SCOTUS Comparison FRQ: Brown v. Board

The Seattle School District operated a school choice program that allowed parents to choose the high school they wanted their children to attend. Because some schools were much more popular than others and the school system wanted to make sure that their schools had diverse student bodies, it used race as one of the tiebreakers when deciding who would get to attend the schools most in demand. In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle (2007), the United States Supreme Court found that the school district was using race in an unconstitutional manner in its assignment plan. The decision was a 5–4 split on the Court, with both sides claiming that their position was truest to the precedent set in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

After reading the scenario, respond to A, B, and C below.

Identify the clause of the Fourteenth Amendment that is most relevant to Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle (2007).

Explain how the similarity in the facts between Brown v. Board of Education and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle led to similar holdings in both cases.