruled last week.

"The racial tiebreaker ... is inherently invidious," said the opinion by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The San Francisco-based court overturned a 2001 ruling by a federal judge in Seattle that upheld the district's policy of promoting racial diversity in its high schools.

The 47,000-student district has an open-enrollment plan for its 10 high schools, but it strives to keep enrollment within 15 percentage points of the district's overall racial makeup: 40 percent non-Hispanic white students, and 60 percent students of other...