Features

A legal challenge to Berkeley’s school integration plan that made national headlines last spring has died a quiet death. 

The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a well-heeled conservative legal group that targeted the Berkeley plan for using race as a factor in assigning students to city elementary schools, failed to appeal a superior court ruling by an Aug. 31 deadline. 

John Findley, a PLF attorney said his group had planned to appeal the case, but the plaintiff, Lorenzo Avila and his two elementary-school aged sons, moved out of the district, depriving the PLF of standing before appeals court. 

Avila’s departure from Berkeley means that Berkeley Unified—which in 1968 became the first school district in the country to voluntarily desegregate—can continue to use race as a factor to produce diversity in its elementary schools. 

The PLF has argued that Proposition 209, approved by state voters in 1996, effectively prohibits districts from integrating schools by race. The proposition outlaws racial preferences or discrimination in public education, employment and contracting. 

Findley said the PLF now has no current cases challenging school desegregation plans, but still hopes to overturn Berkeley’s system. 

“We would welcome hearing from any resident of Berkeley who disagrees with their policy,” Findley said.  

Any new challenge to the district, Findley said, would have to be under a new school assignment plan, adopted by the school board last year. 

The new policy adds socio-economic factors in addition to race in assigning students. The plan still mandates that the racial mix for each grade be within five to 10 percent of the average for the district’s three school assignment zones. 

In dismissing the case last April, Alameda County Superior Court Judge James Richmond found the district’s former policy did not, on its face, violate Proposition 209. 

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