468
Syllabus
inconvenient, and even bizarre in some situations," Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Education, 402 U. S. 1, 28.
Held: 1. In the course of supervising a desegregation plan, a district court has the authority to relinquish supervision and control of a school district in incremental stages, before full compliance has been achieved in every area of school operations, and may, while retaining jurisdiction over the case, determine that it will not order further remedies in areas where the school district is in compliance with the decree. Pp. 485-492. (a) Green held that the duty of a former de jure district is to take all necessary steps to convert to a unitary system in which racial discrimination is eliminated, set forth factors that measure unitariness, and instructed the district courts to fashion remedies that address all these factors. Although the unitariness concept is helpful in defining the scope of the district court's authority, the term "unitary" does not have a fixed meaning or content and does not confine the court's discretion in a way that departs from traditional equitable principles. Under such principles, a court has the inherent capacity to adjust remedies in a feasible and practical way to correct the constitutional violation, Swann, supra, at 15-16, with the end purpose of restoring state and local authorities to the control of a school system that is operating in compliance, see, e. g., Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U. S. 267, 280-281. Where justified by the facts of the case, incremental or partial withdrawal of judicial supervision and control in areas of compliance, and retention of jurisdiction over the case with continuing supervision in areas of non-compliance, provides an orderly means for fulfilling this purpose. In particular, the court may determine that it will not order further remedies in the area of student assignments where racial imbalance is not traceable, in a proximate way, to constitutional violations. See Pasadena Bd. of Education v. Spangler, 427 U. S. 424, 436. Pp. 485-491. (b) Among the factors which must inform the court's discretion to order the incremental withdrawal of its supervision in an equitable manner are the following: whether there has been full and satisfactory compliance with the decree in those aspects of the system where supervision is to be withdrawn; whether retention of control is necessary or practicable to achieve compliance in other areas; and whether the school district has demonstrated, to the public and to the parents and students of the once disfavored race, its good-faith commitment to the whole of the decree and to those statutory and constitutional provisions that were the predicate for judicial intervention in the first instance. In considering these factors a court should give particular attention to the school system's record of compliance; i. e., whether its policies form a consistent
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