Missouri v. Jenkins, 515 U.S. 70, 64 (1995)

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Cite as: 515 U. S. 70 (1995)

Souter, J., dissenting

must be evidence of a constitutional violation in one district that produces a significant segregative effect in another district.' Order of June 5, 1984 at 14, 95. . . . The district court thus dealt not only with the issue of whether the SSDs were constitutional violators but also whether there were significant interdistrict segregative effects. See V, infra. When it did so, it made specific findings that negate current significant interdistrict effects . . . ." Ibid.

It is clear that, in this passage, the Court of Appeals was summarizing the District Court's findings that the constitutional violations within the KCMSD had not produced any segregative effects in other districts. Ibid. While the Court of Appeals did not repeat the word "segregative" in its concluding sentence, there is nothing to indicate that it was referring to anything but segregative effects, and there is in fact nothing in the District Court's own statements going beyond its finding that the State and the KCMSD's actions did not lead to segregative effects in the SSD's.6

6 The Court states that the Court of Appeals would not have decided the question whether the State and the KCMSD's violations produced segregative effects in the SSD's, as respondents lacked standing to raise the issue. Ante, at 96, n. 9. This statement eludes explanation. In Milliken I, 418 U. S. 717 (1974), we held that before a district court may order the mandatory interdistrict reassignment of students throughout a metropolitan area, it must first find either that multiple school districts participated in the unconstitutional segregation of students, or that the violation within a single school district "produce[d] . . . significant segregative effect[s]" in the others. Id., at 744-745. See ante, at 93; ante, at 105, 108 (O'Connor, J., concurring); see also infra, at 170-171. In the earlier stages of this litigation, the Jenkins respondents sought the mandatory reassignment of students throughout the Kansas City metropolitan area, and the District Court, 3 App. 721-820 (Order of June 5, 1984), and the Court of Appeals, Jenkins, 807 F. 2d, at 665-666, 672, rejected such relief on the grounds that the requirements of Milliken I had not been satisfied. The Court is now saying that respondents lacked standing to raise the issue of interdistrict segregative effects, and that the District Court and

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