Parents vs. Seattle School District was more than a little disappointing because, as has been pointed out on our list, it pays deference to the Grutter precedent which supported “diversity” as an educational benefit in higher education. Grutter further found that purportedly ”narrowly-tailored” race plans that employ “holistic” review of a students’ credentials and count race only as one factor among many, are constitutional. Interestingly, in that decision, Justice Kennedy joined the minority that opposed the University of Michigan Law School’s “diversity” policy and made Grutter a narrow 5-4 decision, something to be grateful for. He supported the idea that diversity brings educational benefits, but he joined the dissent because he said Michigan’s policy was a quota plan, pure and simple He went over the figures and showed how each of the minority groups had been admitted to the Law School in more or less exact proportion to their numbers in the applicant pool. I wrote about this at NRO when the Grutter decision came out, in 2003. In this present decision, he continues to uphold the ideal of “diversity,” but keeps insisting that it be done without crude counting by race. Thus he joined the majority in opposing the Seattle plan but dissented in part because he said diversity is still an important goal, even in the lower grades, something with which the four other majority justices did not agree. He said again that race should be only one factor, and that other factors, such as “special talents and needs,” should be considered. Aside from the fact that this makes admission to lower schools needlessly complicated (special talents when dealing with eight year olds?), when will he and others learn that taking race as a factor inevitably leads to its being the whole thing?