Cite as: 515 U. S. 70 (1995)
Souter, J., dissenting
uitable principles, id., at 737-738, we left open the possibility that a district court might subject a proven constitutional wrongdoer to a remedy with intended effects going beyond the district of the wrongdoer's violation, when such a remedy is necessary to redress the harms flowing from the constitutional violation.
The Court, nonetheless, reads Milliken I quite differently. It reads the case as categorically forbidding imposition of a remedy on a guilty district with intended consequences in a neighboring innocent district, unless the constitutional violation yielded segregative effects in that innocent district. See, e. g., ante, at 92 ("But this interdistrict goal [of attracting nonminority students from outside the KCMSD schools] is beyond the scope of the intradistrict violation identified by the District Court" (emphasis deleted)).
Today's decision therefore amounts to a redefinition of the terms of Milliken I and consequently to a substantial expansion of its limitation on the permissible remedies for prior segregation. But that is not the only prior law affected by today's decision. The Court has not only rewritten Milliken I; it has effectively overruled a subsequent case expressly refusing to constrain remedial equity powers to the extent the Court does today, and holding that courts ordering relief from unconstitutional segregation may, with an appropriate factual predicate, exercise just the authority that the Court today eliminates.
Two Terms after Milliken, we decided Hills v. Gautreaux, 425 U. S. 284 (1976), in a unanimous opinion by Justice Stewart. The District Court in Gautreaux had found that the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) had maintained a racially segregated system of public housing within the city of Chicago, in violation of various constitutional and statutory provisions. There was no indication that the violation had produced any effects outside the city itself. The issue before us was whether "the remedial order
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