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Washington - In a decision that hit on hot-button issues of race, discrimination and education, the US Supreme Court ruled Thursday that school districts cannot use race alone to determine which schools students can attend.

In a divided 5-4 decision, the highest US court found school districts in Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Kentucky could not use race as a tie-breaker in determining which students would attend which schools.

The ruling follows a similar decision in 2004 aimed at universities, which said race could only be considered as one of many factors in educational admission decisions to address past discrimination against blacks and other minorities.

Supporters of the schools’ plans saw so-called affirmative action as a way to keep schools from becoming segregated based on the location of minority neighbourhoods.

The districts in Seattle and Louisville allowed students to choose which school in the area they wanted to attend, but had policies that used race if there were more students than spaces in a particular school. The efforts were used to keep the racial makeup of the schools in line with that of the city.

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s decision.

Before a landmark 1954 decision that outlawed school racial segregation, “schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on colour 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.

Dissenting justices said the decision threatened efforts to prevent resegregation of schools.

“This is a decision that the court and the nation will come to regret,” Justice Stephen Breyer said.