Supreme Court of the United States

William G. Milliken, Governor of Michigan, et al., Petitioners,
v.
Ronald Bradley and Richard Bradley, by their mother and next friend, VerdaBradley, et al.

Allen Park Public Schools et al., Petitioners,
v.
Ronald Bradley and Richard Bradley, by their mother and next friend, Verda Bradley, et al.

The Grosse Pointe Public School System, Petitioner,
v.
Ronald Bradley and Richard Bradley, by their mother and next friend, VerdaBradley, et al.

Nos. 73--434, 73--435 and 73--436.
Argued Feb. 27, 1974.
Decided July 25, 1974.

418 U.S. 717, 94 S.Ct. 3112, 41 L.Ed.2d 1069

Frank J. Kelley, Lansing, Mich., for petitioners William G. Milliken et al.
William M. Saxton, Detroit, Mich., for petitioners Allen Park Public Schools and Grosse Pointe Public School System et al.
*721 Solicitor Gen. Robert H. Bork for the United States, as amicus curiae, by special leave of Court.
J. Harold Flannery, Cambridge, Mass., and Nathaniel R. Jones, New York City, for respondents.

Mr. Chief Justice Burger delivered the opinion of the Court.

We granted certiorari in these consolidated cases to determine 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 within their districts, absent any claim or finding that the boundary lines of any affected school district were established with the purpose of fostering racial segregation in public schools, absent any finding that the included districts committed acts which effected segregation within the other districts, and absent a *722 meaningful opportunity for the included neighboring school districts to present evidence or be heard on the propriety of a multidistrict remedy or on the question of constitutional violations by those neighboring districts. [FN1]FN1. 484 F.2d 215 (CA6), cert. granted, 414 U.S. 1038, 94 S.Ct. 538, 38 L.Ed.2d 329 (1973). I

The action was commenced in August 1970 by the respondents, the Detroit Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [FN2] and individual parents and students, on behalf of a class later defined by order of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, dated February 16, 1971, to included 'all school children in the City of Detroit, Michigan, and all Detroit resident parents who have children of school age.' The named defendants in the District Court 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, the city's and its former superintendent of schools. The State of Michigan as such is not a party to this litigation and references to the State must be read as references to the public officials, state and local, through whom the State is alleged to have acted. In their complaint respondents attacked the constitutionality of a statute of the State of Michigan known as Act 48 of the 1970 Legislature on the ground that it put the State of Michigan in the position of unconstitutionally interfering with the execution and operation of a voluntary plan of partial high school desegregation, known as the April 7, 1970, Plan, which had been adopted by the Detroit Board of Education to be effective beginning *723 with the fall 1970 semester. The complaint also alleged that the Detroit Public School System was and is segregated on the basis of race as a result of the official policies and actions of the defendants and their predecessors in office, and called for the implementation of a plan that would eliminate 'the racial identity of every school in the (Detroit) system and . . . maintain now and hereafter a unitary, nonracial school system.'

FN2. The standing of the NAACP as a proper party plaintiff was not contested in the trial court and is not an issue in this case.

Initially the matter was tried on respondents' motion for a preliminary injunction to restrain in enforcement of Act 48 so as to permit the April 7 Plan to be implemented. On that issue, the **3117 District Court ruled that respondents were not entitled to a preliminary injunction since at that stage there was no proof that Detroit had a dual segregated school system. On appeal, the Court of Appeals found that the 'implementation of the April 7 plan was (unconstitutionally) thwarted by State action in the form of the Act of the Legislature of Michigan,' 433 F.2d 897, 902 (CA6 1970), and that such action could not be interposed to delay, obstruct, or nullify steps lawfully taken for the purpose of protecting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The case was remanded to the District Court for an expedited trial on the merits.

On remand, the respondents moved for immediate implementation of the April 7 Plan in order to remedy the deprivation of the claimed constitutional rights. In response, the School Board suggested two other plans, along with the April 7 Plan, and urged that top priority be assigned to the so-called 'Magnet Plan' which was 'designed to attract children to a school because of its superior curriculum.' The District Court approved the Board's Magnet Plan, and respondents again appealed to the Court of Appeals, moving for summary reversal. The Court of Appeals refused to pass on the merits of the Magnet Plan and ruled that the District Court had *724 not abused its discretion in refusing to adopt the April 7 Plan without an evidentiary hearing. The case was again remanded with instructions to proceed immediately to a trial on the merits of respondents' substantive allegations concerning the Detroit school system. 438 F.2d 945 (CA6 1971).

The trial of the issue of segregation in the Detroit school system began on April 6, 1971, and continued through July 22, 1971, consuming some 41 trial days. On September 27, 1971, the District Court issued its findings and conclusions on the issue of segregation, finding that 'Governmental actions and inaction at all levels, federal, state and local, have combined, with those of private organizations, such as loaning institutions and real estate associations and brokerage firms, to establish and to maintain the pattern of residential segregation throughout the Detroit metropolitan area.' 338 F.Supp. 582, 587 (ED Mich.1971). While still addressing a Detroit-only violation, the District Court reasoned:

'While it would be unfair to charge the present defendants with what other governmental officers or agencies have done, it can be said that the actions or the failure to act by the responsible school authorities, both city and state, were linked to that of these other governmental units. When we speak of governmental action we should not view the different agencies as a collection of unrelated units. Perhaps the most that can be said is that all of them, including the school authorities, are, in part, responsible for the segregated condition which exists. And we note that just as there is an interaction between residential patterns and the racial composition of the schools, so there is a corresponding effect on the residential pattern by the racial composition of the schools.' Ibid.

*725 The District Court found that the Detroit Board of Education created and maintained optional attendance zones [FN3] within Detroit neighborhoods undergoing racial transition and between high school attendance areas of opposite predominant racial compositions. These zones, the court found, had the 'natural, probable, foreseeable and actual effect' of allowing white pupils to escape identifiably Negro schools. Ibid. Similarly, the District Court found that Detroit school attendance zones had been drawn along north-south boundary lines despite the Detroit Board's awareness that **3118 drawing boundary lines in an east-west direction would result in significantly greater desegregation. Again, the District Court concluded, the natural and actual effect of these acts was the creation and perpetuation of school segregation within Detroit.

FN3. Optional zones, sometimes referred to as dual zones or dual overlapping zones, provide pupils living within certain areas a choice of attendance at one of two high schools.

The District Court found that in the operation of its school transportation program, which was designed to relieve overcrowding, the Detroit Board had admittedly bused Negro Detroit pupils to predominantly Negro schools which were beyond or away from closer white schools with available space. [FN4] This practice was found to have continued in recent years despite the Detroit Board's avowed policy, adopted in 1967, of utilizing transportation to increase desegregation:

'With one exception (necessitatedby the burning of a white school), defendant Board has never bused *726 white children to predominantly black schools. The Board has not bused white pupils to black schools despite the enormous amount of space available in inner-city schools. There were 22,961 vacant seats in schools 90% or more black.' Id., at 588.

FN4. The Court of Appeals found record evidence that in at least one instance during the period 1957--1958, Detroit served a suburban school district by contracting with it to educate its Negro high school students by transporting them away from nearby suburban white high schools, and past Detroit high schools which were predominantly white, to all-Negro or predominantly Negro Detroit schools. 484 F.2d, at 231.

With respect to the Detroit Board of Education's practices in school construction, the District Court found that Detroit school construction generally tended to have a segregative effect with the great majority of schools being built in either overwhelmingly all-Negro or all-white neighborhoods so that the new schools opened as predominantly one-race schools. Thus, of the 14 schools which opened for use in 1970--1971, 11 opened over 90% Negro and one opened less than 10% Negro.

The District Court also found that the State of Michigan had committed several constitutional violations with respect to the exercise of its general responsibility for, and supervision of, public education. [FN5] The State, for example, was found to have failed, until the 1971 Session of the Michigan Legislature, to provide authorization or *727 funds for the transportation of pupils within Detroit regardless of their poverty or distance from the school to which they were assigned; during this same period the State provided many neighboring, mostly white, suburban districts the full range of state- supported transportation.

FN5. School districts in the State of Michigan are instrumentalities of the State and subordinate to its State Board of Education and legislature. The Constitution of the State of Michigan, Art. 8, § 2, provides in relevant part:

'The legislature shall maintain and support a system of free public elementary and secondary schools as defined by law.'

Similarly, the Michigan Supreme Court has stated: 'The school district is a State agency. Moreover, it is of legislative creation. . . .' Attorney General ex rel. Kies v. Lowrey, 131 Mich. 639, 644, 92 N.W. 289, 290 (1902): "Education in Michigan belongs to the State. It is no part of the local self-government inherent in the township or municipality, except so far as the Legislature may choose to make it such. The Constitution has turned the whole subject over to the Legislature. . . ." Attorney General ex rel. Zacharias v. Detroit Board of Education, 154 Mich. 584, 590, 118 N.W. 606, 609 (1908).

