however, an exception for such actions pursuant to “pre-existing” Court Orders. Under the circumstances, the existence of this proposed initiative is yet another reason why the District seeks this Final Order as proposed.

I recalled this unusual admission that the integration program “could be illegal” under Proposition 209, which was then on the ballot the coming November, being put forth as yet another reason for continuing court jurisdiction. It signified then and now the determination of the Board to continue racial assignments required of non-class students under its integration program, immunized from charges by Intervenors of illegality under Proposition 209.

The prospect of non-class students being subject to such assignments until at least January 1, 2000 raised in my mind the unconstitutionality of placing them in that position, under an analogous quote in Goss v. Lopez, (1975) 419 U.S. 565,574:

Although Ohio may not be constitutionally obligated to establish and maintain a public school system, it has nevertheless done so and has required its children to attend. Those young people do not “shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door.”

The students in San Diego should not have to shed the right, which their counterparts have in other California districts not under a court order, to challenge their assignments as illegal under Proposition 209. I must keep trying to end court jurisdiction as soon as possible, and the upholding of Proposition 209 on appeal before the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals offered that possibility.