A conservative majority led by Chief Justice John Roberts said other means besides race considerations should be used to achieve diversity in schools.

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race," he wrote.

More than a half-century after the high court outlawed segregation in public schools, the justices were deeply divided over one controversial outgrowth of that decision: what role race should play, if any, in assigning students to competitive spots in elementary and secondary schools.

The cases from Kentucky and Washington state revisit past disputes over race and education, stemming from the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.

"Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on color of their skin. The school districts in these cases have not carried the heavy burden of demonstrating that we should allow this once again-- even for very different reasons," Roberts wrote.

He was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito.

But Kennedy held out hope for school systems that use race that their criteria might be allowed in some narrow circumstances.

Reading his concurring opinion from the bench, Kennedy said, "This nation has a moral and ethical obligation to fulfill its historic commitment to creating an integrated society that ensures equal opportunity for all its children.

"A compelling interest exists in avoiding racial isolation, an interest that a school district, in its discretion and expertise, may choose to pursue."

He added, "Crude measures of this sort [as illustrated in this case] threaten to reduce children to racial chits valued and traded according to one school's supply and another's demand."

And Thomas said, "Simply putting students together under the same roof does not necessarily mean that the students will learn together or even interact. Furthermore, it is unclear whether increased interracial contact improves racial attitudes and relations."

Those on both sides of the issue, as well as the Bush administration, had hoped the Supreme Court would clarify when and to what lengths state and local officials can go to promote diversity in K-12 education.

In a landmark case three years ago, the justices affirmed racial quotas were unconstitutional but offered a limited, but nonetheless powerful endorsement of affirmative action in higher education. The Supreme Court has now ruled that legal standard does not apply in a K-12 public school setting.

While supporters on both sides of the issue seemed to agree classroom diversity is an important goal, differences remain over how to maintain it without the real or perceived consequence that some families may be unfairly discriminated against or inconvenienced.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said the majority "reverses course and reaches the wrong conclusion. In doing so, it distorts precedent, it misapplies the relevant constitutional principles, it announces legal rules that will obstruct efforts by state and local governments to deal effectively with the growing resegregation of public schools, it threatens to substitute for present calm a disruptive round of race-related litigation."

Stevens was joined by Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

The Seattle and Louisville plans are voluntary, introduced in the years after integration of schools in many areas was managed by the courts. They were not designed as remedial efforts to achieve diversity, but to maintain it, as a reflection of the larger communities' racial makeup.

During oral arguments in December, hundreds of demonstrators -- many of them African-American college students -- marched and chanted outside the court in support of the affirmative action plans. Some carried signs such as "Equal education, not segregation."

Louisville-area schools endured decades of federal court oversight after schools there were slow to integrate. When that oversight ended in the late 1990s, county officials sought to maintain integration, requiring that most public schools have at least 15 percent and no more than 50 percent African-American enrollment. The idea was to reflect the whole of Jefferson County, which is 60 percent white and 38 percent black. Officials say their plan reflects not only the need for diversity but also the desire of parents for greater school choice.

A white parent, Crystal Meredith, sued, saying her child was twice denied the school nearest their home and had to endure a three-hour bus ride to a facility that was not their top choice. Many African-American parents raised similar concerns.

In Seattle, public schools often rely on a "tiebreaker." Under the plan, begun in 1998, families can send their children to any school in their district. When there are more applicants than spaces available, and when a school is not considered "racially balanced," race is one of several "integration tiebreakers" used to achieve diversity.

A group primarily of white parents from two neighborhoods sued in 2001, saying about 200 students were not admitted to the schools of their choice, preventing many from attending facilities nearest to their homes.

One school at the center of the controversy is Franklin High. Half of its roughly 1,500 students are Asian-American, a third are African-American, and about 7 percent are Hispanic. White enrollment dropped from 23 percent in 2000 to 10 percent last year.

The Seattle diversity plan was suspended while the appeals worked their way through the courts.

From the justices' comments during oral arguments and in the various written opinions, it was clear the legal sticking point was whether those diversity efforts represented a "compelling government interest."

The Bush administration supported the parents bringing suit against the choice plans. Solicitor General Paul Clement told the justices the two plans at issue represented "very stark racial quotas." He argued they were a "clear effort to get the schools to mimic the overall community" and that other "race-neutral" means to achieve classroom diversity should be used.

In a statement, Countrywide denied that a raid had occurred but didn't address the general subject of an investigation.

"Even if there were [such a probe], it's company policy not to comment on anything to do with our regulators," a spokesman said.

In the insider trading case, the former executives — Alan Cao, 38, of Woodland Hills; Jun Shi, 43, of Moorpark; and Quan Zhu, 43, of Santa Monica — admitted in plea agreements that they had made tens of thousands of dollars by selling Countrywide shares, including some stock they had borrowed to profit from a price drop in a technique known as short selling, and by buying options giving them the right to sell Countrywide shares.

