Missouri v. Jenkins, 515 U.S. 70, 97 (1995)

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

Opinion of the Court

"[a]mong the factors which must inform the sound discretion of the court in ordering partial withdrawal are the following: [1] whether there has been full and satisfactory compliance with the decree in those aspects of the system where supervision is to be withdrawn; [2] whether retention of judicial control is necessary or practicable to achieve compliance with the decree in other facets of the school system; and [3] whether the school district has demonstrated, to the public and to the parents and students of the once disfavored race, its good-faith commitment to the whole of the courts' decree and to those provisions of the law and the Constitution that were the predicate for judicial intervention in the first instance." 503 U. S., at 491.

The ultimate inquiry is " 'whether the [constitutional violator] ha[s] complied in good faith with the desegregation decree since it was entered, and whether the vestiges of past discrimination ha[ve] been eliminated to the extent practicable.' " Id., at 492 (quoting Dowell, supra, at 249-250).

Proper analysis of the District Court's orders challenged here, then, must rest upon their serving as proper means to the end of restoring the victims of discriminatory conduct to the position they would have occupied in the absence of that conduct and their eventual restoration of "state and local authorities to the control of a school system that is operating in compliance with the Constitution." 503 U. S., at 489. We turn to that analysis.

The State argues that the order approving salary increases is beyond the District Court's authority because it was crafted to serve an "interdistrict goal," in spite of the fact that the constitutional violation in this case is "intradistrict" in nature. Brief for Petitioners 19. "[T]he nature of the desegregation remedy is to be determined by the nature and scope of the constitutional violation." Milliken II, supra, at 280; Pasadena City Bd. of Ed. v. Spangler, 427 U. S. 424, 434 (1976) (" '[T]here are limits' beyond which a

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