The Supreme Court ruled today that race cannot be used to decide where students go to school except in limited circumstances, a decision that advocates fear could jeopardize roughly 20 voluntary desegregation plans in Massachusetts.
By a 5-4 vote, the court struck down voluntary programs adopted in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., to attain racial diversity in public school classrooms.
Chief Justice Roberts said, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
Wasn't that refreshing?
Clarence Thomas added, "What was wrong in 1954 cannot be right today... The plans before us base school assignment decisions on students' race. Because 'our Constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,' such race-based decisionmaking is unconstitutional."
WASHINGTON -- Manufacturers may set a fixed price for their products and forbid retailers from offering discounts, the Supreme Court said today, overturning a nearly century-old rule of antitrust law that prohibited retail price fixing.
The 5-4 ruling may be felt by shoppers, including those who buy on the Internet. It permits manufacturers to adopt and enforce what lawyers called "resale price maintenance agreements" that forbid discounting.
Until today, the nation has had an unusually competitive retail market, in part because antitrust laws made it illegal for sellers or manufacturers to agree on fixed prices. The Supreme Court, in a 1911 case involving Dr. Miles and his patented medicines, had said that price-fixing agreements between manufacturers and retail sellers were flatly illegal.
It looks like the consumer got screwed on this one...
It has been brought to my attention that perhaps I am looking at this with a Canadian perspective and not with an American one.
Here in Canada, racial discrimination doesn’t really happen…well, it does to a degree, mainly with Arabs these days post 9/11. But the whole black/white issue isn’t really a huge factor like it is south of the border.
Furthermore it has been brought to my attention that it is a huge issue in terms of the quality of schools that black’s go to versus that of whites.
Now while I don’t know for sure what is true or not, in my opinion, as a Canadian, I stand by the Supreme Courts decision but I understand if some don’t.
It would be much better to find ways to make the under performing school districts more competitive . The truth is that parents would prefer to send children to quality schools in their own neighborhoods .
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In 1990, after months of interviews with Justice Thurgood Marshall, who had been the lead lawyer for the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund on the Brown case, I sat in his Supreme Court chambers with a final question. Almost 40 years later, was he satisfied with the outcome of the decision? Outside the courthouse, the failing Washington school system was hypersegregated, with more than 90 percent of its students black and Latino. Schools in the surrounding suburbs, meanwhile, were mostly white and producing some of the top students in the nation.
Had Mr. Marshall, the lawyer, made a mistake by insisting on racial integration instead of improvement in the quality of schools for black children?
His response was that seating black children next to white children in school had never been the point. It had been necessary only because all-white school boards were generously financing schools for white children while leaving black students in overcrowded, decrepit buildings with hand-me-down books and underpaid teachers. He had wanted black children to have the right to attend white schools as a point of leverage over the biased spending patterns of the segregationists who ran schools — both in the 17 states where racially separate schools were required by law and in other states where they were a matter of culture.
If black children had the right to be in schools with white children, Justice Marshall reasoned, then school board officials would have no choice but to equalize spending to protect the interests of their white children.
Racial malice is no longer the primary motive in shaping inferior schools for minority children. Many failing big city schools today are operated by black superintendents and mostly black school boards.
And today the argument that school reform should provide equal opportunity for children, or prepare them to live in a pluralistic society, is spent. The winning argument is that better schools are needed for all children — black, white, brown and every other hue — in order to foster a competitive workforce in a global economy.
Besides ;the way Brown was enforced was the real problem with the the ruling . The case decided that a girl could attend a school near her ;that she could not be excluded due to race. In that aspect it was the right call .It over-ruled a ridiculous activist decision by SCOTUS in Plessy V Ferguson ..
Brown banned forced segregation. This ruling bans forced mixing.
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I am not an economist so I will defer to what someone like Elliot's with a financial backround opinion . I do not have a firm opinion on the pricing ruling .
I wonder how this ruling will affect bulk purchasing retailers like Walmart which gets a volume discount on it's purchases and passes it along to the customer. ah heck ;why should we care about Walmart .????....no one likes them anyway. My guess is that Walmart will still be able to dictate prices to the manufacturer .
I think we can already look at the costs of price fixing in dairy and the gasoline industry .They are hardly the model of competitive industries.
The court said that min. pricing was legal if it promotes competition. I need someone to explain to me how fixed prices encourages competition. If I'm a low end retailer with almost no overhead I can turn a profit if I sell products for less than say a huge retail place like Macy's . Why shouldn't I ?
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Until today, the nation has had an unusually competitive retail market, in part because antitrust laws made it illegal for sellers or manufacturers to agree on fixed prices. The Supreme Court, in a 1911 case involving Dr. Miles and his patented medicines, had said that price-fixing agreements between manufacturers and retail sellers were flatly illegal.
Then again.... Harley's are marketed and sold as premium motorcycles and I'm sure that there are many simular high end goods that are marketed specifically towards the high end buyer where pricing agreements have been in place for years . That has not inhibited competition by other brands of motorcycles and I kinda doubt that these pricing agreements were flatly illegal.. There has to be more to this ruling than I understand .
Yes, greatly unloved Wal-Mart will continue to pressure manufacturers and other retailers to keep prices down. The prices most likely to go up will be strong brands, perhaps ones not available now at Wal-Mart. Those consumers not needing the validation of a strong brand name will still be free to buy other brands at competitive prices.
In some cases I am already choosing to pay a higher price in order to support local retailers. If you buy everything you can at Wal-Mart or Lowes, eventually you won't have any place to buy the things you can't buy there. The other day when I was buying a bag of Pro Plan, I made a point of thanking the owner of the store for sponsoring a youth baseball team. Check some of the Home and Garden threads and you will find I frequently suggest Ace and other small hardwares.
The ruling will allow the manufacturers to set a higher price. It will not prevent consumers from choosing not to pay them. Those manufacturers pushing up prices, will lose sales. Those of us believing the the free market, will welcome the removal of government interference. Consumers will continue to vote with their dollars.
"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
Another feel good slogam that sounds good, but doesn't solve any problems and affects peoples lives in a negative way. But they had to come up with something to replace "seperate but equal" we all know what that was about too!
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Until today, the nation has had an unusually competitive retail market, in part because antitrust laws made it illegal for sellers or manufacturers to agree on fixed prices. The Supreme Court, in a 1911 case involving Dr. Miles and his patented medicines, had said that price-fixing agreements between manufacturers and retail sellers were flatly illegal.
What a novel way to run the little guys out of the market. Does anyone for one minute think that big business, is promoting competition???? Its always about the money. The big guys can't stand the little guy to make a dollar because they think its their dollar to begin with.
Generally people have spoken on matters of segregation . Defacto they prefer it like it or not . You find this not only in middle class white flight ,but also in the black middle class suburbs surrounding major cities of the nation . Now that may indeed be an indictment of human nature ,but it does represent an legitimate choice. Forced integration has been a failed policy. Brown v Board of Ed reversed de jure segregation and was the proper ruling for it's time. Inequities in the quality of education has to be addressed in means beyond forced integration ;a policy that people have demonstrated they reject.
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