The District Court found that the State, through Act 48, acted to 'impede, delay and minimize racial integration in Detroit schools.' The first sentence of s 12 of Act 48 was designed to delay the April 7, 1970, desegregation plan originally adopted by the Detroit Board. The remainder of s 12 sought to prescribe for each school in the eight districts criteria of 'free choice' and 'neighborhood schools,' which, the District Court found, 'had as their purpose **3119 and effect the maintenance of segregation.' 338 F.Supp., at 589. [FN6]

FN6. 'Sec. 12. The implementation of any attendance provisions for the 1970--71 school year determined by any first class school district board shall be delayed pending the date of commencement of functions by the first class school district boards established under the provisions of this amendatory act but such provision shall not impair the right of any such board to determine and implement prior to such date such changes in attendance provisions as are mandated by practical necessity. . . .' Act No. 48, § 12, Mich. Pub. Acts of 1970; Mich. Comp. Laws § 388.182 (1970).

The District Court also held that the acts of the Detroit Board of Education, as a subordinate entity of the State, were attributable to the State of Michigan, thus creating a vicarious liability on the part of the State. Under Michigan law, Mich. Comp. Laws § 388.851 (1970), for example, school building construction plans had to be approved by the State Board of Education, and, prior to 1962, the State Board had specific statutory authority to supervise school-site selection. The proofs concerning the effect of Detroit's school construction program were, *728 therefore, found to be largely applicable to show state responsibility for the segregative results. [FN7]

FN7. The District Court briefly alluded to the possibility that the State, along with private persons, had caused, in part, the housing patterns of the Detroit metropolitan area which, in turn, produced the predominantly white and predominantly Negro neighborhoods that characterize Detroit:

'It is no answer to say that restricted practices grew gradually (as the black population in the area increased between 1920 and 1970), or that since 1948 racial restrictions on the ownership of real property have been removed. The policies pursued by both government and private persons and agencies have a continuing and present effect upon the complexion of the community--as we know, the choice of a residence is a relatively infrequent affair. For many years FHA and VA openly advised and advocated the maintenance of 'harmonious' neighborhoods, i.e., racially and economically harmonious. The conditions created continue.' 338 F.Supp. 582, 587 (ED Mich.1971).

Thus, the District Court concluded:

'The affirmative obligation of the defendant Board has been and is to adopt and implement pupil assignment practices and policies that compensate for and avoid incorporation into the school system the effects of residential racial segregation.' Id., at 593.

The Court of Appeals, however, expressly noted that:

'In affirming the District Judge's findings of constitutional violations by the Detroit Board of Education and by the State defendants resulting in segregated schools in Detroit, we have not relied at all upon testimony pertaining to segregated housing except as school construction programs helped cause or maintain such segregation.' 484 F.2d., at 242.

Accordingly, in its present posture, the case does not present any question concerning possible state housing violations.

Turning to the question of an appropriate remedy for these several constitutional violations, the District Court deferred a pending motion [FN8] by intervening parent defendants *729 to join as additional parties defendant the 85 outlying school districts in the three-county Detroit metropolitan area on the ground that effective relief could not be achieved without their presence. [FN9] The District Court concluded that this motion to join was 'premature,' since it 'has to do with relief' and no reasonably specific desegregation plan was before the court. 338 F.Supp., at 595. Accordingly, the District Court proceeded to order the Detroit Board of Education to submit desegregation plans limited to the segregation problems found to be existing within the city of **3120 Detroit. At the same time, however, the state defendants were directed to submit desegregation plans encompassing the three-county metropolitan area [FN10] despite the fact that the 85 outlying school *730 districts of these three counties were not parties to the action and despite the fact that there had been no claim that these outlying districts had committed constitutional violations. [FN11] An effort to appeal these orders to the Court of Appeals was dismissed on the ground that the orders were not appealable. 468 F.2d 902 (CA6), cert. denied, 409 U.S. 844, 93 S.Ct. 45, 34 L.Ed.2d 83 (1972). The sequence of the ensuing actions and orders of the District Court are significant factors and will therefore be catalogued in some detail.

FN8. On March 22, 1971, a group of Detroit residents, who were parents of children enrolled in the Detroit public schools, were permitted to intervene as parties defendant. On June 24, 1971, the District Judge alluded to the 'possibility' of a metropolitan school system stating: '(A)s I have said to several witnesses in this case: 'How do you desegrate a black city, or a black school system.'' Petitioners' Appendix 243a (hereinafter Pat.App.). Subsequently, on July 16, 1971, various parents filed a motion to require joinder of all of the 85 outlying independent school districts within the tri-county area.

FN9. The respondents, as plaintiffs below, opposed the motion to join the additional school districts, arguing that the presence of the state defendants was sufficient and all that was required, even if, in shaping a remedy, the affairs of these other districts was to be affected. 338 F.Supp. at 595.

FN10. At the time of the 1970 census, the population of Michigan was 8,875,083, almost half of which, 4,199,931, resided in the tri-county area of Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb. Oakland and Macomb Counties abut Wayne County to the north, and Oakland County abuts Macomb County to the west. These counties cover 1,952 square miles, Michigan Statistical Abstract (9th ed. 1972), and the area is approximately the size of the State of Delaware (2,057 square miles), more than half again the size of the State of Rhode Island (1,214 square miles) and almost 30 times the size of the District of Columbia (67 square miles). Statistical Abstract of the United States (93d ed. 1972). The populations of Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb Counties were 2,666,751; 907,871; and 625,309, respectively, in 1970. Detroit, the State's largest city, is located in Wayne County.

In the 1970--1971 school year, there were 2,157,449 children enrolled in school districts in Michigan. There are 86 independent, legally distinct school districts within the tri-county area, having a total enrollment of approximately 1,000,000 children. In 1970, the Detroit Board of Education operated 319 schools with approximately 276,000 students.

FN11. In its formal opinion, subsequently announced, the District Court candidly recognized:

'It should be noted that the court has taken no proofs with respect to the establishment of the boundaries of the 86 public school districts in the counties of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb, 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.' 345 F.Supp. 914, 920 (ED Mich.1972).

Following the District Court's abrupt announcement that it planned to consider the implementation of a multidistrict, metropolitan area remedy to the segregation problems identified within the city of Detroit, the District Court was again requested to grant the outlying school districts intervention as of right on the ground that the District Court's new request for multidistrict plans 'may, as a practical matter, impair or impede (the intervenors') ability to protect' the welfare of their students. The District Court took the motions to intervene under advisement pending submission of the requested desegregation plans by Detroit and the state officials. On March 7, 1972, the District Court notified all parties and the petitioner school districts seeking intervention, that March 14, 1972, was the deadline for submission of recommendations for conditions of intervention and the *731 date of the commencement of hearings on Detroit-only desegregation plans. On the second day of the scheduled hearings, March 15, 1972, the District Court granted the motions of the intervenor school districts [FN12] subject, inter alia, to the following conditions:

'1. No intervenor will be permitted to assert any claim or defense previously adjudicated by the court.

'2. No intervenor shall reopen any question or issue which has previously been decided by the court.

'7. New intervenors are granted intervention for two principal purposes: (a) To advise the court, by brief, of the legal propriety or impropriety of considering a metropolitan plan; (b) To review any plan or plans for the desegregation of the so-called larger Detroit Metropolitan area, and submitting objections, modifications **3121 or alternatives to it or them, and in accordance with the requirements of the United States Constitution and the prior orders of this court.' 1 Joint Appendix 206 (hereinafter App.).

FN12. According to the District Court, intervention was permitted under Fed.Rule Civ.Proc. 24(a), 'Intervention of Right,' and also under Rule 24(b), 'Permissive Intervention.'

Upon granting the motion to intervene, on March 15, 1972, the District Court advised the petitioning intervenors that the court had previously set March 22, 1972, as the date for the filing of briefs on the legal propriety of a 'metropolitan' plan of desegregation and, accordingly, that the intervening school districts would have one week to muster their legal arguments on the issue. [FN13] *732 Thereafter, and following the completion of hearings on the Detroit-only desegregation plans, the District Court issued the four rulings that were the principal issues in the Court of Appeals.

FN13. This rather abbreviated briefing schedule was maintained despite the fact that the District Court had deferred consideration of a motion made eight months earlier, to bring the suburban districts into the case. See text accompanying n. 8 supra.

(a) On March 24, 1972, two days after the intervenors' briefs were due, the District Court issued its ruling on the question of whether it could 'consider relief in the form of a metropolitan plan, encompassing not only the City of Detroit, but the larger Detroit metropolitan area.' It rejected the state defendants' arguments that no state action caused the segregation of the Detroit schools, and the intervening suburban districts' contention that interdistrict relief was inappropriate unless the suburban districts themselves had committed violations. The court concluded:

'(I)t is proper for the court to consider metropolitan plans directed toward the desegregation of the Detroit public schools as an alternative to the present intra-city desegregation plans before it and, in the event that the court finds such intra-city plans inadequate to desegregate such schools, the court is of the opinion that it is required to consider a metropolitan remedy for desegregation.' Pet.App. 51a.

(b) On March 28, 1972, the District Court issued its findings and conclusions on the three Detroit-only plans submitted by the city Board and the respondents. It found that the best of the three plans 'would make the Detroit school system more identifiably Black . . . thereby increasing the flight of Whites from the city and the system.' Id., at 55a. From this the court concluded that the plan 'would not accomplish desegregation . . . within the corporate geographical limits of the city.' Id., at 56a. Accordingly, the District Court held that it 'must look beyond the limits of the Detroit school *733 district for a solution to the problem,' and that '(s)chool district lines are simply matters of political convenience and may not be used to deny constitutional rights.' Id., at 57a.

