In a victory for advocates of school integration, the state Supreme Court rejected a challenge Wednesday to Berkeley’s policy of considering the racial composition of students’ neighborhoods in deciding where they will enroll.
Without a dissenting vote, the court denied review of an appeal by backers of Proposition 209, the 1996 initiative that outlawed racial preferences in public education, employment and contracting. An appellate ruling upholding the Berkeley system is now binding on courts statewide and allows any district to adopt a similar plan.
In the March 17 ruling, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco said the Berkeley Unified School District was not violating Prop. 209 because it based enrollment decisions on the diversity of a student’s neighborhood, not the individual student’s race. It was the first ruling by a California appeals court on a district’s voluntary integration program since voters approved the constitutional amendment.
