Case Name: COLUMBUS BOARD OF EDUCATION et al. v. PENICK et al.
Court: Supreme Court of the United States
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 1979-07-02
Citations: 443 U.S. 449
Docket Number: No. 78-610
Parties: COLUMBUS BOARD OF EDUCATION et al. v. PENICK ET AL.
Judges: White, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BRENNAN, Marshall, BlackmtjN, and Stevens, JJ., joined. Burger, C. J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 468. Stewart, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which Burger, C. J., joined, post, p. 469. Powell, J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 479. Rehnquist, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Powell, J., joined, post, p. 489.
Reporter: United States Reports
Volume: 443
Pages: 449–525

Head Matter:
COLUMBUS BOARD OF EDUCATION et al. v. PENICK ET AL.
No. 78-610.
Argued April 24, 1979
Decided July 2, 1979
White, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BRENNAN, Marshall, BlackmtjN, and Stevens, JJ., joined. Burger, C. J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 468. Stewart, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which Burger, C. J., joined, post, p. 469. Powell, J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 479. Rehnquist, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Powell, J., joined, post, p. 489.
Samuel H. Porter argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs were Earl F. Morris and Curtis A. Loveland.
Thomas I. Atkins argued the cause for respondents. With him on the brief were Richard M. Stein, William L. Taylor, Nathaniel R. Jones, Louis R. Lucas, William E. Caldwell, Paul R. Dimond, Robert A. Murphy, Richard S. Kohn, and Norman J. Chachkin. Mark O’Neill filed a brief for the Ohio State Board of Education et al. as respondents under this Court’s Rule 21 (4).
Assistant Attorney General Days argued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae urging affirmance. With him on the brief were Acting Solicitor General Wallace, Sara Sun Beale, Brian K. Landsberg, and Robert J. Reinstein.
Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed by Richard S. Gebelein, Attorney General of Delaware, Regina M. Small, Deputy Attorney General, Mason E. Turner, Jr., James T. McKinstry, and Philip B. Kurland for the Delaware State Board of Education et al.; and by Charles E. Brown and Ira Owen Kane for the Neighborhood School Coordinating Committee et al.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed by Burt Neuborne, E. Richard Larson, Robert Allen Sedler, Winn Newman, and Carole W. Wilson for the American Civil Liberties Union et al.; by Arthur J. Lesemann for the Fair Housing Council of Bergen County, N. J.; by Jack Greenberg, James M. Nabrit III, Bill Lann Lee, Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., John Silard, Elliott C. Lichtman, and John Fillion for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., et al.; and by Stephen J. Poliak, Richard M. Sharp, Wendy S. White, and David Rubin for the National Education Association et al.
Briefs of amici curiae were filed by Harriet F. Pilpel, Nathan Z. Der-showitz, and Joseph B. Robison for the American Jewish Congress; and by Duane W. Krohnke for Special School District No. 1, Minneapolis, Minn.

Opinion:
Mr. Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The public schools of Columbus, Ohio, are highly segregated by race. .In 1976, over 32% of the 96,000 students in the system were black. About 70% of all students attended schools that were at least 80% black or 80% white. 429 F. Supp. 229, 240 (SD Ohio 1977). Half of the 172 schools were 90% black or 90% white. 583 F. 2d 787, 800 (CA6 1978). Fourteen named students in the Columbus school system brought this case on June 21, 1973, against the Columbus Board of Education, the State Board of Education, and the appropriate local and state officials. The second amended complaint, filed on October 22, 1974, charged that the Columbus defendants had pursued and were pursuing a course of conduct having the purpose and effect of causing and perpetuating segregation in the public schools, contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment. A declaratory judgment to this effect and appropriate injunctive relief were prayed. Trial of the case began more than a year later, consumed 36 trial days, produced a record containing over 600 exhibits and a transcript in excess of 6,600 pages, and was completed in June 1976. Final arguments were heard in September, and in March 1977 the District Court filed an opinion and order containing its findings of fact and conclusions of law. 429 F. Supp. 229.
The trial court summarized its findings:
"From the evidence adduced at trial, the Court has found earlier in this opinion that the Columbus Public Schools were openly and intentionally segregated on the basis of race when Brown [v. Board of Education, 347 IT. S. 483 (Brown /)] was decided in 1954. The Court has found that the Columbus Board of Education never actively set out to dismantle this dual system. The Court has found that until legal action was initiated by the Columbus Area Civil Rights Council, the Columbus Board did not assign teachers and administrators to Columbus schools at random, without regard for the racial composition of the student enrollment at those schools. The Columbus Board even in very recent times . . has approved optional attendance zones, discontiguous attendance areas and boundary changes which have maintained and enhanced racial imbalance in the Columbus Public Schools. The Board, even in very recent times and after promising to do otherwise, has adjured [sic] workable suggestions for improving the racial balance of city schools.
