The Supreme Court of the United States won't issue its decisions in two cases challenging whether public school districts can use race in assigning students to elementary or high school until next year, possibly as late as the end of the term in June.  But if Monday's oral arguments were a preview of how the justices will rule, then it seems the High Court won't give in to the unprincipled protesters outside the courthouse who claimed that race should matter for some but not for others.  Rather, a majority of the justices seemed to signal Monday that they understand the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution means an individual's race shouldn't matter at all.

In fact, the most shocking part of the arguments Monday was the role played by so-called "liberals" who were desperately trying to find their way around the landmark civil rights decision of Brown v. Board of Education.  More than a half century ago, the High Court ruled unanimously that black students could not be assigned to specific schools because of their race.  That decision was an obvious problem for the "liberals" -- not to mention the lawyers for the public school districts -- because exactly the same thing is going on in these cases, only the disfavored race has changed from black to white.

Specifically, the cases came from Louisville, Kentucky, and Seattle, Washington, where the public school districts allow students (with the assistance of their parents) to choose which schools they want to attend.  However, in assigning each student based on his or her preferences, those school districts use a student's race if the school of choice already enrolls too many pupils with the same skin color.  Quite simply, if the school already has what the district considers to be "enough" students of the same race, then no more students with that skin color are allowed to attend.

Both outside the courthouse and inside the courtroom, no one was ignoring the parallels to Brown v. Board of Education.  Outside, self-identified "civil rights" protesters claimed the justices had to uphold the race-based school assignments to promote integration and diversity -- to "Save Brown" in the words on some of the signs.  But inside, multiple justices wondered how the Constitution could allow public school districts to close specific schoolhouse doors on certain students because of their skin color.

The lawyer for the Seattle public school district argued that there was no racial discrimination in these cases because each of the schools was "basically comparable" and "everyone gets a seat."  In other words, a student couldn't complain because he or she still got to attend school somewhere, and it shouldn't matter whether the student got to attend the school of his or her choice.

But Chief Justice John Roberts immediately jumped in to explain the same sort of rationalization had supported the days of segregation, the days before Brown, when black students were told they had to attend "separate but equal" schools.  Everyone knew those schools were separate, but not equal.  Thus, the Chief Justice wondered: "[E]veryone got a seat in Brown, as well.  But because they were assigned to those seats on the basis of race, it violated equal protection.  How is your argument that there's no problem here because everybody gets a seat distinguishable?"

In responding to the same point, Justice Anthony Kennedy -- who will likely be the deciding vote in the cases -- tried explaining the problem in another way.  "[T]he emphasis on the fact that everybody gets into a school, it seems to me is misplaced," Justice Kennedy explained.  "[T]he question is whether or not you can get into the school that you really prefer.  And that in some cases depends solely on skin color.  You know, it's like saying everybody can have a meal, but only people with separate skin can get the dessert."  Indeed, Justice Kennedy made it all but perfectly clear what he believes, prefacing his remarks by stating, "Characterizing each student by the color of his or her skin, that should be a matter of last resort."

But, as is so often the case, it was Justice Antonin Scalia who cut right to the constitutional heart of the matters at hand.  Achieving racial diversity "is certainly an admirable goal," he stated.  However, "[e]ven if the objective is okay, you cannot achieve it by any means whatsoever. ... I thought one of the absolute restrictions [of the Fourteenth Amendment] is that you cannot judge or classify people on the basis of their race," he explained.

In other words, the Constitution sets some limits on what the government can do, and one of those limits is that it cannot "divvy[ ] us up by race," as Chief Justice Roberts wrote in a decision handed down last term.  That is what the Supreme Court of the United States established more than a half century ago in Brown v. Board of Education, and all Americans -- blacks and white, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans -- are better off with such a colorblind Constitution.  We would have thought the so-called "liberals" and "civil rights" activists would have realized this long ago.