The US Supreme Court was accused yesterday of rolling back one of its landmark rulings of the civil rights era by rejecting plans to ensure that America’s schools remained racially integrated.

The decision will be seen as further evidence that President Bush’s appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the court have shifted the balance of power decisively towards social conservatives.

After the court split 5-4 on the issue, dissenting liberal justices denounced the vote as flying in the face of legal precedent and, in particular, the 1954 Brown v Board of Education ruling, which abolished segregation of black and white schoolchildren.

Chief Justice Roberts insisted, however, that he had honoured the principle of the court’s decision 53 years ago. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” he said. “Simply because the school districts may seek a worthy goal doesn’t mean that they are free to discriminate on the basis of race to achieve it.”

Yesterday’s ruling on schools policy in Louisville, Kentucky, and Seattle, Washington, will place question marks over hundreds of similar systems across America that have been designed to guarantee racial diversity in classrooms. The Bush Administration had sided with parents who took legal action against policies that prevented their children from attending preferred schools.

Crystal Meredith, a white single mother in Louisville, sued after her request to transfer her five-year-old son Joshua to a school closer to home was turned down. This was because of policies introduced during desegregation to ensure broad racial diversity across the US education system. Schools in Louisville spent 25 years under a court order to eliminate the effects of state-sponsored segregation. When it was lifted recently, the school board decided to keep much of the plan in place to prevent education from becoming segregated once more – a decision Mrs Meredith challenged successfully.

She said yesterday: “My son is my world and I will never regret fighting for his rights. I only hope this case has brought attention to the school board and this community that each child’s education is more important than their plan.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy – who effectively holds the casting vote between liberals and conservatives on the bench – offered an opinion that race could still be used in some circumstances to achieve diversity, even though he backed yesterday’s ruling.

But Justice Stephen Breyer said that Brown v Board of Education would be undermined by the ruling. “It reverses course and reaches the wrong conclusion,” he said. “It distorts precedent, it misapplies the relevant constitutional principles, it announces legal rules that will obstruct efforts by state and local governments to deal effectively with the growing resegregation of public schools.”

The ruling was the first on this issue since 2003, when the court upheld consideration of race in college admissions.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who approved of the limited use of race, has since retired and her replacement, Justice Alito, was in the majority that struck down the school system plans in Kentucky and Washington.

Recent rulings

Other right-leaning rulings under Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts:

Rumsfeld v Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (2006) The Government may withhold federal funds from universities that refuse military recruiters equal access to campus resources

Gonzalez v Carhart (2007) Constitutionality of laws banning partial-birth abortion is upheld

Federal Election Commission v Wisconsin Right to Life (2007) Interest groups’ “issue ads” are free speech, and are not subject to restrictions under elections law

Morse v Frederick (2007) A school did not violate the First Amendment by confiscating student Joseph Frederick’s pro-drug “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner and suspending him

Source: Times database

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