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Souter, J., dissenting
geographical or political boundaries of its violation. "Nothing in the Milliken decision suggests a per se rule that federal courts lack authority to order parties found to have violated the Constitution to undertake remedial efforts beyond the municipal boundaries of the city where the violation occurred." 425 U. S., at 298.
On its face, the District Court's magnet school concept falls entirely within the scope of equitable authority recognized in Gautreaux. In Gautreaux, the fact that the CHA and HUD had the authority to operate outside the limits of the city of Chicago meant that an order to fund or build housing beyond those limits would "not necessarily entail coercion of uninvolved governmental units . . . ." Id., at 298. Here, by the same token, the District Court has not sought to "consolidate or in any way restructure" the SSD's, id., at 305-306, or, indeed, to subject them to any remedial obligation at all.7 The District Court's remedial measures go only to the operation and quality of schools within the KCMSD, and the burden of those measures accordingly falls only on the two proven constitutional wrongdoers in this case, the KCMSD and the State. And insofar as the District Court has ordered those violators to undertake measures to increase the KCMSD's attractiveness to students from other districts and thereby to reverse the flight attributable to their prior segregative acts, its orders do not represent an abuse of discretion, but instead appear "wholly commensurate with the 'nature and extent of the constitutional violation.' " Id., at 300, quoting Milliken I, 418 U. S., at 744.
The Court's failure to give Gautreaux its due points up the risks of its approach to this case. The major peril of addressing an important and complex question without ade-7 Thus, the Court errs in suggesting that the District Court has sought to do here indirectly what we held the District Court could not do directly in Milliken I. Ante, at 94. The District Court here has not attempted, directly or indirectly, to impose any remedial measures on school districts innocent of a constitutional violation or free from its segregative effects.
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