| Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education
(No. 84-1340)
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| Syllabus
| Opinion
[ Powell ] | Concurrence
[ O'Connor ] | Concurrence
[ White ] | Dissent
[ Marshall ] | Dissent
[ Stevens ] |
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Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
JUSTICE WHITE, concurring in the judgment.
The School Board's policy when layoffs are necessary is to maintain a certain proportion of minority teachers. This policy requires laying off nonminority teachers solely on the basis of their race, including teachers with seniority, and retaining other teachers solely because they are black, even [p295] though some of them are in probationary status. None of the interests asserted by the Board, singly or together, justifies this racially discriminatory layoff policy and saves it from the strictures of the Equal Protection Clause. Whatever the legitimacy of hiring goals or quotas may be, the discharge of white teachers to make room for blacks, none of whom has been shown to be a victim of any racial discrimination, is quite a different matter. I cannot believe that, in order to integrate a workforce, it would be permissible to discharge whites and hire blacks until the latter comprised a suitable percentage of the workforce. None of our cases suggests that this would be permissible under the Equal Protection Clause. Indeed, our cases look quite the other way. The layoff policy in this case -- laying off whites who would otherwise be retained in order to keep blacks on the job -- has the same effect and is equally violative of the Equal Protection Clause. I agree with the plurality that this official policy is unconstitutional, and hence concur in the judgment.