(c) During the period from March 28 to April 14, 1972, the District Court conducted hearings on a metropolitan plan. Counsel for the petitioning intervenors was allowed to participate in these hearings, but he was ordered to confine his argument to 'the size and expanse of the metropolitan plan' without addressing the intervenors' opposition to such a remedy or the claim that a finding of a constitutional violation by the intervenor districts was an essential predicate to any remedy involving them. Thereafter, on June 14, 1972, the District Court issued its ruling on the 'desegregation area' and related findings and conclusions. The court acknowledged at the outset 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 districts, such school districts have committed acts of de jure segregation.' Nevertheless, the court designated 53 of the 85 suburban school districts plus Detroit as the 'desegregation area' and appointed a panel to prepare and submit **3122 'an effective desegregation plan' for the Detroit schools that would encompass the entire desegregation area. [FN14] The plan was to be based on 15 clusters, each containing part of the Detroit system and two or more suburban districts, *734 and was to 'achieve the greatest degree of actual desegregation to the end that, upon implementation, no school, grade or classroom (would be) substantially disproportionate to the overall pupil racial composition.' 345 F.Supp. 914, 918 (ED Mich.1972).

FN14. As of 1970, the 53 school districts outside the city of Detroit that were included in the court's 'desegration area' had a combined student population of approximately 503,000 students compared to Detroit's approximately 276,000 students. Nevertheless, the District Court directed that the intervening districts should be represented by only one member on the desegregation panel while the Detroit Board of Education was granted three panel members. 345 F.Supp., at 917.

(d) On July 11, 1972, and in accordance with a recommendation by the court- appointed desegregation panel, the District Court ordered the Detroit Board of Education to purchase or lease 'at least' 295 school buses for the purpose of providing transportation under an interim plan to be developed for the 1972-- 1973 school year. The costs of this acquisition were to be borne by the state defendants. Pet.App. 106a--107a.

On June 12, 1973, a divided Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded for further proceedings. 484 F.2d 215 (CA6). [FN15] The Court of Appeals held, first, that the record supported the District Court's findings and conclusions on the constitutional violations committed by the Detroit Board, id., at 221--238, and by the state defendants, id., at 239--241. [FN16] It stated that the acts of racial discrimination *735 shown in the record are 'causally related to the substantial amount of segregation found in the Detroit school system,' id., at 241, and that 'the District Court was therefore authorized and required to take effective measures to desegregate the Detroit Public School System.' Id., at 242.

FN15. The District Court had certified most of the foregoing rulings for interlocutory review pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b) (1 App. 265--266) and the case was initially decided on the merits by a panel of three judges. However, the panel's opinion and judgment were vacated when it was determined to rehear the case en banc, 484 F.2d, at 218.

FN16. With respect to the State's violations, the Court of Appeals held: (1) that, since the city Board is an instrumentality of the State and subordinate to the State Board, the segregative actions of the Detroit Board 'are the actions of an agency of the State,' id., at 238; (2) that the state legislation rescinding Detroit's voluntary desegregation plan contributed to increasing segregation in the Detroit schools, ibid.; (3) that under state law prior to 1962 the State Board had authority over school construction plans and therefore had to be held responsible 'for the segregative results,' ibid.; (4) that the 'State statutory scheme of support of transportation for school children directly discriminated against Detroit;' id., at 240, by not providing transportation funds to Detroit on the same basis as funds were provided to surburban districts, id., at 238; and (5) that the transportation of Negro students from one suburban district to a Negro school in Detroit must have had the 'approval, tacit or express, of the State Board of Education,' ibid.

The Court of Appeals also agreed with the District Court that 'any less comprehensive a solution than a metropolitan area plan would result in an all black school system immediately surrounded by practically all white suburban school systems, with an overwhelmingly white majority population in the total metropolitan area.' Id., at 245. The court went on to state that it could '(not) see how such segregation can be any less harmful to the minority students than if the same result were accomplished within one school district.' Ibid.

Accordingly, the Court of Appeals concluded that 'the only feasible desegregation plan involves the crossing of the boundary lines between the Detroit School District and adjacent or nearby school districts for the limited purpose of providing an effective desegregation **3123 plan.' Id., It reasoned that such a plan would be appropriate because of the State's violations, and could be implemented because of the State's authority to control local school districts. Without further elaboration, and without any discussion of the claims that no constitutional violation by the outlying districts had been *736 shown and that no evidence on that point had been allowed, the Court of Appeals held:
'(T)he State has committed de jure acts of segregation and . . . the State controls the instrumentalities whose action is necessary to remedy the harmful effects of the State acts.' Ibid.

An interdistrict remedy was thus held to be 'within the equity powers of the District Court.' Id., at 250. [FN17]

FN17. The court sought to distinguish Bradley v. School Board of the City of Richmond, 462 F.2d 1058 (CA4 1972), aff'd by an equally divided Court, 412 U.S. 92, 93 S.Ct. 1952, 36 L.Ed.2d 771 (1973), on the grounds that the District Court in that case had ordered an actual consolidation of three school districts and that Virginia's Constitution and statutes, unlike Michigan's gave the local boards exclusive power to operate the public schools. 484 F.2d, at 251.

The Court of Appeals expressed no views on the propriety of the District Court's composition of the metropolitan 'desegregation area.' It held that all suburban school districts that might be affected by any metropolitanwide remedy should, under Fed.Rule Civ.Proc. 19, be made parties to the case on remand and be given an opportunity to be heard with respect to the scope and implementation of such a remedy. 484 F.2d, at 251--252. Under the terms of the remand, however, the District Court was not 'required' to receive further evidence on the issue of segregation in the Detroit schools or on the propriety of a Detroit-only remedy, or on the question of whether the affected districts had committed any violation of the constitutional rights of Detroit pupils or others. Id., at 252. Finally, the Court of Appeals vacated the District Court's order directing the acquisition of school buses, subject to the right of the District Court to consider reimposing the order 'at the appropriate time.' Ibid.
*737

II

Ever since Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954), judicial consideration of school desegregation cases has begun with the standard:

'(I)n the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.' Id., at 495, 74 S.Ct., at 692.

This has been reaffirmed time and again as the meaning of the Constitution and the controlling rule of law.

The target of the Brown holding was clear and forthright: the elimination of state-mandated or deliberately maintained dual school systems with certain schools for Negro pupils and others for white pupils. This duality and racial segregation were held to violate the Constitution in the cases subsequent to 1954, including particularly Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968); Raney v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 443, 88 S.Ct. 1697, 20 L.Ed.2d 727 (1968); Monroe v. Board of Comm'rs, 391 U.S. 450, 88 S.Ct. 1700, 20 L.Ed.2d 733 (1968); Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554 (1971); Wright v. Council of the City of Emporia, 407 U.S. 451, 92 S.Ct. 2196, 33 L.Ed.2d 51 (1972); United States v. Scotland Neck City Board of Education, 407 U.S. 484, 92 S.Ct. 2214, 33 L.Ed.2d 75 (1972).

The Swann case, of course, dealt

'with the problem of defining in more precise terms than heretofore the scope of the duty of school authorities and district courts in implementing Brown I and the mandate to eliminate dual systems and establish unitary **3124 systems at once.' 402 U.S., at 6, 91 S.Ct., at 1271.

In Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294, 75 S.Ct. 753, 99 L.Ed. 1083 (1955) (Brown II), the Court's first encounter with the problem of remedies in school desegregation cases, the Court noted:

'In fashioning and effectuating the decrees, the courts will be guided by equitable principles. Traditionally, *738 equity has been characterized by a practical flexibility in shaping its remedies and by a facility for adjusting and reconciling public and private needs.' Id., at 300, 75 S.Ct., at 756 (footnote omitted).

In further refining the remedial process, Swann held, the task is to correct, by a balancing of the individual and collective interests, 'the condition that offends the Constitution.' A federal remedial power may be exercised 'only on the basis of a constitutional violation' and, '(a)s with any equity case, the nature of the violation determines the scope of the remedy.' 402 U.S., at 16, 91 S.Ct., at 1276.

Proceeding from these basic principles, we first note that in the District Court the complainants sought a remedy aimed at the condition alleged to offend the Constitution--the segregation within the Detroit City School District. [FN18] The court acted on this theory of the case and in its initial ruling on the 'Desegregation Area' stated:

'The task before this court, therefore, is now, and . . . has always been, now to desegregate the Detroit public schools.' 345 F.Supp., at 921.

FN18. Although the list of issues presented for review in petitioners' briefs and petitions for writs of certiorari do not include arguments on the findings of segregative violations on the part of the Detroit defendants, two of the petitioners argue in brief that these findings constitute error. This Court's Rules 23(1)(c) and 40(1)(d)(2), at a minimum limit our review to the Detroit violation findings to 'plain error,' and, under our decision last Term in Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver, Colorado, 413 U.S. 189, 93 S.Ct. 2686, 37 L.Ed.2d 548 1973), the findings appear to be correct.

