Ruling targets use of race in policy School assignments changed
in Boston Ruling targets use of race in policy School assignments changed
in Boston
By Anand Vaishnav, Globe Staff, 5/29/2003
In what plaintiffs hailed as a symbolic moral victory, a federal judge ruled that two white Boston children were unfairly denied places in their neighborhood public schools under the city's old, race-based method of assigning students to schools. However, the decision released yesterday by US District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns has little practical effect because the two students no longer attend Boston public schools and the city no longer uses race in assigning children to schools.
The ruling comes in a four-year-old challenge to Boston's student-assignment policy, different versions of which have sparked legal and racial battles for almost 30 years. The suit was filed in 1999 by the group Boston's Children First on behalf of 10 students who said they were denied slots in their preferred schools because they were white. At the time, Boston used race as one factor in assigning children to schools, an outgrowth of the historic 1974 ruling desegregating the city's schools.
A month after Boston's Children First sued, the Boston School Committee voted to remove race as a factor in student assignment, instead using a combination of choice and families' proximity to neighborhood schools. The 10 students pursued their claims against both student-assignment methods. In April, they lost a challenge to the current policy, when Stearns ruled that it is sufficiently race-neutral. But in his most recent ruling, Stearns agreed that the old method used race to block two of the 10 students from their desired schools when they applied in the 1990s.
He ordered the school system to pay nominal damages of $1 to each child -- John Feeney and Kathleen McCoy. ''Despite the absence of a legally cognizable injury, they were nonetheless deprived under the Old School Assignment Plan of their right to compete on an equal footing for admission to the school of their choice,'' Stearns wrote in his two-page decision dated Tuesday. Both sides disagreed yesterday on the significance of the ruling.
Ann F. Walsh, president of Boston's Children First, said the ruling questions the constitutionality of a common assigning plan called controlled choice, which can consider race in the process. Twenty Massachusetts school systems use race in student assignment, according to the Department of Education, but it is unclear how many use a similar controlled-choice plan. ''Once he said that any child's constitutional rights were offended by this policy, he's giving anybody who wants to sue under controlled choice an open door. In Massachusetts, it would be illegal,'' Walsh said.
But Frances Cohen, an attorney with Dechert LLP who represented Boston schools, said that while the judge ruled it was unfair, he did not explicitly say the past use of race in controlled choice was unconstitutional. That issue, Cohen said, has not been litigated. ''We're more than happy to pay nominal damages, but the judge has not ruled and the School Committee has not conceded that past use of race was unconstitutional,'' Cohen said. Boston schools Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant said yesterday he wasn't surprised by the court ruling.
''It is a fair decision by the judge, and it is consistent with what Boston public schools had acknowledged during the early stages of the case,'' Payzant said. ''Our current policy is fair.''
This story ran on page B6 of the Boston Globe on 5/29/2003. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
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