United States v. Fordice, 505 U.S. 717, 14 (1992)

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730

UNITED STATES v. FORDICE

Opinion of the Court

supra, at 494; Dowell, supra, at 250; Green, supra, at 439; Florida ex rel. Hawkins v. Board of Control of Fla., 350 U. S. 413, 414 (1956) (per curiam).4 We also disagree with respondents that the Court of Appeals and District Court properly relied on our decision in Bazemore v. Friday, 478 U. S. 385 (1986). Bazemore neither requires nor justifies the conclusions reached by the two courts below.5

4 To the extent we understand private petitioners to urge us to focus on present discriminatory effects without addressing whether such consequences flow from policies rooted in the prior system, we reject this position. Private petitioners contend that the State must not only cease its legally authorized discrimination, it must also "eliminate its continuing effects insofar as practicable." Brief for Petitioners in No. 90-6588, p. 44. Though they seem to disavow as radical a remedy as student reassignment in the university setting, id., at 66, their focus on "student enrollment, faculty and staff employment patterns, [and] black citizens' college-going and degree-granting rates," id., at 63, would seemingly compel remedies akin to those upheld in Green v. School Bd. of New Kent County, 391 U. S. 430 (1968), were we to adopt their legal standard. As will become clear, however, the inappropriateness of remedies adopted in Green by no means suggests that the racial identifiability of the institutions in a university system is irrelevant to deciding whether a State such as Mississippi has satisfactorily dismantled its prior de jure dual system or that the State need not take additional steps to ameliorate such identifiability.

5 Similarly, reliance on our per curiam affirmance in Alabama State Teachers Assn. v. Alabama Public School and College Authority, 289 F. Supp. 784 (MD Ala. 1968) (ASTA), aff'd, 393 U. S. 400 (1969) (per curiam), is misplaced. In ASTA, the state teachers association sought to enjoin construction of an extension campus of Auburn University in Montgomery, Alabama. The three-judge District Court rejected the allegation that such a facility would perpetuate the State's dual system. It found that the State had educationally justifiable reasons for this new campus and that it had acted in good faith in the fields of admissions, faculty, and staff. 289 F. Supp., at 789. The court also noted that it was "reasonable to conclude that a new institution will not be a white school or a Negro school, but just a school." Ibid. Respondents are incorrect to suppose that ASTA validates policies traceable to the de jure system regardless of whether or not they are educationally justifiable or can be practicably altered to reduce their segregative effects.

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