418 U.S. 717 (1974)
In August 1970, the Detroit Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People along with individual parents and students filed suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on behalf of a class consisting of all school children in the City of Detroit and all Detroit resident parents who have children of school age.1 The named defendants included the Governor of Michigan, the Attorney General, the State Board of Education, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Board of Education of the city of Detroit, its members, and the city's former superintendent of schools.2
The complaint challenged the constitutionality of Act 48 of the 1970 Michigan Legislature, which interfered with a voluntary partial high school desegregation plan adopted by the Detroit Board of Education known as the April 7, 1970 Plan, and alleged that the Detroit Public School System was segregated on the basis of race as a result of the official policies and actions of the defendants.3 Initially the District Court denied a preliminary injunction, but the Court of Appeals reversed and remanded for trial on the merits.4
On remand the District Court approved a Magnet Plan proposed by the Board, but the Court of Appeals again remanded with instructions to proceed to trial on the merits of the substantive allegations.5 The trial on the issue of segregation in the Detroit school system began on April 6, 1971, and continued through July 22, 1971, consuming 41 trial days.6 On September 27, 1971, the District Court issued its findings and conclusions, determining that governmental actions and inaction at all levels had combined to establish and maintain the pattern of residential segregation throughout the Detroit metropolitan area.7
The District Court found that the Detroit Board of Education had created and maintained optional attendance zones, drawn attendance zones along north-south lines, bused Negro pupils to predominantly Negro schools, and constructed schools in a manner that had a segregative effect.8 The court also found that the State of Michigan had failed to provide authorization or funds for transportation within Detroit, had enacted Act 48 which impeded integration, and bore responsibility for the actions of the Detroit Board as a subordinate entity.9 The District Court initially directed submission of Detroit-only desegregation plans but later designated 53 of the 85 suburban school districts plus Detroit as the desegregation area.10
Thereafter, on June 14, 1972, the District Court issued its ruling on the desegregation area.11 On July 11, 1972, the court ordered the Detroit Board to purchase or lease at least 295 school buses for an interim plan.12 On June 12, 1973, a divided Court of Appeals sitting en banc affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded, holding that the record supported the findings of constitutional violations by the Detroit Board and state defendants.13 The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider whether the relief ordered was appropriate.14
Whether a federal court may impose a multidistrict, areawide remedy to a single-district de jure segregation problem absent any finding that the other included school districts have failed to operate unitary school systems, absent any claim or finding that the boundary lines of any affected school district were established with the purpose of fostering racial segregation, absent any finding that the included districts committed acts which effected segregation within the other districts, and absent a meaningful opportunity for the included neighboring school districts to present evidence or be heard on the propriety of a multidistrict remedy?15
The scope of the remedy is determined by the nature and extent of the constitutional violation. The constitutional violation was found only within the Detroit school system. Without an interdistrict violation, there is no basis for an interdistrict remedy.16
No. The District Court found violations only by the Detroit Board and state defendants within the Detroit system.17 The record shows no interdistrict violation by the outlying districts.18 The Court of Appeals affirmed the metropolitan remedy despite the absence of interdistrict violations.19 Because the scope of the remedy must match the violation, the interdistrict remedy was impermissible.2021
The interdistrict remedy was impermissible.
