Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1: Facts
In 1998 the Seattle school district adopted a plan for assigning students to its schools. Students would rank their preferred schools in order. Some schools were more popular than others. If too many students listed the same school as their first choice the school district employed a series of tiebreakers to determine who would fill the open slots. One of the tiebreakers is to assign students based on race to help integrate those schools which are not within 10 percentage points of the district's overall white/nonwhite racial balance.
In 2000 a group (Parents Involved in Community Schools) comprised of the parents of children who have been denied enrollment in their chosen high school brought a suit alleging that Seattle's use of race in assignments violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The District Court judged in favor the school district finding that state law did not bar the district's use of the racial tiebreaker.
Now you can proceed to the visual
of this case.