Do Formally Race-Blind Admissions Programs Impermissibly Circumvent Affirmative Action Bans?
One might think that any formally race-blind admissions procedure would satisfy the federal Constitution and the state affirmative action bans. But an examination of the Supreme Court’s precedents suggests that the issue has not been fully resolved. After the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling invalidating mandatory racial segregation in public schools in Brown v. Board of Education, committed segregationists across the country responded by adopting formally race-neutral student assignment systems that they knew would, in practice, leave their schools largely segregated. For example, in districts with a high level of residential segregation, officials simply assigned students to neighborhood schools. In some other districts, government officials provided generous subsidies to students attending racially homogeneous private schools that were not bound by Brown’s desegregation mandate. The federal courts rightly invalidated such efforts to comply with the letter, but not the spirit, of the Cons
