The divisive debate over affirmative action will return to the Supreme Court this fall when the justices consider the sensitive question of whether public schools can use race as a factor in assigning children to schools. The court agreed on Monday to hear appeals involving two school districts.Neither Chief Justice John Roberts nor Justice Samuel Alito has indicated how he would rule on the issue, but both have solidly conservative credentials suggesting they might strike down programmes that use race as a factor in assigning students to public secondary schools.The Supreme Court barred segregation in public schools in its landmark Brown vs Board of Education ruling in 1954. But its more recent history on the issue has been murkier. Ruling in a pair of cases from the University of Michigan in 2003, the court, in a 5-4 vote, upheld weighing race in student admissions at Michigan’s law school, but struck down a stricter programme for undergraduate admissions.The two cases before the court now involve slightly different programmes. In Seattle, a group of parents challenged any use of race in assigning students to schools. To counter years of segregated housing patterns in the city, the school district had adopted a programme that allows students to pick the high school they want to attend, but uses race as a ‘‘tiebreaker’’ if too many students choose the same school.In Louisville, parent Crystal Meredith sued over a 2001 plan the local district had voluntarily adopted after a court-ordered desegregation plan. Meredith claimed that her son, Joshua, was not allowed to attend a school in the family’s neighborhood because he is white. —Gail Gibson
