This article reports on a U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down two voluntary school-integration plans in a 5-to-4 ruling issued last week. Its decision left solidly intact its precedents dealing with affirmative action in higher education. Rather than signaling any clear desire to revisit its past decisions on race-conscious admissions policies--as some conservative groups had urged it to do--the court majority cited those precedents repeatedly as justification for holding that the school-integration policies in the case violated the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law. Education lawyers, as well as both supporters and critics of affirmative action, said the court's decision would prompt many public-school districts to alter policies they had adopted for the sake of promoting racial integration. But they said it did not significantly change the law governing colleges' use of race-conscious policies in admissions and other areas. It mainly just reaffirmed that colleges must seriously consider race-neutral alternatives, must not put too much weight on race or ethnicity, and must show that such policies have educational benefits.