Separate and Unequal: Big Government Conservatism and the Racial State

On June 28, 2007, the Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to overturn lower court decisions by declaring that public school systems cannot assign students to schools based on race. The case had been brought by local school boards who were seeking to ensure that housing discrimination in their cities not deny black children access to high quality schools.

In this article, George Lipsitz explores the legal reasoning behind this decision. He argues that the Court's decision both erodes the desegregation paradigm that started with Brown v. Board in 1954 and reveals that, in the United States, the nation state is a racial state.