ESTES ET AL. v. METROPOLITAN BRANCHES OF THE DALLAS NAACP ET AL.
No. 78-253
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 29, 1979-Decided January 21, 1980
444 U.S. 437
*Together with No. 78-282, Curry et al. v. Metropolitan Branches of the Dallas NAACP et al.; and No. 78-283, Brinegar et al. v. Metropolitan Branches of the Dallas NAACP et al., also on certiorari to the same court.
E. Brice Cunningham argued the cause for respondents Metropolitan Branches of the Dallas NAACP et al. With him on the brief were Nathaniel R. Jones, Merle W. Loper, and Louis R. Lucas. Edward B. Cloutman III argued the cause for respondents Tasby et al. With him on the brief were Jack Greenberg, James M. Nabrit III, and Bill Lann Lee.
Deputy Solicitor General Wallace argued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae urging affirmance. With him on the brief were Solicitor General McCree, Assistant Attorney General Days, Sara Sun Beale, Brian K. Landsberg, and Mildred M. Matesich.†
PER CURIAM.
The writs of certiorari are dismissed as improvidently granted.
MR. JUSTICE POWELL, with whom MR. JUSTICE STEWART and MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST join, dissenting.
The Court today dismisses the writs previously granted in this litigation and thereby reinstates the ruling of the Court of Appeals. The suit now will be returned to the District Court for elaboration of that court‘s conclusions on the feasibility of extensive busing to achieve racial balance in the Dallas public schools. The Court of Appeals directed the trial court to supplement the record with formal studies of the anticipated times and distances of likely bus routes, and to make additional findings on desegregation in the city‘s high schools.
Although the remand is narrow, aimed solely at the sufficiency of the record on which the District Court based its desegregation order, I do not think it is justified. After studying the schools of the Dallas Independent School District through the many years of this litigation, the trial judge drew on his familiarity with Dallas and its schools, and on the advice of many community groups, to fashion an effective and fair desegregation order. The Court of Appeals failed to accord proper deference to the District Court‘s conscientious execution of this delicate task.
In addition, this case presents a long-needed opportunity to re-examine the considerations relevant to framing a remedy in a desegregation suit. It is increasingly evident that use of the busing remedy to achieve racial balance can conflict with the goals of equal educational opportunity and quality schools. In all too many cities, well-intentioned court decrees have had the primary effect of stimulating resegregation. The experience in Dallas during this litigation presents a striking illustration of this problem. If the District Court orders substantial additional busing, as the Court of Appeals ap
I
The Dallas Independent School District (School District) has been in desegregation litigation since 1955, although the present case is not part of the original suit. During this quarter of a century, the School District has grown into the eighth largest school district in the country, covering 351 square miles and spanning 35 miles at its widest point. Since the present action first was tried in 1971, the student population of the district has changed dramatically. Total enrollment has dropped from 163,000 to 133,000, while the racial distribution of students has shifted from 69% Anglo in 1971 to 33.5% Anglo, 49.1% black, and 16.3% Mexican-American in 1979. There were 112,000 Anglo students in the School District in 1970; there are now fewer than 45,000.
This suit was brought by several parents, acting on behalf of their children, against the superintendent and the Board of Trustees of the School District (Board). Other parents groups have intervened in the suit.1 In the summer of 1971, the District Court found that “elements” of a segregated school system “still remain” in the Dallas schools. Tasby v. Estes, 342 F. Supp. 945, 947 (ND Tex. 1971). The court imposed a number of remedies, including the busing of approx-
In a month-long trial on remand, the District Court considered in detail six plans submitted by the various parties and a court-appointed expert. It heard nearly 50 witnesses, including numerous experts, and produced a trial transcript of some 4,000 pages. The court also conferred with concerned community groups, the most prominent of which was the Educational Task Force of the Dallas Alliance (Alliance), a multiracial, nonpartisan organization.2 In a thorough opinion, Tasby v. Estes, 412 F. Supp. 1192 (ND Tex. 1976), the District Court found that the decline in Anglo enrollment between 1971 and 1976 was not the result of actions taken by the Board. In fact, the court noted the Board‘s continuing “good faith” efforts to establish a unitary school system. Id., at 1207. See Pasadena City Bd. of Education v. Spangler, 427 U. S. 424, 435-436 (1976). The court‘s duty, it asserted, was to adopt a plan that would “realistically and effectively”
With careful attention to the special characteristics and history of the School District, the District Court promulgated a progressive and comprehensive plan that drew heavily on the proposals of the Alliance.3 For purposes of student assignment, the plan divides the School District into six subdistricts. In integrated areas within each subdistrict, present student assignments are retained wherever possible. In other areas, children in grades K-3 remain in neighborhood schools; those in grades 4-8 are assigned to central schools in each subdistrict; and high school students are assigned to schools in their own subdistricts on the basis of geographical attendance zones. The plan provides for a number of “magnet high schools” that offer enriched educational programs.4 The pupil assignment plan is supplemented by majority-to-minority transfers upon request.5
This case now focuses on student assignment and busing.6