Thereafter, however, the District Court abruptly rejected the proposed Detroit-only plans on the ground that 'while (they) would provide a racial mix more in keeping with the Black-White proportions of the student population (they) would accentuate the racial identifiability of the *739 (Detroit) district as a Black school system, and would not accomplish desegregation.' Pet.App., 56a. '(T)he racial composition of the student body is such,' said the court, 'that the plan's implementation would clearly make the entire Detroit public school system racially identifiable' (Id., at 54a), 'leav(ing) many of its schools 75 to 90 per cent Black.' Id., at 55a. Consequently, the court reasoned, it was imperative to 'look beyond the limits of the Detroit school district for a solution to the problem of segregation in the Detroit public schools . . .' since '(s)chool district lines are simply matters of political convenience and may not be used to deny constitutional rights.' Id., at 57a. Accordingly, the District Court proceeded to redefine the relevant area to include areas of predominantly white pupil population in order to ensure that 'upon implementation, no school, grade or classroom (would be) substantially disproportionate to the overall pupil racial composition' of the entire metropolitan area.

While specifically acknowledging that the District Court's findings of a condition of segregation were limited to Detroit, the Court of Appeals approved the use of a metropolitan remedy largely on the grounds that it is
'impossible to declare 'clearly erroneous' the District Judge's conclusion that any Detroit only segregation plan will lead directly to a single segregated Detroit school district overwhelmingly black in all of its schools, surrounded by a ring of suburbs and suburban school districts overwhelmingly **3125 white in composition in a State in which the racial composition is 87 per cent white and 13 per cent black.' 484 F.2d, at 249.

Viewing the record as a whole, it seems clear that the District Court and the Court of Appeals shifted the primary *740 focus from a Detroit remedy to the metropolitan area only because of their conclusion that total desegregation of Detroit would not produce the racial balance which they perceived as desirable. Both courts proceeded on an assumption that the Detroit schools could not be truly desegregated--in their view of what constituted desegregation--unless the racial composition of the student body of each school substantially reflected the racial composition of the population of the metropolitan area as a whole. The metropolitan area was then defined as Detroit plus 53 of the outlying school districts. That this was the approach the District Court expressly and frankly employed is shown by the order which expressed the court's view of the constitutional standard:

'Within the limitations of reasonable travel time and distance factors, pupil reassignments shall be effected within the clusters described in Exhibit P.M. 12 so as to achieve the greatest degree of actual desegregation to the end that, upon implementation, no school, grade or classroom (will be) substantially disproportionate to the overall pupil racial composition.' 345 F.Supp., st 918 (emphasis added).

In Swann, which arose in the context of a single independent school district, the Court held:

'If we were to read the holding of the District Court to require, as a matter of substantive constitutional right, any particular degree of racial balance or mixing, that approach would be disapproved and we would be obliged to reverse.' 402 U.S., at 24, 91 S.Ct., at 1280.

The clear import of this language from Swann is that desegregation, in the sense of dismantling a dual school system, does not require any particular racial balance in *741 each 'school, grade or classroom.' [FN19] See Spencer v. Kugler, 404 U.S. 1027, 92 S.Ct. 707, 30 L.Ed.2d 723 (1972).

FN19. Disparity in the racial composition of pupils within a single district may well constitute a 'signal' to a district court at the outset, leading to inquiry into the causes accounting for a pronounced racial identifiability of schools within one school system. In Swann, for example, we were dealing with a large but single independent school system, . . . and a unanimous Court noted: 'Where the school authority's proposed plan for conversion from a dual to a unitary system contemplates the continued existence of some schools that are all or predominantly of one race (the school authority has) the burden of showing that such school assignments are genuinely nondiscriminatory.' 402 U.S., at 26, 91 S.Ct., at 1281. See also Keyes, supra, at 208, 93 S.Ct., at 2697. However, the use of significant racial imbalance in schools within an autonomous school district as a signal which operates simply to shift the burden of proof, is a very different matter from equating racial imbalance with a constitutional violation calling for a remedy. Keyes, supra, also involved a remedial order within a single autonomous school district.

Here the District Court's approach to what constituted 'actual desegregation' raises the fundamental question, not presented in Swann, as to the circumstances in which a federal court may order desegregation relief that embraces more than a single school district. The court's analytical starting point was its conclusion that school district lines are no more than arbitrary lines on a map drawn 'for political convenience.' Boundary lines may be bridged where there has been a constitutional violation calling for interdistrict relief, but the nation that school district lines may be casually ignored or treated as a mere administrative convenience is contrary to the history of public education in our country. No single tradition in public education is more deeply rooted than local control over the operation of schools; local autonomy has long been thought essential both to the maintenance of community concern and support for public schools and to *742 quality of the **3126 educational process. See Wright v. Council of the City of Emporia, 407 U.S., at 469, 92 S.Ct., at 2206. Thus, in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 50, 93 S.Ct. 1278, 1305, 36 L.Ed.2d 16 (1973), we observed that local control over the educational process affords citizens an opportunity to participate in decision-making, permits the structuring of school programs to fit local needs, and encourages 'experimentation, innovation, and a healthy competition for educational excellence.'

The Michigan educational structure involved in this case, in common with most States, provides for a large measure of local control, [FN20] and a review of the scope and character of these local powers indicates the extent to which the interdistrict remedy approved by the two courts could disrupt and alter the structure of public education *743 in Michigan. 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. See n. 10, supra. 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. Some of the more obvious questions would be: What would be the status and authority of the present popularly elected school boards? Would the children of Detroit be within the jurisdiction and operating control of a school board elected by the parents and residents of other districts? What board or boards would levy taxes for school operations in these 54 districts constituting the consolidated metropolitan area? What provisions could be made for assuring substantial equality in tax levies among the 54 districts, if this were deemed requisite? What provisions would be made for financing? Would the validity of long-term bonds be jeopardized unless approved by all of the component districts as well as the State? What body would determine that portion of the curricula now left to the discretion of local school boards? Who would establish attendance zones, purchase school equipment, locate and construct new schools, and indeed attend to all the myriad day-to-day decisions that are necessary to school operations affecting potentially more than three-quarters of a million pupils? See n. 10, supra.

FN20. Under the Michigan School Code of 1955, the local school district is an autonomous political body corporate, operating through a Board of Education popularly elected. Mich.Comp.Laws §§ 340.27, 340.55, 340.107, 340.148, 340.149, 340.188. As such, the day-to-day affairs of the school district are determined at the local level in accordance with the plenary power to acquire real and personal property, §§ 340.26, 340.77, 340.113, 340.165, 340.192, 340.352; to hire and contract with personnel, §§ 340.569, 340.574; to levy taxes for operations, s 340.563; to borrow against receipts, § 340.567; to determine the length of school terms, s 340.575; to control the admission of nonresident students, § 340.582; to determine courses of study, s 340.583; to provide a kindergarten program, s 340.584; to establish and operate vocational schools, s 340.585; to offer adult education programs, s 340.586; to establish attendance areas, § 340.589; to arrange for transportation of nonresident students, § 340.591; to acquire transportation equipment, § 340.594; to receive gifts and bequests for educational purposes, § 340.605; to employ an attorney, § 340.609; to suspend or expel students, § 340.613; to make rules and regulations for the operation of schools, § 340.614; to cause to be levied authorized millage, § 340.643a; to acquire property by eminent domain, § 340.711 et seq.; and to approve and select textbooks, § 340.882. It may be suggested that all of these vital operational problems are yet to be resolved by the District Court, and that this is the purpose of the Court of Appeals' proposed remand. But it is obvious from the scope of the interdistrict remedy itself that absent a complete restructuring of the laws of Michigan relating to school districts the District Court will become first, a de facto *744 'legislative authority' to resolve these complex**3127 questions, and then the 'school superintendent' for the entire area. This is a task which few, if any, judges are qualified to perform and one which would deprive the people of control of schools through their elected representatives.

Of course, no state law is above the Constitution. School district lines and the present laws with respect to local control, are not sacrosanct and if they conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment federal courts have a duty to prescribe appropriate remedies. See, e.g., Wright v. Council of the City of Emporia, 407 U.S. 451, 92 S.Ct. 2196, 33 L.Ed.2d 51 (1972); United States v. Scotland Neck City Board of Education, 407 U.S. 484, 92 S.Ct. 2214, 33 L.Ed.2d 75 (1972) (state or local officials prevented from carving out a new school district from an existing district that was in process of dismantling a dual school system); cf. Haney v. County Board of Education of Sevier County, 429 F.2d 364 (CA8 1970) (State contributed to separation of races by drawing of school district lines); United States v. Texas, 321 F.Supp. 1043 (ED Tex.1970), aff'd, 447 F.2d 441 (CA5 1971), cert. denied sub nom. Edgar v. United States, 404 U.S. 1016, 92 S.Ct. 675, 30 L.Ed.2d 663 (1972) (one or more school districts created and maintained for one race). But our prior holdings have been confined to violations and remedies within a single school district. We therefore turn to address, for the first time, the validity of a remedy mandating cross-district or interdistrict consolidation to remedy a condition of segregation found to exist in only one district.