Related opinions on this issue
Justice Stewart concurred in the judgment.22 He stated that the basic issue concerns the appropriate exercise of federal equity jurisdiction.23 No evidence was adduced and no findings were made in the District Court concerning the activities of school officials in districts outside the city of Detroit.24 The District Court found that any desegregation plan operating wholly within the corporate geographical limits of the city would be deficient since it would clearly make the entire Detroit public school system racially identifiable as Black.25
The courts were in error for the simple reason that the remedy they thought necessary was not commensurate with the constitutional violation found.26 Traditions of local control of schools, together with the difficulty of a judicially supervised restructuring of local administration of schools, render improper and inequitable such an interdistrict response to a constitutional violation found to have occurred only within a single school district.27 He observed that this is not to say that an interdistrict remedy would not be proper in other factual situations where state officials had contributed to the separation of the races by drawing or redrawing school district lines.28
Justice Douglas dissented, arguing that the Court of Appeals had acted responsibly and that its judgment should be affirmed.29 He stated that the Michigan educational system is unitary, maintained and supported by the legislature and under the general supervision of the State Board of Education.30 The State controls the boundaries of school districts and supervises school site selection.31
When the Court rules against the metropolitan area remedy it takes a step that will likely put the problems of the blacks and our society back to the period that antedated the separate but equal regime of Plessy v. Ferguson.32 The inner core of Detroit is now rather solidly black and the blacks in many instances are likely to be poorer.33 Today's decision means that there is no violation of the Equal Protection Clause though the schools are segregated by race and though the black schools are not only separate but inferior.34
Joined by Justice Douglas, Justice Brennan, And Justice Marshall
Justice White dissented, contending that the core of his disagreement is that deliberate acts of segregation and their consequences will go unremedied because an effective remedy would cause what the Court considers to be undue administrative inconvenience to the State.35 The result is that the State of Michigan has successfully insulated itself from its duty to provide effective desegregation remedies by vesting sufficient power over its public schools in its local school districts.36 The District Court and the Court of Appeals found that over a long period of years those in charge of the Michigan public schools engaged in various practices calculated to effect the segregation of the Detroit school system.37
The Court does not question these findings nor could it reasonably do so.38 The Court fashions out of whole cloth an arbitrary rule that remedies for constitutional violations occurring in a single Michigan school district must stop at the school district line.39
Joined by Justice Douglas, Justice Brennan, And Justice White
Justice Marshall dissented, asserting that after twenty years of small often difficult steps toward the great end of equal educational opportunity the Court today takes a giant step backwards.40 Notwithstanding a record showing widespread and pervasive racial segregation in the educational system provided by the State of Michigan for children in Detroit this Court holds that the District Court was powerless to require the State to remedy its constitutional violation in any meaningful fashion.41 The great irony of the Court's opinion is that it remands for prompt formulation of a decree directed to eliminating the segregation found to exist in Detroit city schools a remedy which has been delayed since 1970 while the majority seems to have forgotten the District Court's explicit finding that a Detroit-only decree the only remedy permitted under today's decision would not accomplish desegregation.42
Whether the record shows constitutional violations in the outlying school districts that would justify including them in a metropolitan desegregation remedy?43
The record in this case shows no constitutional violation in the outlying districts that would justify including them in the remedy. The record contains evidence of discrimination by the State and the Detroit Board but does not show that any of the outlying districts engaged in discriminatory conduct that caused the segregation in Detroit.44
No. The District Court acknowledged that it had taken no proofs with respect to the establishment of the boundaries of the 86 public school districts in the counties in the Detroit area nor on the issue of whether with the exclusion of the city of Detroit school district such school districts have committed acts of de jure segregation.4546 The Court of Appeals relied on five factors which it held amounted to unconstitutional state action with respect to the violations found in the Detroit system but these factors did not establish violations by the outlying districts themselves.47 There is no claim and there is no evidence hinting that petitioner outlying school districts have ever maintained or operated anything but unitary school systems.48
The record shows no constitutional violations in the outlying school districts that would justify including them in a metropolitan desegregation remedy.49
Whether the metropolitan remedy would present substantial problems of administration, financing, and political legitimacy that render it impermissible?50
The metropolitan remedy would present substantial problems of administration, financing, and political legitimacy. It would require the creation of a super school board and would fundamentally alter the structure of local government in the Detroit metropolitan area.51
Yes. The metropolitan remedy would require in effect consolidation of 54 independent school districts historically administered as separate units into a vast new super school district.52 Entirely apart from the logistical and other serious problems attending large-scale transportation of students the consolidation would give rise to an array of other problems in financing and operating this new school system.53 The consolidation would give rise to questions concerning the status and authority of the present popularly elected school boards and what board or boards would levy taxes for school operations in these 54 districts constituting the consolidated metropolitan area.54
The metropolitan remedy would present substantial problems of administration, financing, and political legitimacy that render it impermissible.55