Countrywide reported Oct. 20, 2004, that its third-quarter profit was 7 cents a share lower than analysts had forecast. The company also cut its earnings forecast. Its stock sank 11.5% that day.

Prosecutors said the illegal profits amounted to $47,668 for Cao, who was Countrywide Financial's vice president of financial planning; $35,547 for Zhu, executive vice president of portfolio risk management; and $19,995 for Shi, first vice president of planning at Countrywide Bank.

Cao and Shi settled a related Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit in March 2006 by returning their earnings plus interest and paying a fine equal to their profit, the SEC said.

In the plea agreements, prosecutors said they would recommend home confinement and probation if pre-sentencing reports turn up no other wrongdoing. No one else is expected to be charged in the case, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Beong-Soo Kim in Los Angeles, the prosecutor in the case.

In a statement about the trading case, Countrywide said it was "committed to the highest ethical standards."

"The company's policies prohibiting illegal insider trading are strictly enforced," Countrywide said.

The company described the three executives as "mid-level managers" and said it had cooperated fully with regulators and prosecutors in the case.

Hose's attorney, Jim Ecker, said he is pleased with the outcome for his mentally ill client. The judge left the opportunity for Hose to receive mental health treatment in prison, he said.

"He has suicidal tendencies, and he's at high risk for that," Ecker said.

Hose was charged with several sex crimes related to the disappearance and alleged abuse of Tanya Kach, a runaway who was 14 when she vanished Feb. 10, 1996.

The trial was originally set to begin in February of this year, but Hose tried to kill himself the day before it began. It was delayed again in May because Hose was being treated at a mental hospital.

The majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, who was appointed to the court by President George W. Bush, said the law is unconstitutional as applied to issue ads that a Wisconsin anti-abortion group wanted to broadcast before the 2004 election.

The ruling was a victory for the group Wisconsin Right to Life, which argued the law violated its free-speech rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution.

"The First Amendment requires us to err on the side of protecting political speech rather than suppressing it," Roberts wrote. "Where the First Amendment is implicated, the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor."

The court upheld a ruling that the ads were not election ads covered by the law, but were general issue ads that did not aim to influence voters.

The court's four liberals dissented and said campaign finance reform laws seek to protect the integrity of elections from huge amounts of money.

"After today, the ban on contributions by corporations and unions and the limitation on their corrosive spending when they enter the political arena are open to easy circumvention," Justice David Souter said for the dissenters.

The part of the law at issue in the ruling bans corporations, unions and special interest groups from using unrestricted money to run television or radio ads that refer to a candidate for federal office two months before a general election or one month before a primary election.

In 2003, the Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote upheld the law, including the ban on certain issue ads broadcast before an election.

But since then, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who cast the decisive vote in 2003, has retired and has been replaced by the more conservative Justice Samuel Alito, Bush's other appointee to the court, who joined the majority opinion.

The ads criticized Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin for supporting efforts to block confirmation of several of Bush's judicial nominees. Because Feingold, a Democrat, was running for re-election at the time, the ads were prohibited.

Feingold had co-written the landmark campaign finance law, along with Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who is running for president.

McCain called it regrettable that the court carved out a narrow exception by which some corporate and labor expenditures can be used to target a federal candidate in the days and weeks before an election.

"It is important to recognize, however, that the court's decision does not affect the principal provision of the (law), which bans federal officeholders from soliciting soft money contributions for their parties to spend on their campaigns," he said.

One of McCain's Republican presidential rivals, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, hailed the ruling "Score one for free speech," he said.

Frederick's sign was ambiguous. Was the 18-year-old supporting drugs or Christianity? The ambiguity matters because it places Frederick's sign within the confines of protected speech.

Supreme Court members, in a majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, convinced themselves that Frederick's banner was a public promotion of the use of illegal drugs. School authorities, according to Roberts — joined by Justices Thomas, Scalia, Alito and Kennedy — did not violate Frederick's constitutional rights when they went across the street, snatched his sign and ripped it to shreds.

The Supreme Court recognized student political speech with its 1969 decision, Tinker v. Des Moines (Iowa) School District. Justice Stephen Breyer, while siding with the majority, asserts that Frederick and his bong-hits banner make for an inadequate foundation on which to limit students' right to political speech.

The court's dissenters - Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg - go further. Stevens, penning the dissent, called the student's banner "nonsense" and the court's ruling a reach for broad censorship that would ban speech that advocated for medicinal marijuana use or other related messages.

The majority worries that illegal drugs are a serious danger in schools. This argument gets some sympathy but not enough to trample on the First Amendment.