The controlling principle consistently expounded in our holdings is that the scope of the remedy is determined by the nature and extent of the constitutional violation. Swann, 402 U.S., at 16, 91 S.Ct., at 1276. Before the boundaries of separate and autonomous school districts may be set aside by consolidating the separate units for remedial purposes or by imposing a cross- district remedy, it must *745 first be shown that there has been a constitutional violation within one district that produces a significant segregative effect in another district. Specifically, it must be shown that racially discriminatory acts of the state or local school districts, or of a single school district have been a substantial cause of interdistrict segregation. Thus an interdistrict remedy might be in order where the racially discriminatory acts of one or more school districts caused racial segregation in an adjacent district, or where district lines have been deliberately drawn on the basis of race. In such circumstances an interdistrict remedy would be appropriate to eliminate the interdistrict segregation directly caused by the constitutional violation. Conversely, without an interdistrict violation and interdistrict effect, there is no constitutional wrong calling for an interdistrict remedy.

The record before us, voluminous as it is, contains evidence of de jure segregated conditions only in the Detroit schools; indeed, that was the theory on which the litigation was initially based and on which the District Court took evidence. See supra at 3117--3118. With no showing of significant violation by the 53 outlying school districts and no evidence of any interdistrict violation or effect, the court went beyond the original theory of the case as framed by the pleadings and mandated a metropolitan area remedy. To approve the remedy ordered by the court would impose on the outlying districts, not shown to have committed any constitutional violation, a wholly impermissible remedy based on a standard not hinted at in Brown I and II or any holding of this Court.

In dissent, Mr. Justice White and Mr. Justice Marshall undertake to demonstrate that agencies having statewide authority participated in maintaining the dual school system found to exist **3128 in Detroit. They are apparently of the view that once such participation is *746 shown, the District Court should have a relatively free hand to reconstruct school districts outside of Detroit in fashioning relief. Our assumption, arguendo, see infra, p. 3129, that state agencies did participate in the maintenance of the Detroit system, should make it clear that it is not on this point that we part company. [FN21] The difference between us arises instead from established doctrine laid down by our cases. Brown, supra; Green, supra; Swann, supra; Scotland Neck, supra; and Emporia, supra, each addressed the issue of constitutional wrong in terms of an established geographic and administrative school system populated by both Negro and white children. In such a context, terms such as 'unitary' and 'dual' systems, and 'racially identifiable schools,' have meaning, and the necessary federal authority to remedy the constitutional wrong is firmly established. But the remedy is necessarily designed, as all remedies are, to restore the victims of discriminatory conduct to the position they would have occupied in the absence of such conduct. Disparate treatment of white and Negro students occurred within the Detroit school system, and not elsewhere, and on this record the remedy must be limited to that system. Swann, supra, 402 U.S., at 16, 91 S.Ct., at 1276.

FN21. Since the Court has held that a resident of a school district has a fundamental right protected by the Federal Constitution to vote in a district election, it would seem incongruous to disparage the importance of the school district in a different context. Kramer v. Union Free School District No. 15, 395 U.S. 621, 626, 89 S.Ct. 1886, 1889, 23 L.Ed.2d 583 (1969). White the district there involved was located in New York, none of the facts in our possession suggest that the relation of school districts to the State is significantly different in New York from that in Michigan.

FN22. The suggestion in the dissent of Mr. Justice Marshall that schools which have a majority of Negro students are not 'desegregated,' whatever the racial makeup of the school district's population and however neutrally the district lines have been drawn and administered, finds no support in our prior cases. In Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968), for example, this Court approved a desegregation plan which would have resulted in each of the schools within the district having a racial composition of 57% Negro and 43% White. In Wright v. Council of the City of Emporia, 407 U.S. 451, 92 S.Ct. 2196, 33 L.Ed.2d 51 (1972), the optimal desegregation plan would have resulted in the schools' being 66% Negro and 34% white, substantially the same percentages as could be obtained under one of the plans involved in this case. And in United States v. Scotland Neck City Board of Education, 407 U.S. 484, 491 n. 5, 92 S.Ct. 2214, 2218, 33 L.Ed.2d 75 (1972), a desegregation plan was implicitly approved for a school district which had a racial composition of 77% Negro and 22% white. In none of these cases was it even intimated that 'actual desegregation' could not be accomplished as long as the number of Negro students was greater than the number of white students.

FN23. People ex rel. Workman v. Board of Education of Detroit, 18 Mich. 400 (1869); Act 34, § 28, Mich.Pub.Acts of 1867. The Michigan Constitution and laws provide that 'every school district shall provide for the education of its pupils without discrimination as to religion, creed, race, color or national origin,' Mich. Const.1963, Art. 8, § 2; that 'no separate school or department shall be kept for any person or persons on account of race or color,' Mich.Comp.Laws s 340.355; and that '(a)ll persons,residents of a school district . . . shall have an equal right to attend school therein,' id., § 340.356. See also Act 319, Part II, c. 2, § 9, Mich. Pub. Acts of 1927.

'This and other financial limitations, such as those on bonding and the working of the state aid formula whereby suburban districts were able to make far larger per pupil expenditures despite less tax effort, have created and perpetuated systematic educational inequalities.' Id., at 239.

FN24. Apparently, when the District Court sua sponte, abruptly altered the theory of the case to include the possibility of multidistrict relief, neither the plaintiffs nor the trial judge considered amending the complaint to embrace the new theory.

FN1. As this Court stated in Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294, 300, 75 S.Ct. 753, 756, 99 L.Ed. 1083: '(E)quity has been characterized by a practical flexibility in shaping its remedies and by a facility for adjusting and reconciling public and private needs. These (school desegregation) cases call for the exercise of these traditional attributes of equity power.'

FN2. My Brother Marshall seems to ignore this fundamental fact when he states, post at 3153, that 'the most essential finding (made by the District Court) was that Negro children in Detroit had been confined by intentional acts of segregation to a growing core of Negro schools surrounded by a receding ring of white schools.' This conclusion is simply not substantiated by the record presented in this case. The record here does support the claim made by the respondents that white and Negro students within Detroit who otherwise would have attended school together were separated by acts of the State or its subdivision. However, segregative acts within the city alone cannot be presumed to have produced--and no factual showing was made that they did produce--an increase in the number of Negro students in the city as a whole. It is this essential fact of a predominantly Negro school population in Detroit-- caused by unknown and perhaps unknowable factors such as in-migration, birth rates, economic changes, or cumulative acts of private racial fears-- that accounts for the 'growing core of Negro schools,' a 'core' that has grown to include virtually the entire city. The Constitution simply does not allow federal courts to attempt to change that situation unless and until it is shown that the State, or its political subdivisions, have contributed to cause the situation to exist. No record has been made in this case showing that the racial composition of the Detroit school population or that residential patterns within Detroit and in the surrounding areas were in any significant measure caused by governmental activity, and it follows that the situation over which my dissenting Brothers express concern cannot serve as the predicate for the remedy adopted by the District Court and approved by the Court of Appeals. *757

Mr. Justice Douglas, dissenting.

The Court of Appeals has acted responsibly in these cases and we should affirm its judgment. This was the fourth time the case was before it over a span of less than three years. The Court of Appeals affirmed the District **3134 *758 Court on the issue of segregation and on the 'Detroit-only' plans of desegregation. The Court of Appeals also approved in principle the use of a metropolitan area plan, vacating and remanding only to allow the other affected school districts to be brought in as parties, and in other minor respects.

We have before us today no plan for integration. The only orders entered so far are interlocutory. No new principles of law are presented here. Metropolitan treatment of metropolitan problems is commonplace. If this were a sewage problem or a water problem, or an energy problem, there can be no doubt that Michigan would stay well within federal constitutional bounds if it sought a metropolitan remedy. In Bradley v. School Board of City of Richmond, 4 Cir., 462 F.2d 1058, aff'd by an equally divided Court, 412 U.S. 92, 93 S.Ct. 1952, 36 L.Ed.2d 771, we had a case involving the Virginia school system where local school boards had 'exclusive jurisdiction' of the problem, not 'the State Board of Education,' 462 F.2d, at 1067. Here the Michigan educational system is unitary, maintained and supported by the legislature and under the general supervision of the State Board of Education. [FN1] The State controls the boundaries of school districts. [FN2] The State supervises schoolsite selection. [FN3] The construction is done through municipal bonds approved by several state agencies. [FN4] Education in Michigan is a state project with very little completely local control, [FN5] except that the schools are financed locally, not on a statewide basis. Indeed *759 the proposal to put school funding in Michigan on a statewide basis was defeated at the polls in November 1972. [FN6] Yet the school districts by state law are agencies of the State. [FN7] State action is indeed challenged as violating the Equal Protection Clause. Whatever the reach of that claim may be, it certainly is aimed at discrimination based on race.

FN1. Mich.Const., Art. 8, §§ 2, 3.

FN2. See 484 F.2d 215, 247--248; Mich.Comp.Laws §§ 340.402, 340.431, 340.447, 388.681 (1970).

