Missouri v. Jenkins, 515 U.S. 70, 78 (1995)

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70

OCTOBER TERM, 1994

Syllabus

MISSOURI et al. v. JENKINS et al.

certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the eighth circuit

No. 93-1823. Argued January 11, 1995—Decided June 12, 1995*

In this 18-year-old school desegregation litigation, see, e. g., Missouri v.

Jenkins, 495 U. S. 33, Missouri challenges the District Court's orders requiring the State (1) to fund salary increases for virtually all instructional and noninstructional staff within the Kansas City, Missouri, School District (KCMSD), and (2) to continue to fund remedial "quality education" programs because student achievement levels were still "at or below national norms at many grade levels." In affirming the orders, the Court of Appeals rejected the State's argument that the salary increases exceeded the District Court's remedial authority because they did not directly address and relate to the State's constitutional violation: its operation, prior to 1954, of a segregated school system within the KCMSD. The Court of Appeals observed, inter alia, that the increases were designed to eliminate the vestiges of state-imposed segregation by improving the "desegregative attractiveness" of the district and by reversing "white flight" to the suburbs. The Court of Appeals also approved the District Court's "implici[t]" rejection of the State's request for a determination of partial unitary status, under Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U. S. 467, 491, with respect to the existing quality education programs.

Held: 1. Respondents' arguments that the State may no longer challenge the District Court's desegregation remedy and that, in any event, the propriety of the remedy is not before this Court are rejected. Because, in Jenkins, 495 U. S., at 37, certiorari was granted to review the manner in which this remedy was funded, but denied as to the State's challenge to review the remedial order's scope, this Court resisted the State's efforts to challenge such scope and, thus, neither approved nor disapproved the Court of Appeals' conclusion that the remedy was proper, see, e. g., id., at 53. Here, however, the State has challenged the District Court's approval of across-the-board salary increases as beyond its remedial authority. Because an analysis of the permissible scope of that authority is necessary for a proper determination of whether the

*Together with Missouri et al. v. Jenkins et al., also on certiorari to the same court (see this Court's Rule 12.2).

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