Wake County's race-blind approach to school assignments may help shape the outcome of a high-profile Supreme Court case being presented Monday that would effectively end the nation's 52-year chapter on desegregation.

The court will hear oral arguments in twin cases that challenge the use of race by school systems in two cities, Seattle and Louisville. Both systems defend the student assignment practice as a crucial way to ensure equal opportunities. The case comes at a time of increasing resegregation in schools throughout North Carolina and nationwide.

The ruling could free districts to include race after years of legal uncertainty, or it could ban the practice altogether. A ruling that bans the use of race in student assignments would thrust Wake directly into the national spotlight.

"If the court strikes down the use of race in voluntary integration, then all eyes are going to be on Wake County," said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow with the Century Foundation, an advocate of economic integration. "Here's a district that has been fairly successful in preserving racial diversity through nonracial means."

Wake is named in several friend-of-the-court briefs because of its focus on avoiding concentrations of poverty instead of achieving racial balance.

The Bush administration, supporting the parents challenging the use of race, cites a report from the U.S. Department of Education that highlights Wake as a district that use race-neutral strategies to foster diversity.

But groups backing the use of race in school assignments in Seattle and Louisville argue that Wake's approach won't work everywhere, nor does it achieve the same goal of racial diversity.

Even a former Wake administrator says the district's approach isn't a substitute for one that takes race into account.

"A district should be able to do whatever it can to improve academic outcomes for students," said Walt Sherlin, a retired Wake administrator who submitted one of dozens of friend-of-court briefs in support of the Seattle and Louisville districts.

In 2000, Wake school leaders feared a legal challenge to the district's long-standing race-based assignment policy. They decided the effectiveness of schools was more dependent on concentrations of poverty than on racial balance. The policy tries to limit the proportion of poor students -- defined by their eligibility for federally subsidized lunch -- to no more than 40 percent in any school.

But the board has allowed many schools to exceed that limit. In the six years of the revised policy, schools have become increasingly segregated by race and income. More than 30 of the county's 143 schools exceed the subsidized-lunch standard of 40 percent. About a dozen have minority enrollments above 75 percent.

Sherlin's brief, written at the request of the UNC Center for Civil Rights, calls attention to that trend. The center supports continued desegregation.

"Wake County has experienced a decline in racial diversity since it adopted a race-neutral assignment policy," Raleigh lawyer Melinda Lawrence wrote on Sherlin's behalf. "Most school districts, in which the distribution of poverty does not fall so heavily along racial lines, would experience even less success achieving racial diversity through the use of a plan based on family income."

To integration advocates, racial diversity in schools is crucial, especially as the nation's population grows increasingly diverse.

"If we educate students in isolated schools, they're going to be hugely disadvantaged, both in working together in tomorrow's business world and in participating cooperatively in the nation's political life," said John C. Boger, dean of the UNC Law School and an expert in school desegregation.

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