FN3. Mich.Comp.Laws § 388.851 (1948), as amended by Act 231, Mich.Pub.Acts of 1949, and Act 175, Mich.Pub.Acts 1962.

FN4. See Mich.Comp.Laws §§ 132.1 and 132.2 (1970); 3 App. 157.

FN5. See 484 F.2d at 248-249.

FN6. See Detroit Free Press, Nov. 8, 1972, p. 1A, col. 3. Michigan has recently passed legislation which could eliminate some, but not all, of the inequities in school financing. See Act 101, Mich.Pub.Acts of 1973.

FN7. See 484 F.2d, at 246-247; Mich.Const. Art. 8, §§ 2, 3.

Therefore as the Court of Appeals held there can be no doubt that as a matter of Michigan law the State itself has the final say as to where and how school district lines should be drawn. [FN8]

FN8. See n. 2, supra.

When we rule against the metropolitan area remedy we take 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, 163 U.S. 537, 16 S.Ct. 1138, 41 L.Ed. 256. The reason is simple.

The inner core of Detroit is now rather solidly black; [FN9] and the blacks, we **3135 know, in many instances are likely to *760 be poorer, [FN10] just as were the Chicanos in San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 93 S.Ct. 1278, 36 L.Ed.2d 16. By that decision the poorer school districts [FN11] must pay their own way. It is therefore a foregone conclusion that we have now given the States a formula whereby the poor must pay their own way. [FN12]

FN9. A tremendous change has occurred in the distribution of this country's black population since World War I. See Hauser, Demographic Factors in the Integration of the Negro, Daedalus 847--877 (fall 1965). In 1910, 73% of all blacks lived on farms and in rural areas; by 1960, 73% lived in urban areas, mainly in the largest metropolitan areas. Moreover, due to the fact that the black population is younger than the white population, the concentration of blacks in the cities is even more pronounced for the schoolage population. The pattern of change which has existed since World War I is continuing, and hence the proportion of blacks in the urban North and West will continue to increase. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, J. Coleman et al., Equality of Educational Opportunity 39--40 (1966).

FN10. There are some definite and systematic directions of difference between the schools attended by minorities and those attended by the majority. It appears to be in the most academically related areas that the schools of minority pupils show the most consistent deficiencies.' Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, Coleman et al., supra n. 9, at 120.

FN11. That some school districts are markedly poorer than others is beyond question. The California Supreme Court has noted that per-pupil expenditures in two different districts--both located in the same county-- were $2,223 and $616. Serrano v. Priest, 5 Cal.3d 584, 600 n. 15 (1971). In New York the Fleischmann Commission reported that the two Long Island districts of Great Neck and Levittown spent $2,078 and $1,189 respectively per pupil. 1 New York State Commission on the Quality, Cost, and Financing of Elementary and Secondary Education, Fleischmann Report 58 (1973). 'A further glaring inequity resulting from the current systems of school finance is that variations in per pupil expenditures among school districts tend to be inversely related to educational need. City students, with greater than average education deficiencies, consistently have less money spent on their education and have higher pupil/teacher ratios than do their high-income counterparts in the favored schools of suburbia.' Glickstein & Want, Inequality in School Financing: The Role of the Law, 25 Stan.L.Rev. 335, 338 (1973).

FN12. Cities face an especially difficult problem in paying the cost of education, since they have the 'municipal overburden' which results from greater costs for health, public safety, sanitation, public works, transportation, public welfare, public housing, and recreation. Because of municipal overburden, cities on the average devote only about 30% of their budgets to their schools. This compares with the over 50% which is spent on schools by the suburbs. J. Berke & J. Callahan, Inequities in School Finance (1971), reprinted in Senate Select Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity, 92d Cong., 2d Sess., Report on Issues in School Finance 129, 142 (Comm.Print 1972); see Glickstein & Want, supra, n. 11, at 387. *761 Today's decision, given Rodriguez, 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.'

So far as equal protection is concerned we are now in a dramatic retreat from the 7-to-1 decision in 1896 that blacks could be segregated in public facilities, provided they received equal treatment.

As I indicated in Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver, Colorado, 413 U.S. 189, 214-217, 93 S.Ct. 2686, 2700-2701, 37 L.Ed.2d 548, there is so far as the school cases go no constitutional difference between de facto and de jure segregation. Each school board performs state action for Fourteenth Amendment purposes when it draws the lines that confine it to a given area, when it builds schools at particular sites, or when it allocates students. The creation of the school districts in Metropolitan Detroit either maintained existing segregation or caused additional segregation. Restrictive covenants maintained by state action or inaction build black ghettos. It is state action when public funds are dispensed by housing agencies to build racial ghettos. Where a community is racially mixed and school authorities segregate schools, or assign black teachers to black schools or close schools in fringe areas and build new schools in black areas and in more distant white areas, the State creates and nurtures a segregated school system, just as surely as did those States involved in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873, when they maintained dual school systems.

All these conditions and more were found by the District Court to exist. The issue is notwhether there should be racial balance but whether the State's use of *762 various devices that end up with **3136 black schools and white schools brought the Equal Protection Clause into effect. Given the State's control over the educational system in Michigan, the fact that the black schools are in one district and the white schools are in another is not controlling--either constitutionally or equitably. [FN13] No specific plan has yet been adopted. We are still at an interlocutory stage of a long drawn- out judicial effort at school desegregation. It is conceivable that ghettos develop on their own without any hint of state action. But since Michigan by one device or another has over the years created black school districts and white school districts, the task of equity is to provide a unitary system for the affected area where, as here, the State washes its hands of its own creations.FN13. Mr. Justice Stewart indicates that equitable factors weigh in favor of local school control and the avoidance of administrative difficulty given the lack of an 'interdistrict' violation. Ante, at 3132. It would seem to me that the equities are stronger in favor of the children of Detroit who have been deprived of their constitutional right to equal treatment by the State of Michigan.

Mr. Justice White, with whom Mr. Justice Douglas, Mr. Justice Brennan, and Mr. Justice Marshall join, dissenting.

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. The Court does not question these findings, nor could it reasonably do so. Neither does it question the obligation of the federal courts to devise a feasible and effective remedy. But it promptly cripples the ability of the judiciary to perform this task, which is of fundamental importance to our constitutional system, by *763 fashioning a strict rule that remedies in school cases must stop at the school district line unless certain other conditions are met. As applied here, the remedy for unquestioned violations of the protection rights of Detroit's Negroes by the Detroit School Board and the State of Michigan must be totally confined to the limits of the school district and may not reach into adjoining or surrounding districts unless and until it is proved there has been some sort of 'interdistrict violation'--unless unconstitutional actions of the Detroit School Board have had a segregative impact on other districts, or unless the segregated condition of the Detroit schools has itself been influenced by segregative practices in those surrounding districts into which it is proposed to extend the remedy.

Regretfully, and for several reasons, I can join neither the Court's judgment nor its opinion. The core of my disagreement is that deliberate acts of segregation and their consequences will go unremedied, not because a remedy would be infeasible or unreasonable in terms of the usual criteria governing school desegregation cases, but because an effective remedy would cause what the Court considers to be undue administrative inconvenience to the State. The result is that the State of Michigan, the entity at which the Fourteenth Amendment is directed, 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. If this is the case in Michigan, it will be the case in most States.
There are undoubted practical as well as legal limits to the remedial powers of federal courts in school desegregation cases. The Court has made it clear that the achievement of any particular degree of racial balance in the school system is not required by the Constitution; *764 nor may it be the primary focus of a court in devising an acceptable remedy for de jure segregation. A variety of procedures and techniques are available to a district court engrossed in fashioning remedies in a case such as this; but the courts must keep in mind that they are **3137 dealing with the process of educating the young, including the very young. The task is not to devise a system of pains and penalties to punish constituttional violations brought to light. Rather, it is to desegregate an educational system in which the races have been kept apart, without, at the same time, losing sight of the central educational function of the schools.

Viewed in this light, remedies calling for school zoning, pairing, and pupil assignments, become more and more suspect as they require that schoolchildren spend more and more time in buses going to and from school and that more and more educational dollars be diverted to transportation systems. Manifestly, these considerations are of immediate and urgent concern when the issue is the desegregation of a city school system where residential patterns are predominantly segregated and the respective areas occupied by blacks and whites are heavily populated and geographically extensive. Thus, if one postulates a metropolitan school system covering a sufficiently large area, with the population evenly divided between whites and Negroes and with the races occupying identifiable residential areas, there will be very real practical limits on the extent to which racially identifiable schools can be eliminated within the school district. It is also apparent that the larger the proportion of Negroes in the area, the more difficult it would be to avoid having a substantial number of all-black or nearly all-black schools.

