The nine Supreme Court Justices are not scheduled to meet again until October. In the meantime, they have left America to deal with the law as they see fit. On June 28, the majority-conservative Supreme Court overturned school integration plans that used race as a deciding factor in student enrollment.
In Parents involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 et. al., parents in Seattle and in Jefferson County, Ky. schools filed suit against policies allocating children to different public schools, claiming that this policy, "based solely on their race, violates the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection guarantee."
Howard University students, after protesting this very outcome, are not surprised at how the nine Justices ruled.
"I'm very disappointed," said Victoria Kirby, junior speech communication major. "I was hoping not to be surprised."
Kirby read the transcript of the hearing, which was argued on December 4, 2006 while protesters lingered outside. Since then, she had a strong feeling they were going to rule conservatively.
Analyzing the outcome, Kirby said, "They looked at it very black and white. Race can still be used as a factor, but not as a last resort."
Melech Thomas, sophomore African American studies and legal communications major, was not surprised either. But, unable to go back in time, both he and Kirby have suggestions to those who are willing to get and stay involved.
"Lobby to Congressmen about getting an amendment saying that education in public schools must be equally funded across the state," Thomas said. "That's all we're asking for."
Kirby speculates that rural schools officials might abuse this decision. "They don't have to take special programs for racial balancing," she said. "At this point, if there are going to be schools, they're going to be majority black and we're going to be fighting for resources."
Looking into the future, Kirby hopes to see the same group that rallied in December to step up and come together again in order to ensure that things are fair. Simply put, Thomas said, "Our battle is to make sure that we are equal."
Thomas, one of the December 4 protesters, said, "Even though I was out there, I was not surprised given their background," he said.
The Supreme Court is made up of nine Justices, two of whom were appointed by President George W. Bush. Four have a record of voting liberally, while four are known for being conservatives, leaving one justice, Anthony Kennedy, as the "tiebreaker."
But in the 2006-07 term, Justice Kennedy has been more apt to breaking the tie by siding with Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Alito, Scalia and Thomas - conservatives. The Court made six major rulings with narrow 5-4 votes during these months, five of which had Kennedy in the majority, alongside his conservatives collegues. In one case, Massachusetts et. al. v. Environment Protection Agency et. al., Kennedy sided with liberal Justices, making it the only liberal ruling out of the six.
In this case, a group of private organizations petitioned the EPA to begin to regulate emissions of four gases under the Clean Air Act. The EPA denied their petition since the Act did not authorize them to use mandatory regulations to address global climate change.
The opinion of the court, by liberal Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer and Kennedy, stated, "Petitioners have standing to challenge the EPA's denial of their rulemaking petition." In essence, the Court ruled that the federal government has authority over and must regulate vehicle emissions that contribute to global warming, unless there is evidence that no regulation is needed.
Other rulings were in Gonzales, Attorney General v. Carhart et. al., which sustained the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. Decided on April 18, the Court's opinion, authored by Kennedy, prohibited the "dilation and evacuation" and "intact dilation and evacuation" abortion procedures that usually occur during a woman's second trimester.
The justices voted in Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. that it is unconstitutional to ban radio and television advertisements aired and funded by corporations or unions 30 days before a federal primary or 60 days before a federal general election.
From these cases, as well as in Morse et. al. v. Frederick, where public school students can now face consequences for speech that could lead a school administrator to interpreting it as promoting illegal drug use, and in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Inc., where plaintiffs cannot file lawsuits concerning pay discrimination based on gender or race after 180 days of discovering the discrepancy, it is clear that, with Roberts in the drivers seat and Alito riding shot-gun, America is about to take a ride on an expressway to the right.
