108
O'Connor, J., concurring
acknowledged by the dissent, post, at 173-174, n. 8, of finding the necessary facts and exercising its discretion accordingly. Indeed, in footnote 11 itself, we repeated the requirement of a "significant segregative effect in another district," Milliken I, 418 U. S., at 745, and held that the Court of Appeals' "unsupported speculation falls far short of the demonstration" required, Gautreaux, supra, at 295, n. 11. There would have been little need to overrule the Court of Appeals expressly on these factual matters if they were indeed irrelevant.
It is this reading of Hills v. Gautreaux—as an affirmation of, not a deviation from, Milliken I—that the Court of Appeals itself adopted in an earlier phase of this litigation: "Milliken and Hills make clear that we may grant interdistrict relief only to remedy a constitutional violation by the SSD [suburban school district], or to remedy an interdistrict effect in the SSD caused by a constitutional violation in KCMSD." Jenkins v. Missouri, 807 F. 2d 657, 672 (CA8 1986) (en banc). Perhaps Gautreaux was "mentioned only briefly" by the respondents, post, at 174, because the case may actually lend support to the State's argument.
Absent Gautreaux, the dissent hangs on the semantic distinction that "the District Court did not mean by an 'intra-district violation' what the Court apparently means by it today. The District Court meant that the violation within the KCMSD had not led to segregation outside of it, and that no other school districts had played a part in the violation. It did not mean that the violation had not produced effects of any sort beyond the district." Post, at 159. The relevant inquiry under Milliken I and Gautreaux, however, is not whether the intradistrict violation "produced effects of any sort beyond the district," but rather whether such violation caused "significant segregative effects" across district boundaries, Milliken I, supra, at 745. When the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's initial remedial order, it specifically stated that the District Court "dealt not only with the issue of whether the SSDs [suburban school
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