Respondents argue that the District Court‘s plan leaves 62 schools, about one-third of the 176 schools in the district, with “one-race” student bodies (defined as those where more than 75% of the students are of one race).8 Fifty-two of these schools would be predominantly black, nine Anglo, and one Mexican-American. A majority of these one-race schools result from the District Court‘s refusal to bus very young children.9 This Court has recognized that concern for the health and welfare of younger children may dictate their exclusion from student transportation plans, see Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Education, 402 U. S. 1, 31 (1971), and respondents do not dispute that feature of the District Court order. In addition, several high schools have one-race student bodies because the District Court declined to order the busing of high school students. It noted that “of approximately 1,000 Anglos ordered to be transported to formerly all-black high schools under this Court‘s 1971 student assignment plan, fewer than 50 Anglo students attend those schools today.” 412 F. Supp., at 1205. The court
Viewed on a geographic basis, the order left 28 “predominantly black” schools in East Oak Cliff, which is bounded by the Trinity River bottom on one side and by Interstate 35 on the other. The court found that the “practicalities of time and distance” prevent the effective integration of the schools in this neighborhood through busing. Id., at 1204. In contrast, the Seagoville subdistrict remains predominantly white. Seagoville, however, is “geographically isolated” from the rest of the city, Tasby v. Estes, 572 F. 2d 1010, 1013 (CA5 1978), and its school population represents less than 2% of the School District‘s student body.
The Court of Appeals was not impressed by the District Court‘s carefully structured plan. It concentrated almost exclusively on the “large number of one-race schools” remaining in Dallas. Id., at 1012.
“We cannot properly review any student assignment plan that leaves many schools in a system one race without specific findings by the district court as to the feasibility of [student assignment] techniques. . . . There are no adequate time-and-distance studies in the record in this case. Consequently, we have no means of determining whether the natural boundaries and traffic considerations preclude either the pairing and clustering of schools or the use of transportation to eliminate the large number of one-race schools still existing.” Id., at 1014.
The Court of Appeals remanded “for the formulation of a new student assignment plan and for findings to justify the maintenance of any one-race schools that may be part of that plan.” Id., at 1018 (emphasis added).
The duration and complexity of this litigation demonstrate the difficulty of providing effective relief in a school desegregation case. The school board and the court must consider many economic, social, and educational factors, and those factors vary widely from community to community. Courts frequently are caught between the constitutional prohibition against segregation and the severe limitations on their ability to implement an effective plan with public support. See Columbus Bd. of Education v. Penick, 443 U. S. 449, 486-488 (1979) (POWELL, J., dissenting). Consequently, this Court has been reluctant to give more than general instructions for desegregation orders, and those instructions have not always been completely consistent.10 The result in too many instances has been confusion in the lower courts. See infra, at 449-450.
I believe that two rules provide the basic outline for responsible exercise of the courts’ equitable powers in school desegregation cases. First, “the nature of the desegregation remedy is to be determined by the nature and scope of the constitutional violation.” Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U. S. 267, 280 (1977) (Milliken II). The constitutional deprivation must be identified accurately, and the remedy must be related closely to that deprivation. Otherwise, a desegregation order may exceed both the power and the competence of courts. Second, “[t]he measure of any desegregation plan is its effectiveness.” Davis v. School Comm‘rs of Mobile County, 402 U. S. 33, 37 (1971). A court must act decisively to remove purposeful segregation, but it also must avoid the danger of inciting resegregation by unduly disrupting the public schools.
A
The opinion of the Court of Appeals focuses almost entirely on the one-race schools remaining in the School District. This preoccupation apparently derives from the oft-repeated language in Green v. County School Board, 391 U. S. 430, 442 (1968), that desegregation must create “a system without a ‘white’ school [or] a ‘Negro’ school.” As I have noted before, this language was suitable to the small rural county before the Court in that case, where there were only two schools and 1,300 schoolchildren of both races scattered throughout the county. But it makes no sense to apply that statement to the Dallas Independent School District or any major metropolitan school district. In large cities, the principal cause of segregation in the schools is residential segregation, which results largely from demographic and economic conditions over which school authorities have no control. E. g., Pasadena City Bd. of Education v. Spangler, 427 U. S., at 435-437; see Keyes v. School Dist. No. 1, Denver, Colo., 413 U. S. 189, 222-223 (1973) (POWELL, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).12 In cases since Green, the Court has stated ex-
The important distinction is between “desegregated” schools and “integrated” schools. There can be no legitimate claim that “racial balance” in the public schools is constitutionally required. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U. S. 717, 740-741 (1974) (Milliken I). Rather, the Constitution mandates that no school system be structured to segregate the races. The proposition was stated fully in Swann:
“Our objective in dealing with the issues presented by these cases is to see that school authorities exclude no
pupil of a racial minority from any school, directly or indirectly, on account of race; it does not and cannot embrace all the problems of racial prejudice, even when those problems contribute to disproportionate racial concentrations in some schools.” 402 U. S., at 23.
