Cite as: 505 U. S. 717 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
tual findings of the District Court that there are several surviving aspects of Mississippi's prior dual system which are constitutionally suspect; for even though such policies may be race neutral on their face, they substantially restrict a person's choice of which institution to enter, and they contribute to the racial identifiability of the eight public universities. Mississippi must justify these policies or eliminate them.
It is important to state at the outset that we make no effort to identify an exclusive list of unconstitutional remnants of Mississippi's prior de jure system. In highlighting, as we do below, certain remnants of the prior system that are readily apparent from the findings of fact made by the District Court and affirmed by the Court of Appeals,8 we
by no means suggest that the Court of Appeals need not examine, in light of the proper standard, each of the other policies now governing the State's university system that have been challenged or that are challenged on remand in light of the standard that we articulate today. With this caveat in mind, we address four policies of the present system: admissions standards, program duplication, institutional mission assignments, and continued operation of all eight public universities.
We deal first with the current admissions policies of Mississippi's public universities. As the District Court found, the three flagship historically white universities in the sys-8 In this sense, it is important to reiterate that we do not disturb the findings of no discriminatory purpose in the many instances in which the courts below made such conclusions. The private petitioners and the United States, however, need not show such discriminatory intent to establish a constitutional violation for the perpetuation of policies traceable to the prior de jure segregative regime which have continuing discriminatory effects. As for present policies that do not have such historical antecedents, a claim of violation of the Fourteenth Amendment cannot be made out without a showing of discriminatory purpose. See supra, at 732, n. 6.
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