Cite as: 505 U. S. 717 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
recruitment and enrollment, faculty hiring, elimination of unnecessary program duplication, and institutional funding practices to ensure that "a student's choice of institution or campus, henceforth, will be based on other than racial criteria." Id., at 205. The Board reluctantly offered amendments, prefacing its reform pledge to HEW with this statement: "With deference, it is the position of the Board of Trustees . . . that the Mississippi system of higher education is in compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964." Id., at 898. At this time, the racial composition of the State's universities had changed only marginally from the levels of 1968, which were almost exclusively single race.2 Though HEW refused to accept the modified Plan, the Board adopted it anyway. 674 F. Supp., at 1530. But even the limited effects of this Plan in disestablishing the prior de jure segregated system were substantially constricted by the state legislature, which refused to fund it until fiscal year 1978, and even then at well under half the amount sought by the Board. App. 896-897, 1444-1445, 1448-1449.3
Private petitioners initiated this lawsuit in 1975. They complained that Mississippi had maintained the racially segregative effects of its prior dual system of postsecondary education in violation of the Fifth, Ninth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Amendments, 42 U. S. C. §§ 1981 and 1983, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C. § 2000d.
2 For the 1974-1975 school year, black students comprised 4.1 percent of the full-time undergraduate enrollments at University of Mississippi; at Mississippi State University, 7.5 percent; at University of Southern Mississippi, 8.0 percent; at Delta State University, 12.6 percent; at Mississippi University for Women, 13.0 percent. At Jackson State, Alcorn State, and Mississippi Valley State, the percentages of black students were 96.6 percent, 99.9 percent, and 100 percent, respectively. Brief for United States 7.
3 According to counsel for respondents, it was in this time period—the mid- to late-1970's—that the State came into full "compliance with the law" as having taken the necessary affirmative steps to dismantle its prior de jure system. Tr. of Oral Arg. 45.
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