Justice Thomas, concurring.
Today, the Court holds that state entities may not experiment with race-based means to achieve ends they deem socially desirable. I wholly concur in The Chief Justice's opinion. I write separately to address several of the contentions in Justice Breyer's dissent (hereinafter dissent). Contrary to the dissent's arguments, resegregation is not occurring in Seattle or Louisville; these school boards have no present interest in remedying past segregation; and these race-based student-assignment programs do not serve any compelling state interest. Accordingly, the plans are unconstitutional. Disfavoring a colorblind interpretation of the Constitution, the dissent would give school boards a free hand to make decisions on the basis of race—an approach reminiscent of that advocated by the segregationists in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). This approach is just as wrong today as it was a half century ago. The Constitution and our cases require us to be much more demanding before permitting local school boards to make decisions based on race.
I
The dissent repeatedly claims that the school districts are threatened with resegregation and that they will succumb to that threat if these plans are declared unconstitutional. It also argues that these plans can be justified as part of the school boards' attempts to "eradicat[e] earlier school segre- [p. 749] gation." See, e. g., post, at 806. Contrary to the dissent's rhetoric, neither of these school districts is threatened with resegregation, and neither is constitutionally compelled or permitted to undertake race-based remediation. Racial imbalance is not segregation, and the mere incantation of terms like resegregation and remediation cannot make up the difference.
A
Because this Court has authorized and required race-based remedial measures to address de jure segregation, it is important to define segregation clearly and to distinguish it from racial imbalance. In the context of public schooling, segregation is the deliberate operation of a school system to "carry out a governmental policy to separate pupils in schools solely on the basis of race." Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Ed., 402 U.S. 1, 6 (1971); see also Monroe v. Board of Comm'rs of Jackson, 391 U.S. 450, 452 (1968). In Brown, this Court declared that segregation was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Swann, supra, at 6; see also Green v. School Bd. of New Kent Cty., 391 U.S. 430, 435 (1968) ("[T]he State, acting through the local school board and school officials, organized and operated a dual system, part 'white' and part 'Negro.' It was such dual systems that 14 years ago Brown[, 347 U.S. 483,] held unconstitutional and a year later Brown [v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294 (1955),] held must be abolished").
Racial imbalance is the failure of a school district's individual schools to match or approximate the demographic makeup of the student population at large. Cf. Washington [p. 750] v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 458 U.S. 457, 460 (1982). Racial imbalance is not segregation. Although presently observed racial imbalance might result from past de jure segregation, racial imbalance can also result from any number of innocent private decisions, including voluntary housing choices. See Swann, supra, at 25–26; Missouri v. Jenkins, 515 U.S. 70, 116 (1995) (Thomas, J., concurring). Because racial imbalance is not inevitably linked to unconstitutional segregation, it is not unconstitutional in and of itself. Dayton Bd. of Ed. v. Brinkman, 433 U.S. 406, 413 (1977); Dayton Bd. of Ed. v. Brinkman, 443 U.S. 526, 531, n. 5 (1979) ("Racial imbalance...is not per se a constitutional violation"); Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U.S. 467, 494 (1992); see also Swann, supra, at 31–32; cf. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717, 740– 741, and n. 19 (1974).
Although there is arguably a danger of racial imbalance in schools in Seattle and Louisville, there is no danger of resegregation. No one contends that Seattle has established or that Louisville has reestablished a dual school system that separates students on the basis of race. The statistics cited in Appendix A to the dissent are not to the contrary. See post, at 869–872. At most, those statistics show a national trend toward classroom racial imbalance. However, racial imbalance without intentional state action to separate the races does not amount to segregation. To raise the specter of resegregation to defend these programs is to ignore the meaning of the word and the nature of the cases before us. [p. 751]