As school districts try to interpret last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision on school desegregation, editorial pages across the country have offered the following opinions:
The two major newspapers covering the districts in the case were split. The Seattle Times agreed with the decision; Kentucky’s Lexington Herald-Leader said it was “supreme nonsense.”
Elsewhere, the San Fransisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Raleigh’s News & Observer minced no words in their opposition to the 5-4 decision. The Sacramento Bee and the St. Petersburg Times both called it a step backwards, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch found the majority opinion “sadly dogmatic.”
On the other side, Denver’s Rocky Mountain News called the decision “on the money” and The San Diego Union-Tribune characterized it as a “ruling that squares with the 14th Amendment, court precedent, and common sense.”
Kennedy’s opinion opens the door for more legal action, The Plain Dealer says. Until then, The Oregonian tells districts to “look for new ways to fight inequality.”
“Not as bad as it could have been,” said The Des Moines Register, while also offering advice to districts in the state with desegregation plans.
Columnists offered their own take. The Washington Post‘s Eugene Robinson compared the majority justices to George Wallace; Seattle’s Danny Westneat found himself agreeing with Clarence Thomas; The Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s Jim Wooten thinks vouchers would help integrate schools; and St. Petersburg’s Thomas C. Tobin wrote about racial integration among teachers.