The Detroit school district is both large and heavily populated. It covers 139.6 square miles, encircles two *765 entirely separate cities and school districts, and surrounds a third city on three sides. Also, whites and Negroes live in identifiable areas in the city. The 1970 public school enrollment in the city school district totaled 289,763 and was 63.6% Negro and 34.8% white. [FN1] If 'racial balance' were achieved in every school in the district, each school would be approximately 64% Negro. A remedy confined to the district could achieve no more desegregation. Furthermore, the proposed intracity remedies were beset with practical problems. None of the plans limited to the school district was satisfactory to the District Court. The most promising proposal, submitted by respondents, who were the plaintiffs in the District Court, would 'leave many of its schools 75 to 90 per cent Black.' 484 F.2d 215, 244 (CA6 1973). [FN2] Transportation on a 'vast scale' would be required; 900 buses would have to be purchased for the transportation of pupils who are not now bused. Id., at 243. The District Court also found that the plan 'would change a school system which is now Black and White to one that would be perceived as Black, thereby increasing the flight of Whites from the city and the system, thereby increasing the Black student population.' Id., at 244. For the District Court, '(t)he conclusion, under the evidence in this case, is inescapable that relief of segregation in the public schools of the *766 City of Detroit cannot be accomplished within the corporate geographical limits of the city.' Ibid.

FN1. The percentage of Negro pupils in the Detroit student population rose to 64.9% in 1971, to 67.3% in 1972, and to 69.8% in 1973, amid a metropolitan school population whose racial composition in 1970 was 81% white and 19% Negro. 5 App. 16; Racial-Ethnic Distribution of Students and Employees in the Detroit Public Schools, October 1972, and October 1973; 484 F.2d 215, 250.

FN2. The District Court's ruling on the Detroit-only desegregation plans is set out in full by the Court of Appeals, id., at 242--245, and is not otherwise officially reported.

The District Court therefore considered extending its remedy of the suburbs. After hearings, it concluded that a much more effective desegregation plan could be implemented if the suburban districts were included. In proceeding to design its plan on the basis that student bus rides to and from school should not exceed 40 minutes each way **3138 as a general matter, the court's express finding was that '(f)or all the reasons stated heretofore--including time, distance, and transportation factors--desegregation within the area described is physically easier and more practicable and feasible, than desegregation efforts limited to the corporate geographic limits of the city of Detroit.' 345 F.Supp. 914, 930 (ED Mich.1972).

The Court of Appeals agreed with the District Court that the remedy must extend beyond the city limits of Detroit. It concluded that '(i)n the instant case the only feasible desegregation plan involves the crossing of the boundary lines between the Detroit School District and adjacent or nearby school districts for the limited purpose of providing an effective desegregation plan.' 484 F.2d, at 249. (Emphasis added.) It also agreed that 'any Detroit only desegregation plan will lead directly to a single segregated Detroit school district overwhelmingly black in all of its schools, surrounded by a ring of suburbs and suburban school districts overwhelmingly white in composition in a State in which the racial composition is 87 per cent white and 13 per cent black.' Ibid. There was 'more than ample support for the District Judge's findings of unconstitutional segregation by race resulting in major part from action and inaction of public authorities, both local and State. . . . Under this record a remedial order of a court of equity which left the Detroit school system overwhelmingly black (for the foreseeable *767 future) surrounded by suburban school systems overwhelmingly white cannot correct the constitutional violations herein found.' Id., at 250. To conclude otherwise, the Court of Appeals announced, would call up 'haunting memories of the now long overruled and discredited 'separate but equal doctrine' of Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (16 S.Ct. 1138, 41 L.Ed. 256) . . . (1896),' and 'would be opening a way to nullify Brown v. Board of Education which overruled Plessy. . . .' 484 F.2d, at 249.

This Court now reverses the Court of Appeals. It does not question the District Court's findings that any feasible Detroit-only plan would leave many schools 75 to 90 percent black and that the district would become progressively more black as whites left the city. Neither does the Court suggest that including the suburbs in a desegregation plan would be impractical or infeasible because of educational considerations, because of the number of children requiring transportation, or because of the length of their rides. Indeed, the Court leaves unchallenged the District Court's conclusion that a plan including the suburbs would be physically easier and more practical and feasible than a Detroit-only plan. Whereas the most promising Detroit-only plan, for example, would have entailed the purchase of 900 buses, the metropolitan plan would involve the acquisition of no more than 350 new vehicles.

Despite the fact that a metropolitan remedy, if the findings of the District Court accepted by the Court of Appeals are to be credited, would more effectively desegregate the Detroit schools, would prevent resegregation, [FN3] and would be easier and more feasible from many *768 standpoints, 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. Apparently, no matter how much less burdensome or more effective and efficient in many respects, such as transportation, the metropolitan plan might be, the school district line may not be crossed. Otherwise, it seems, there would be too much disruption of the Michigan scheme for managing its educational **3139 system, too much confusion, and too much administrative burden.

FN3. The Court has previously disapproved the implementation of proposed desegregation plans which operate to permit resegregation. Monroe v. Board of Comm'rs, 391 U.S. 450, 459--460, 88 S.Ct. 1700, 1705, 20 L.Ed.2d 733 (1968), ('free transfer' plan). The District Court, on the scene and familiar with local conditions, had a wholly different view.

The Court of Appeals also addressed itself at length to matters of local law and to the problems that interdistrict remedies might present to the State of Michigan. Its conclusion, flatly contrary to that of this Court, was that 'the constitutional right to equality before the law (is not) hemmed in by the boundaries of a school district' and that an interdistrict remedy

'is supported by the status of school districts under Michigan law and by the historical control exercised over local school districts by the legislature of Michigan and by State agencies and officials . . .. (I)t is well established under the Constitution and laws of Michigan that the public school system is a State function and that local school districts are instrumentalities of the State created for administrative convenience.' [FN4] 484 F.2d, at 245-- 246.

FN4. The Court of Appeals also noted several specific instances of school district mergers ordered by the State Board of Education for financial reasons. 484 F.2d, at 247.

Limitations on the authority of local school districts were also outlined by the Court of Appeals: 'Local school districts, unless they have the approval of the State Board of Education or the Superintendent of Public Instruction, cannot consolidate with another school district, annex territory, divide or attach parts of other districts, borrow monies in anticipation of State aid, or construct, reconstruct or remodel school buildings or additions to them.' Id., at 249. (Footnotes and supporting statutory citations omitted.)

And the Court of Appeals properly considered the State's statutory attempt to undo the adoption of a voluntary high school desegregation plan by the Detroit Board of Education as evidencing state control over local school district affairs. Ibid. Finally, it is also relevant to note that the District Court found that the school district boundaries in that segment of the metropolitan area preliminarily designated as the desegregation area 'in general bear no relationship to other municipal, county, or special district governments, needs or services,' that some educational services are already provided to students on an interdistrict basis requiring their travel from one district to another, and that local communities in the metropolitan area share noneducational interests in common, which do not adhere to school district lines, and have applied metropolitan solutions to other governmental needs. 345 F.Supp. 914, 934--935 (E.D.Mich.1972). *769 I am surprised that the Court, sitting at this distance from the State of Michigan, claims better insight than the Court of Appeals and the District Court as to whether an interdistrict remedy for equal protection violations practiced by the State of Michigan would involve undue difficulties for the State in the management of its public schools. In the area of what constitutes an acceptable desegregation plan, 'we must of necessity rely to a large extent, as this Court has for more than 16 years, on the informed judgment of the district courts in the first instance and on courts of appeals.' Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 28, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 1282, 28 L.Ed.2d 554 (1971). Obviously, whatever difficulties there might be, they are surmountable; for the Court itself concedes that, had there been sufficient evidence of an interdistrict violation, the District Court could have fashioned a single remedy for the districts implicated rather than a different remedy for each district *770 in which the violation had occurred or had an impact.

I am even more mystified as to how the Court can ignore the legal reality that the constitutional violations, even if occurring locally, were committed by governmental entities for which the State is responsible and that it is the State that must respond to the command of the Fourteenth Amendment. An interdistrict remedy for the infringements that occurred in this case is well within the confines and powers of the State, which is the governmental entity ultimately responsible for desegregating its schools. The Michigan Supreme Court has observed that '(t)he school district is a **3140 State agency,' Attorney General ex rel. Kies v. Lowrey, 131 Mich. 639, 644, 92 N.W. 289, 290 (1902), and that "(e)ducation in Michigan belongs to the State. It is no part of the local self-government inherent in the township or municipality, except so far as the legislature may choose to make it such. The Constitution has turned the whole subject over to the legislature. . . ." Attorney General ex rel. Lacharias v. Detroit Board of Education, 154 Mich. 584, 590, 118 N.W. 606, 609 (1908).

It is unnecessary to catalogue at length the various public misdeeds found by the District Court and the Court of Appeals to have contributed to the present segregation of the Detroit public schools. The legislature contributed directly by enacting a statute overriding a partial high school desegregation plan voluntarily adopted by the Detroit Board of Education. Indirectly, the trial court found the State was accountable for the thinly disguised, pervasive acts of segregation committed by the Detroit Board, [FN5] for Detroit's school construction *771 plans that would promote segregation, and for the Detroit school district's not having funds for pupil transportation within the district. The State was also chargeable with responsibility for the transportation of Negro high school students in the late 1950's from the suburban Ferndale School District, past closer suburban and Detroit high schools with predominantly white student bodies, to a predominantly Negro high school within Detroit. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, supra, 402 U.S., at 20--21, 91 S.Ct. at 1278, and Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver, Colorado, 413 U.S. 189, 93 S.Ct. 2686, 37 L.Ed.2d 548 (1973), make abundantly clear that the tactics employed by the Detroit Board of Education, a local instrumentality of the State, violated the constitutional rights of the Negro students in Detroit's public schools and required equitable relief sufficient to accomplish the maximum, practical desegregation within the power of the political body against which the Fourteenth Amendment directs its proscriptions. No 'State' may deny any individual the equal protection of the laws; and if the Constitution and the Supremacy Clause are to have any substance at all, the courts must be free to devise workable remedies against the political entity with the effective power to determine local choice. It is also the case here that the State's legislative interdiction of Detroit's voluntary effort to desegregate its school system was unconstitutional. See North Carolina State Board of Education v. Swann, 402 U.S. 43, 91 S.Ct. 1284, 28 L.Ed.2d 586 (1971).

