Missouri v. Jenkins, 515 U.S. 70, 102 (1995)

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94

MISSOURI v. JENKINS

Opinion of the Court

properly rejected the District Court's interdistrict remedy because "[t]here were no findings that the differing racial composition between schools in the city and in the outlying suburbs was caused by official activity of any sort." Id., at 757.

What we meant in Milliken I by an interdistrict violation was a violation that caused segregation between adjoining districts. Nothing in Milliken I suggests that the District Court in that case could have circumvented the limits on its remedial authority by requiring the State of Michigan, a constitutional violator, to implement a magnet program designed to achieve the same interdistrict transfer of students that we held was beyond its remedial authority. Here, the District Court has done just that: created a magnet district of the KCMSD in order to serve the interdistrict goal of attracting nonminority students from the surrounding SSD's and redistributing them within the KCMSD. The District Court's pursuit of "desegregative attractiveness" is beyond the scope of its broad remedial authority. See Milliken II, 433 U. S., at 280.

Respondents argue that the District Court's reliance upon desegregative attractiveness is justified in light of the District Court's statement that segregation has "led to white flight from the KCMSD to suburban districts." 1 App. 126; see Brief for Respondents KCMSD et al. 44-45, and n. 28; Brief for Respondents Jenkins et al. 47-49.6 The lower

6 Prior to 1954, Missouri mandated segregated schools for black and white children. Jenkins v. Missouri, 593 F. Supp. 1485, 1490 (WD Mo. 1984). Immediately after the Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954), the State's Attorney General issued an opinion declaring the provisions that mandated segregation unenforceable. 593 F. Supp., at 1490. In the 1954-1955 school year, 18.9% of the KCMSD's students were black. 807 F. 2d, at 680. The KCMSD became 30% black in the 1961-1962 school year, 40% black in the 1965-1966 school year, and 60% black in the 1975-1976 school year. Ibid. In 1977, the KCMSD implemented the 6C desegregation plan in order to ensure that each school within the KCMSD had a minimum minority enrollment of 30%. Jenkins

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