By Jennifer Millman

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The U.S. Supreme Court has taken its time to decide two school-integration cases—the first such cases since Brown v. Board of Education 53 years ago—but time has run out. A handful of remaining decisions must be issued by the end of the term this Friday. National civil-rights leaders and others who support school integration to achieve educational equity fear the worst. 

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Why has the court waited six months to issue decisions on these cases? It's typical for the court to leave legally difficult decisions—those that require much debate because multiple justices tend to dissent—until the end of the term.

Is this really the end to school integration? What will be the implications of the decision, and who will be most affected? The decisions are expected Thursday morning. We'll keep you updated on new developments.

What's Going On?

On Dec. 4, the Supreme Court heard two cases involving voluntary school-integration plans in K-12 public-school districts in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle, Wash. The constitutional question at hand is whether voluntary school-integration programs that consider race as a factor in student assignments to ensure integration violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment by potentially denying white public-school students attendance at their first choice of school in their districts.

Both of these plans were upheld by lower courts. Here are brief snapshots of the logistics, key players and key issues presented in each case:

The Case: Meredith vs. Jefferson County Board of Education

The Plan: Applies throughout K-12 educational system. Each student initially is assigned a school based on geographic proximity; elementary schools are grouped into clusters and students can pick any of the schools in their clusters as their first choice to attend. Race only is used as a factor in school assignments when there is manifest racial imbalance. The school district set a guideline that 15 percent to 50 percent of the student body be black to reflect the district's black population of 37 percent. The district had been under court order to desegregate from 1973 until 2000 and adopted voluntary school-integration plans to prevent a reversal of its progress.

The Case: Parents Involved in Community Schools vs. Seattle Public School District

The Plan: Only applies to high school. Students choose their top three choices among the district's 10 high schools. Sibling attendance gets the most weight in school assignments, followed by geographic proximity to the school. Race only is used as a tiebreaker if the racial makeup of a school that cannot accommodate all the students that choose it as their first option varies from the local demographics by 15 percentage points.

Find out more about the cases here.

How Will the Court Rule?

The outlook is ominous for supporters of school integration. The climate of the court has changed drastically since the retirement of former centrist Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who cast the swing vote in the 2003 University of Michigan affirmative-action case that affirmed diversity as a compelling interest in a student body.

Bush's two appointments—Chief Justice John Roberts and, most recently, Samuel Alito as O'Connor's replacement—have changed the ideological balance of the court in favor of conservatives. The swing vote has transferred to Anthony Kennedy, a 1988 Reagan appointee who voted against affirmative action in 2003. School integration, however, is a different issue. These cases involve voluntary integration in compulsory education, which is not merit-based like higher education, in an era where we're trying to ward off the rampant re-segregation that already plagues many school districts nationwide.

The justices have heard 71 cases since October, and Kennedy has been the only justice in the majority in each of the court's 13 5-4 decisions to date.

The rest of the court is split into two decidedly liberal and conservative blocks, with Roberts, an ardent affirmative-action foe, expected to write the majority opinion in these cases. He made his viewpoint on school integration painstakingly clear when he said in a 2006 dissent that "It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race."

The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), which is representing the plaintiffs, filed an amicus brief opposing voluntary school integration in conjunction with affirmative-action foe Ward Connerly's American Civil Rights Institute and Linda Chavez's Center for Equal Opportunity. The Bush administration was among the first groups to file an amicus brief opposing voluntary-integration programs in both districts. This is not a surprise, given its affiliations with the anti-affirmative-action movement. (See also: Who Is Paying to End Affirmative Action? High-Ranking Bush Officials, Rupert Murdoch)

Click here for a complete list of who filed amicus briefs on each side.

What Will Happen Next?

Once the decision is issued, how will the new law be interpreted, and to what extent will that affect other schools around the nation?

Should the court strike down these programs, it's likely we'll see increasing re-segregation in these districts and diminished power of other school districts to remedy the lingering effects of past discrimination and prevent re-segregation by adopting voluntary-integration programs. In the face of legal challenges to affirmative action, such precedent on voluntary-school integration could be devastating to equal opportunity. 

"Many such programs around the country could be affected. Given that school districts reflect local demographics, it is hard to see how many of our schools can be effectively integrated without permitting such voluntary efforts to address the problem directly and within appropriate and carefully defined legal limits," says Jonathan Alger, vice president and general counsel, Rutgers University, and lead counsel in the 2003 University of Michigan affirmative-action cases.

Just last week, a California court upheld racial composition of student neighborhoods as a legitimate consideration in public-school-district assignments, but the impending decision could make that ruling obsolete, depending on how the justices interpret the extent of the law. Either way, it'll only open the door for more challenges. Eight more cases involving school integration already are in the lower courts, and PLF's Sharon Brown, who litigated the Jefferson County Board of Education case on behalf of the parents, is the lead attorney in two of them.

What will happen next? Many legal analysts are predicting a split 5-4 ruling with a narrow reading that supports the overall value of school integration but strikes down certain methods for achieving it, including those used by Louisville and Seattle schools.

In the 2003 affirmative-action cases, Justice O'Connor famously supported her decision with the phrase "Context Matters." Will Kennedy take that into consideration? We'll soon find out.   

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