FN5. These included the creation and alteration of attendance zones and feeder patterns from the elementary to the secondary schools in a manner naturally and predictably perpetuating racial segregation of students, the transportation of Negro students beyond predominantly white schools with available space to predominantly Negro schools, the use of optional attendance areas in neighborhoods in which Negro families had recently begun to settle to permit white students to transfer to predominantly white schools nearer the city limits, and the construction of schools in the heart of residentially segregated areas, thereby maximizing school segregation. The Court draws the remedial line at the Detroit school district boundary, even though the Fourteenth Amendment is addressed to the State and even though *772 the State denies equal protection of the laws when its public agencies, acting in its behalf, invidiously discriminate. The State's default is 'the condition that offends the Constitution,' Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, supra, 402 U.S., at 16, 91 S.Ct. at 1277, and state officials may therefore be ordered to take the necessary measures to completely eliminate from the Detroit public schools 'all vestiges of state-imposed segregation.' Id., at 15, 91 S.Ct. at 1275. I cannot understand, nor does the majority satisfactorily explain, why a federal court may not order an appropriate interdistrict remedy, if this is necessary or more effective to accomplish this constitutionally mandated task. As **3141 the Court unanimously observed in Swann: 'Once a right and a violation have been shown, the scope of a district court's equitable powers to remedy past wrongs is broad, for breadth and flexibility are inherent in equitable remedies.' Ibid. In this case, both the right and the State's Fourteenth Amendment violation have concededly been fully established, and there is no acceptable reason for permitting the party responsible for the constitutional violation to contain the remedial powers of the federal court within administrative boundaries over which the transgressor itself has plenary power.

The unwavering decisions of this Court over the past 20 years support the assumption of the Court of Appeals that the District Court's remedial power does not cease at the school district line. The Court's first formulation of the remedial principles to be followed in disestablishing racially discriminatory school systems recognized the variety of problems arising from different local school conditions and the necessity for that 'practical flexibility' traditionally associated with courts of equity. Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294, 299--301, 75 S.Ct. 753, 755--756, 99 L.Ed. 1083, (1955) (Brown II). Indeed, the district courts to which *773 the Brown cases were remanded for the formulation of remedial decrees were specifically instructed that they might consider, inter alia, 'revision of school districts and attendance areas into compact units to achieve a system of determining admission to the public schools on a nonracial basis . . ..' Id., at 300-- 301, 75 S.Ct. at 756. The malady addressed in Brown II was the statewide policy of requiring or permitting school segregation on the basis of race, while the record here concerns segregated schools only in the city of Detroit. The obligation to rectify the unlawful condition nevertheless rests on the State. The permissible revision of school districts contemplated in Brown II rested on the State's responsibility for desegregating its unlawfully segregated schools, not on any segregative effect which the condition of segregation in one school district might have had on the schools of a neighboring district. The same situation obtains here and the same remedial power is available to the District Court.

Later cases reinforced the clearly essential rules that state officials are fully answerable for unlawfully caused conditions of school segregation which can effectively be controlled only by steps beyond the authority of local school districts to take, and that the equity power of the district courts includes the ability to order such measures implemented. When the highest officials of the State of Arkansas impeded a federal court order to desegregate the public schools under the immediate jurisdiction of the Little Rock School Board, this Court refused to accept the local board's assertion of its good faith as a legal excuse for delay in implementing the desegregation order. The Court emphasized that 'from the point of view of the Fourteenth Amendment, they (the local school board members) stand in this litigation as the agents of the State.' Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 16, 78 S.Ct. 1401, 1408, 3 L.Ed.2d 5 (1958). Perhaps *774 more importantly for presentpurposes, the Court went on to state:

'The record before us clearly establishes that the growth of the Board's difficulties to a magnitude beyond its unaided power to control is the product of state action. Those difficulties . . . can also be brought under control by state action.' Ibid.

See also Griffin v. School Board, 377 U.S. 218, 228, 233--234, 84 S.Ct. 1226, 1231, 1234--1235, 12 L.Ed.2d 256 (1964).
In the context of dual school systems, the Court subsequently made clear the 'affirmative duty to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a unitary system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch' and to come forward with a desegregation plan that 'promises realistically to work now.' **3142 Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430, 437--438, 439, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 1694, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968). 'Freedom of choice' plans were rejected as acceptable desegregation measures where 'reasonably available other ways . . . promising speedier and more effective conversion to a unitary, nonracial school system . . .' exist. Id., at 441, 88 S.Ct., at 1696. Imperative insistence on immediate full desegregation of dual school systems 'to operate now and hereafter only unitary schools' was reiterated in Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, 396 U.S. 19, 20, 90 S.Ct. 29, 24 L.Ed.2d 19 (1969), and Carter v. West Feliciana Parish School Board, 396 U.S. 290, 90 S.Ct. 608, 24 L.Ed.2d 477 (1970).
The breadth of the equitable authority of the district courts to accomplish these comprehensive tasks was reaffirmed in much greater detail in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, supra, and the companion case of Davis v. School Comm'rs of Mobile County, 402 U.S. 33, 91 S.Ct. 1289, 28 L.Ed.2d 577 (1971), where there was unanimous assent to the following propositions:

'Having once found a violation, the district judge or school authorities should make every effort to *775 achieve the greatest possible degree of actual desegregation, taking into account the practicalities of the situation. A district court may and should consider the use of all available techniques including restructuring of attendance zones and both contiguous and noncontiguous attendance zones. . . . The measure of any desegregation plan is its effectiveness.' Id., at 37, 91 S.Ct. at 1292.

No suggestion was made that interdistrict relief was not an available technique. In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education itself, the Court, without dissent, recognized that the District Judge, in fulfilling his obligation to 'make every effort to achieve the greatest possible degree of actual desegregation(,) will thus necessarily be concerned with the elimination of one-race schools.' 402 U.S., at 26, 91 S.Ct., at 1281. Nor was there any dispute that to break up the dual school system, it was within the District Court's 'broad remedial powers' to employ a 'frank--and sometimes drastic-- gerrymandering of school districts and attendance zones,' as well as 'pairing, 'clustering,' or 'grouping' of schools,' to desegregate the 'formerly all-Negro schools,' despite the fact that these zones might not be compact or contiguous and might be 'on opposite ends of the city.' Id., at 27, 91 S.Ct. at 1282. The school board in that case had jurisdiction over a 550-square-mile area encompassing the city of Charlotte and surrounding Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. The Mobile County, Alabama, board in Davis embraced a 1,248- squaremile area, including the city of Mobile. Yet the Court approved the District Court's authority to award countywide relief in each case in order to accomplish desegregation of the dual school system.

Even more recently, the Court specifically rejected the claim that a new school district, which admittedly would operate a unitary school system within its borders, was beyond the reach of a court-ordered desegregation plan *776 for other school districts, where the effectiveness of the plan as to the other districts depended upon the availability of the facilities and student population of the new district. In Wright v. Council of City of Emporia, 407 U.S. 451, 470, 92 S.Ct. 2196, 2207, 33 L.Ed.2d 51 (1972), we held 'that a new school district may not be created where its effect would be to impede the process of dismantling a dual system.' Mr. Justice Stewart's opinion for the Court made clear that if a proposal to erect new district boundary lines 'would impede the dismantling of the (pre-existing) dual system, then a district court, in the exercise of its remedial discretion, may enjoin it from being carried out.' Id., at 460, 92 S.Ct. at 2203. In United States v. Scotland Neck Board of Education, 407 U.S. 484, 92 S.Ct. 2214, 33 L.Ed.2d 75 (1972), this same standard was applied to forbid North Carolina from **3143 creating a new city school district within a larger district which was in the process of dismantling a dual school system. The Court noted that if establishment of the new district were permitted, the 'traditional racial identities of the schools in the area would be maintained,' id., at 490, 92 S.Ct., at 2717.

Until today, the permissible contours of the equitable authority of the district courts to remedy the unlawful establishment of a dual school system have been extensive, adaptable, and fully responsive to the ultimate goal of achieving 'the greatest possible degree of actual desegregation.' There are indeed limitations on the equity powers of the federal judiciary, but until now the Court had not accepted the proposition that effective enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment could be limited by political or administrative boundary lines demarcated by the very State responsible for the constitutional violation and for the disestablishment of the dual system. Until now the Court has instead looked to practical considerations in effectuating a desegregation *777 decree, such as excessive distance, transportation time, and hazards to the safety of the schoolchildren involved in