Sotomayor, J., dissenting
The desegregation cases that followed Brown confirm that the ultimate goal of that seminal decision was to achieve a system of integrated schools that ensured racial equality of opportunity, not to impose a formalistic rule of race-blindness. In Green v. School Bd. of New Kent Cty., 391 U. S. 430 (1968), for example, the Court held that the New Kent County School Board’s “freedom of choice” plan, which allegedly allowed “every student, regardless of race, … ‘freely’ [to] choose the school he [would] attend,” was insufficient to effectuate “the command of [Brown].” Id., at 437, 441–442. That command, the Court explained, was that schools dismantle “well-entrenched dual systems” and transition “to a unitary, nonracial system of public education.” Id., at 435–436. That the board “opened the doors of the former ‘white’ school to [Black] children and the [‘Black’] school to white children” on a race-blind basis was not enough. Id., at 437. Passively eliminating race classifications did not suffice when de facto segregation persisted. Id., at 440–442 (noting that 85% of Black children in the school system were still attending an all-Black school). Instead, the board was “clearly charged with the affirmative duty to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a unitary system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch.” Id., at 437–438. Affirmative steps, this Court held, are constitutionally necessary when mere formal neutrality cannot achieve Brown’s promise of racial equality. See Green, 391 U. S., at 440–442; see also North Carolina Bd. of Ed. v. Swann, 402 U. S. 43, 45–46 (1971) (holding that North Carolina statute that forbade the use of race in school busing “exploits an apparently neutral form to control school assignment plans by directing that they be ‘colorblind’; that requirement, against the background of segregation, would render illusory the promise of Brown”); Dayton Bd. of Ed. v. Brinkman, 443 U. S. 526, 538 (1979) (school board “had to do more than abandon
