176
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
eral declared these provisions mandating segregated schools unenforceable. See Jenkins v. Missouri, 593 F. Supp. 1485, 1490 (WD Mo. 1984). The statutes were repealed in 1957 and the constitutional provision was rescinded in 1976. Ibid. Nonetheless, 30 years after Brown, the District Court found that "the inferior education indigenous of the state-compelled dual school system has lingering effects in the Kansas City, Missouri School District." 593 F. Supp., at 1492. The District Court concluded that "the State . . . cannot defend its failure to affirmatively act to eliminate the structure and effects of its past dual system on the basis of restrictive state law." Id., at 1505. Just ten years ago, in June 1985, the District Court issued its first remedial order. Jenkins v. Missouri, 639 F. Supp. 19 (WD Mo.).
Today, the Court declares illegitimate the goal of attracting nonminority students to the Kansas City, Missouri, School District, ante, at 94, and thus stops the District Court's efforts to integrate a school district that was, in the 1984/1985 school year, sorely in need and 68.3% black. 639 F. Supp., at 36; see also Jenkins v. Missouri, 672 F. Supp. 400, 411 (WD Mo. 1987) (reporting that physical facilities in the School District had "literally rotted"). Given the deep, inglorious history of segregation in Missouri, to curtail desegregation at this time and in this manner is an action at once too swift and too soon. Cf. 11 F. 3d 755, 762 (CA8 1993) (Court of Appeals noted with approval that the District Court had ordered the School District to submit plans projecting termination of court-ordered funding at alternative intervals, running from April 1993, of three, five, seven, or, at most, ten years).
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