John Paul Stevens

“ Rejecting arguments comparable to those that the plurality accepts today, [6] that court noted: "It would be the height of irony if the racial imbalance act, enacted as it was with the laudable purpose of achieving equal educational opportunities, should, by prescribing school pupil allocations based [p. 802] on race, founder on unsuspected shoals in the Fourteenth Amendment." ”

“ Comfort v. Lynn School Comm., 418 F.3d 1, 27–29 (CA1 2005) (Boudin, C. J., concurring) . The Court's misuse of the three-tiered approach to equal protection analysis merely reconfirms my own view that there is only one such Clause in the Constitution. ”

“ I have long adhered to the view that a decision to exclude a member of a minority because of his race is fundamentally different from a decision to include a member of a minority for that reason. See, e. g., Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U.S. 200, 243, 248, n. 6 (1995) (Stevens, J., dissenting) ; Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Ed., 476 U.S. 267, 316 (1986) (same) . This distinction is critically important in the context of education. While the focus of our opinions is often on the benefits that minority schoolchildren receive from an integrated education, see, e. ”