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Goss v. Board of Education of Knoxville

Supreme Court of the United States · 1963 · Constitutional Law

Constitutional LawEqual ProtectionSchool DesegregationFourteenth AmendmentEqual Protection Clausepublic schoolsdesegregationstudent transfers

Facts

The school boards adopted desegregation plans under which school districts would be rezoned without reference to race. Each plan also included transfer provisions allowing a student, on request, to transfer when the student would otherwise attend a school previously serving only the other race or a school where the student's race would be in the minority. These provisions thus allowed students to move from a school where they were in the racial minority back to a school where their race was in the majority, while no comparable provision allowed transfer to a school where the student's race would be in the minority except through a general good-cause transfer. Petitioners argued that these race-based transfer provisions would perpetuate the preexisting segregated system.

Issue

Whether public school desegregation plans violate the Fourteenth Amendment when they allow student transfers solely on the basis of race and the racial composition of the assigned school, in a way that tends to preserve or restore racial segregation.

Rule

Classifications based on race for purposes of transfers between public schools violate the Equal Protection Clause when the transfer right operates solely on racial criteria and in practice leads only toward schools in which the transferee's race is in the majority, thereby perpetuating segregation. By contrast, transfer provisions not based on state-imposed racial conditions, or unrestricted transfers regardless of race or racial composition, would present a different case.

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One of 10 multiple-choice questions for this case. Pick an answer to see why.

The public schools in Dayton, Ohio, reassign students by neighborhood zones drawn without reference to race. The district then adopts a rule allowing any student to transfer if the student would otherwise attend a school where most students are of a different race than the student.

A court applying the majority opinion should most likely hold that this transfer rule is

Explanation. The majority held that transfer provisions violate equal protection when they operate solely on the basis of the student's race and the racial composition of the assigned school. Even if rezoning is race-neutral and the option is facially open to all races, the use of race as the decisive transfer criterion is unconstitutional because it lends itself to perpetuating segregation.