"Viewed in the context of segregative optional attendance zones, segregative faculty and administrative hiring and assignments, and the other such actions and decisions of the Columbus Board of Education in recent and remote history, it is fair and reasonable to draw an inference of segregative intent from the Board's actions and omissions discussed in this opinion." Id., at 260-261.
The District Court's ultimate conclusion was that at the time of trial the racial segregation in the Columbus school system "directly resulted from [the Board's] intentional segre-gative acts and omissions," id., at 269, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Accordingly, judgment was entered against the local and state defendants enjoining them from continuing to discriminate on the basis of race in operating the Columbus public schools and ordering the submission of a systemwide desegregation plan.
Following decision by this Court in Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman, 433 U. S. 406 (Dayton I), in June 1977, and in response to a motion by the Columbus Board, the District Court rejected the argument that Dayton I required or permitted any modification of its findings or judgment. It reiterated its conclusion that the Board's " 'liability in this case concerns the Columbus School District as a whole,' " App. to Pet. for Cert. 94, quoting 429 F. Supp., at 266, asserting that, although it had "no real interest in any remedy plan which is more sweeping than necessary to correct the constitutional wrongs plaintiffs have suffered," neither would it accept any plan "which fails to take into account the systemwide nature of the liability of the defendants." App. to Pet. for Cert. 95. The Board subsequently presented a plan that complied with the District Court's guidelines and that was embodied in a judgment entered on October 7. The plan was stayed pending appeal to the Court of Appeals.
Based on its own examination of the extensive record, the Court of Appeals affirmed the judgments entered against the local defendants. 583 F. 2d 787. The Court of Appeals could not find the District Court's findings of fact clearly erroneous. Id., at 789. Indeed, the Court of Appeals examined in detail each set of findings by the District Court and found strong support for them in the record. Id., at 798, 804, 805, 814. The Court of Appeals also discussed in detail and found unexceptionable the District Court's understanding and application of the Fourteenth Amendment and the cases construing it.
Implementation of the desegregation plan was stayed pending our disposition of the case. 439 U. S. 1348 (1978) (Rehnquist, J., in chambers). We granted the Board's petition for certiorari, 439 U. S. 1066 (1979), and we now affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
I
The Board earnestly contends that when this case was brought and at the time of trial its operation of a segregated school system was not done with any general or specific racially discriminatory purpose, and that whatever unconsti tutional conduct it may have been guilty of in the past such conduct at no time had systemwide segregative impact and surely no remaining systemwide impact at the time of trial. A systemwide remedy was therefore contrary to the teachings of the cases, such as Dayton I, that the scope of the constitutional violation measures the scope of the remedy.
We have discovered no reason, however, to disturb the judgment of the Court of Appeals, based on the findings and conclusions of the District Court, that the Board's conduct at the time of trial and before not only was animated by an unconstitutional, segregative purpose, but also had current, segre-gative impact that was sufficiently systemwide to warrant the remedy ordered by the District Court.
These ultimate conclusions were rooted in a series of constitutional violations that the District Court found the Board to have committed and that together dictated its judgment and decree. In each instance, the Court of Appeals found the District Court's conclusions to be factually and legally sound.
A
First, although at least since 1888 there had been no statutory requirement or authorization to operate segregated schools, the District Court found that in 1954, when Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (Brown I), was decided, the Columbus Board was not operating a racially neutral, unitary school system, but was conducting "an enclave of separate, black schools on the near east side of Columbus," and that "[t]he then-existing racial separation was the direct result of cognitive acts or omissions of those school board members and administrators who had originally intentionally caused and later perpetuated the racial isolation . . . 429 F. Supp., at 236. Such separateness could not "be said to have been the result of racially neutral official acts." Ibid.
Based on its own examination of the record, the Court of Appeals agreed with the District Court in this respect, observing that, "[wjhile the Columbus school system's dual black-white character was not mandated by state law as of 1954, the record certainly shows intentional segregation by the Columbus Board. As of 1954 the Columbus School Board had 'carried out a systematic program of segregation affecting a substantial portion of the students, schools, teachers and facilities within the school system.' " 583 F. 2d, at 798-799, quoting Keyes v. School Dist. No. 1, Denver, Colo., 413 U. S. 189, 201-202 (1973).
The Board insists that, since segregated schooling was not commanded by state law and since not all schools were wholly black or wholly white in 1954, the District Court was not war ranted in finding a dual system. But the District Court found that the "Columbus Public Schools were officially segregated by race in 1954," App. to Pet. for Cert. 94 (emphasis added); and in any event, there is no reason to question the finding that as the "direct result of cognitive acts or omissions" the Board maintained "an enclave of separate, black schools on the near east side of Columbus." 429 F. Supp., at 236. Proof of purposeful and effective maintenance of a body of separate black schools in a substantial part of the system itself is prima facie proof of a dual school system and supports a finding to this effect absent sufficient contrary proof by the Board, which was not forthcoming in this case. Keyes, supra, at 203.
