Posted on 01/15/2003 12:39:54 AM PST by JohnHuang2
A nonprofit legal foundation has filed a Petition for Review with the U.S. Supreme Court in a case involving the challenge of a racial quota system in a California school district.
The United States Justice Foundation filed the petition in the case of Scott, et al., v. Pasadena Unified School District on Jan. 8. The petition asks the high court to consider taking up the case.
According to a statement from the group, the case involves parents and students in the district – including black, Hispanic, white and mixed-raced families – who mounted a legal challenge after the district established a racial quota system in its three best schools. A race-based lottery system had been established where each race was given a specific percentage of the lottery "tickets" to the exclusion of others in that race.
The trial court ruled in favor of the parents, after which the district appealed. Three judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals then decided on procedural grounds that the families had no "standing" to challenge the quota system. A request for the entire Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to re-hear the case was denied on Oct. 10.
By voluntarily stopping the lottery system, "the district basically did an end-run," Richard Ackerman, the USJF attorney who argued the case, told WorldNetDaily.
"But [the district] made no promise they wouldn't reinstate it," explained Ackerman.
By suspending the system, the district convinced the appeals court that since the race-based policy was not in effect, the families had no standing to challenge it. In the meantime, Ackerman says, the district still is able to "hang the policy over the students' heads" and re-establish it at any time.
"[The Oct. 10] decision not only flies in the face of previous federal court and U.S. Supreme Court decisions, but it sets a terrible precedent," said USJF executive director Gary G. Kreep in the statement. "This decision encourages school districts to fight cases of racial discrimination on procedural grounds rather than having to deal with the merits of their quota systems. It encourages school districts to continue to violate the constitutional rights of students and their parents in hopes that a court, such as the one that decided this appeal, will find some excuse to allow them to continue their denial of equal protection and equal treatment of all students."
Continued Kreep, "If the three-court panel hearing this case had been hearing the cases challenging racial segregation in public schools in the 1950s and 1960s, we would, presumably, still have racially segregated schools, as this court would have found an excuse to allow the school districts to continue their racist policies."
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