This provision was designed to preserve the effects of a hiring policy whose goal had been to increase the percentage of minority teachers in the school system.

The displaced nonminority teachers sued in federal court, alleging violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The District Court dismissed the teachers' claims, holding that the racial preferences were permissible as an attempt to remedy societal discrimination by providing role models for minority schoolchildren.

He expressed the view that Justice O'Connor stated that the layoff provision was not narrowly tailored to achieve its asserted purpose, on the ground that it was designed to safeguard a hiring goal that was tied to the percentage of minority students in the school district, not to the percentage of qualified minority teachers within the labor pool, and that such a hiring goal itself had no relation to the remedying of employment discrimination.

Justice White expressed the view that none of the interests asserted by the board, singly or together, justified the racially discriminatory layoff policy where none of the retained minority teachers was shown to be a victim of any racial discrimination, and that the layoff policy had the same impermissible effect as one that would integrate a work force by discharging whites and hiring blacks until the latter comprised a suitable percentage.