When this case can be cast successfully as being about "affirmative action," it's obvious the corruption of the term is complete.

The Seattle and Louisville cases, which the Supreme Court will hear next fall, involve challenges to plans known as "managed choice" or "open choice." In Seattle, parents can apply to send their children to any public high school in the district.

If a school is oversubscribed, students are chosen based on a number of "tie-breakers," including racial targets designed to ensure that each school's racial makeup doesn't differ by more than 15 percent from the racial composition of the Seattle public schools as a whole.