Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U.S. 467, 22 (1992)

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488

FREEMAN v. PITTS

Opinion of the Court

attendance zones in the Pasadena school district when changes in the racial makeup of the schools were caused by demographic shifts "not attributed to any segregative acts on the part of the [school district]." Id., at 436. In so holding we said:

"It may well be that petitioners have not yet totally achieved the unitary system contemplated by . . . Swann. There has been, for example, dispute as to the petitioners' compliance with those portions of the plan specifying procedures for hiring and promoting teachers and administrators. See 384 F. Supp. 846 (1974), vacated, 537 F. 2d 1031 (1976). But that does not undercut the force of the principle underlying the quoted language from Swann. In this case the District Court approved a plan designed to obtain racial neutrality in the attendance of students at Pasadena's public schools. No one disputes that the initial implementation of this plan accomplished that objective. That being the case, the District Court was not entitled to require the [Pasadena Unified School District] to rearrange its attendance zones each year so as to ensure that the racial mix desired by the court was maintained in perpetuity. For having once implemented a racially neutral attendance pattern in order to remedy the perceived constitutional violations on the part of the defendants, the District Court had fully performed its function of providing the appropriate remedy for previous racially discriminatory attendance patterns." Ibid.

See also id., at 438, n. 5 ("Counsel for the original plaintiffs has urged, in the courts below and before us, that the District Court's perpetual 'no majority of any minority' requirement was valid and consistent with Swann, at least until the school system achieved 'unitary' status in all other respects such as the hiring and promoting of teachers and administrators. Since we have concluded that the case is moot with

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