Green v. County School Board - The Supreme Court Reverses

On 27 May 1968, the Supreme Court issued its decision. All nine justices agreed to overturn the judgement of the court of appeals with regard to the freedom of choice plan. In rendering its decision, the Court held the plan to the standard mandated in Brown v. Board of Education that school boards must "effectuate a transition to a racially nondiscriminatory school system." The justices placed the burden on the school board to provide a desegregation plan that has a realistic chance to produce immediate results. While it did not rule out the possible use of a freedom of choice scheme to achieve desegregation, it did rule it out where better, faster, and more effective means of achieving that end exist.

Writing for the unanimous majority, Justice Brennan was unequivocal:

The New Kent School Board's "freedom-of-choice" plan cannot be accepted as a sufficient step to "effectuate a transition" to a unitary system. In three years of operation not a single white child has chosen to attend Watkins school and although 115 Negro children enrolled in New Kent school in 1967 . . . 85 percent of the Negro children in the system still attend the all-Negro Watkins school. In other words, the school system remains a dual system. Rather than further the dismantling of the dual system, the plan has operated simply to burden children and their parents with a responsibility which Brown II placed squarely on the School Board. The Board must be required to formulate a new plan and, in light of other courses which appear open to the Board, such as zoning, fashion steps which promise realistically to convert promptly to a system without a "white" school and a "Negro" school, but just schools.