The question in these cases, as in countless others, is how equitably to remedy unconstitutional state action or inaction. A desegregation decree “must be designed as nearly as possible ‘to restore the victims of discriminatory conduct to the position they would have occupied in the absence of such conduct.‘” Milliken II, 433 U. S., at 280, quoting Milliken I, supra, at 746. But the courts cannot pursue this goal responsibly without identifying those features of the current situation that can be attributed to the previous dual system.14
In this litigation, the District Court ordered the busing of 15,000 students in 1971, 342 F. Supp., at 956, while the current decree is likely to result in the transportation of some 20,000 students. See supra, at 442. On the record before us, we cannot determine whether the trial court made findings of constitutional violations that justified these and other reme-
B
Court orders to remedy constitutional deprivations in formerly segregated school systems must be drawn “in light of the circumstances present and the options available,” Green v. County School Board, 391 U. S., at 439, “taking into account the practicalities of the situation.” Davis v. School Comm‘rs of Mobile County, 402 U. S., at 37. Although this Court‘s guidance in desegregation cases necessarily has been general, its emphasis on effectiveness and practicalities reflects an appreciation that perfect solutions may be unattainable in the context of the demographic, geographic, and sociological complexities of modern urban communities. The imperfect nature of court action in school cases is evident in the phenomenon of self-defeating “remedies,” desegregation plans and continuing court oversight so unacceptable that many parents seek to avoid the reach of the court‘s decree. The impact of such remedies may be seen in higher enrollment in private schools, in further migration to the suburbs, or in refusals to move into the school district.
This Court has not considered seriously the relationship between the resegregation problem and desegregation decrees.
Surprisingly few courts, however, have understood this imperative. One exception is the decision on remand in Milliken I, 418 U. S. 717 (1974), where a desegregation plan that left many one-race schools was approved by the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The court explained that the available alternatives would have “accelerate[d] the trend toward rendering all or nearly all of Detroit‘s schools so identifiably black as to represent universal school segregation. . . .” Bradley v. Milliken, 540 F. 2d 229, 239 (1976), aff‘d, Milliken II, supra.16 In a case involving a school district in Ala-
The pursuit of racial balance at any cost-the unintended legacy of Green-is without constitutional or social justification. Out of zeal to remedy one evil, courts may encourage or set the stage for other evils. By acting against one-race schools, courts may produce one-race school systems. Parents with school-age children are highly motivated to seek access to schools perceived to afford quality education. A desegregation plan without community support, typically one with objectionable transportation requirements and continuing judicial oversight, accelerates the exodus to the suburbs of families able to move. The children of families remaining in the area affected by the court‘s decree are denied the opportunity to be part of an ethnically diverse student body. See Parents Assn.
The effects of resegregation can be even broader, reaching beyond the quality of education in the inner city to the life of the entire community. When the more economically advantaged citizens leave the city, the tax base shrinks and all city services suffer. And students whose parents elect to live beyond the reach of the court decree lose the benefits of attending ethnically diverse schools, an experience that prepares a child for citizenship in our pluralistic society.18
III
The District Court in this litigation was properly concerned over resegregation and community support for the Dallas schools.19 The facts before the court made that concern unavoidable. In the five years following the 1971 desegregation decree, the proportion of Anglo students in the Dallas public schools had dropped by almost half. That destabiliz-
| Year | Percentage of Anglo Students |
|---|---|
| 1971 | 69% |
| 1975 | 41.1% |
| 1979 | 33.5%20 |
In view of these far-reaching demographic changes, the futility of administering larger doses of a remedy that has failed is self-evident. In this situation, I can see no justification for reverting now to “time and distance studies” with the goal of attaining increased racial balance through additional busing.
A desegregation remedy that does not take account of the social and educational consequences of extensive student transportation can be neither fair nor effective. The District Court‘s plan is properly sensitive both to existing demographic realities and to the likely consequences of increased busing. The Court of Appeals seriously erred when it remanded this case with a mandate that seems certain to accelerate the destructive trend toward resegregation.
As this Court should not tolerate this error, even by silence that might give rise to an inference of approval, I dissent from the Court‘s failure to decide the case and reinstate the District Court‘s plan-a plan that does have promise for success.