B
Second, both courts below declared that since the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294 (1955) (Brown II), the Columbus Board has been under a continuous constitutional obligation to disestablish its dual school system and that it has failed to discharge this duty. App. to Pet. for Cert. 94; 583 F. 2d, at 799. Under the Fourteenth Amendment and the cases that have construed it, the Board's duty to dismantle its dual system cannot be gainsaid.
Where a racially discriminatory school system has been found to exist, Brown II imposes the duty on local school boards to "effectuate a transition to a racially nondiscriminatory school system." 349 U. S., at 301. "Brown II was a call for the dismantling of well-entrenched dual systems," and school boards operating such systems were "clearly charged with 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." Green v. County School Board, 391 U. S. 430, 437-438 (1968). Each instance of a failure or refusal to fulfill this affirmative duty continues the violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Dayton I, 433 U. S., at 413-414; Wright v. Council of City of Emporia, 407 U. S. 451, 460 (1972); United States v. Scotland Neck Board of Education, 407 U. S. 484 (1972) (creation of a new school district in a city that had operated a dual school system but was not yet the subject of court-ordered desegregation).
The Green case itself was decided 13 years after Brown II. The core of the holding was that the school board involved had not done enough to eradicate the lingering consequences of the dual school system that it had been operating at the time Brown I was decided. Even though a freedom-of-choice plan had been adopted, the school system remained essentially a segregated system, with many all-black and many all-white schools. The board's continuing obligation, which had not been satisfied, was " 'to come forward with a plan that promises realistically to work . . now . . . until it is clear that state-imposed segregation has been completely removed.' " Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U. S. 1, 13 (1971), quoting Green,supra, at 439 (emphasis in original).
As The Chief Justice's opinion for a unanimous Court in Swann recognized, Brown and Green imposed an affirmative duty to desegregate. "If school authorities fail in their affirmative- obligations under these holdings, judicial authority may be invoked. . In default by the school authorities of their obligation to proffer acceptable remedies, a district court has broad power to fashion a remedy that will assure a unitary school system." 402 U. S., at 15-16. In Swann, it should be recalled, an initial desegregation plan had been entered in 1965 and had been affirmed on appeal. But the case was reopened, and in 1969 the school board was required to come forth with a more effective plan. The judgment adopting the ultimate plan was affirmed here in 1971, 16 years after Brown II.
In determining whether a dual school system has been disestablished, Swann also mandates that matters aside from student assignments must be considered:
"[W]here it is possible to identify a 'white school' or a 'Negro school' simply by reference to the racial composition of teachers and staff, the quality of school buildings and equipment, or the organization of sports activities, a prima facie case of violation of substantive constitutional rights under the Equal Protection Clause is shown." 402 U. S., at 18.
Further, Swann stated that in devising remedies for legally imposed segregation the responsibility of the local authorities and district courts is to ensure that future school construction and abandonment are not used and do not serve to perpetuate or re-establish the dual school system. Id., at 20-21. As for student assignments, the Court said:
"No per se rule can adequately embrace all the difficulties of reconciling the competing interests involved; but in a system with a history of segregation the need for remedial criteria of sufficient specificity to assure a school authority's compliance with its constitutional duty warrants a presumption against schools that are substantially disproportionate in their racial composition. 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, they have the burden of showing that such school assignments are genuinely nondiscriminatory." Id., at 26.
The Board's continuing "affirmative duty to disestablish the dual school system" is therefore beyond question, McDaniel v. Barresi, 402 U. S. 39, 41 (1971), and it has pointed to nothing in the record persuading us that at the time of trial the dual school system and its effects had been disestablished. The Board does not appear to challenge the finding of the District Court that at the time of trial most blacks were still going to black schools and most whites to white schools. Whatever the Board's current purpose with respect to racially separate education might be, it knowingly continued its failure to eliminate the consequences of its past intentionally segregative policies. The Board "never actively set out to dismantle this duál system." 429 F. Supp., at 260.
C
Third, the District Court not only found that the Board had breached its constitutional duty by failing effectively to eliminate the continuing consequences of its intentional systemwide segregation in 1954, but also found that in the intervening years there had been a series of Board actions and practices that could not "reasonably be explained without reference to racial concerns," id., at 241, and that "intentionally aggravated, rather than alleviated," racial separation in the schools. App. to Pet. for Cert. 94. These matters included the general practice of assigning black teachers only to those schools with substantial black student populations, a practice that was terminated only in 1974 as the result of a conciliation agreement with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission; the intentionally segregative use of optional attendance zones, discon- tiguous attendance areas, and boundary changes; and the selection of sites for new school construction that had the foreseeable and anticipated effect of maintaining the racial separation of the schools. The court generally noted that "[s]ince the 1954 Brown decision, the Columbus defendants or their predecessors were adequately put on notice of the fact that action was required to correct and to prevent the increase in" segregation, yet failed to heed their duty to alleviate racial separation in the schools. 429 F. Supp., at 255.
II
Against this background, we cannot fault the conclusion of the District Court and the Court of Appeals that at the time of trial there was systemwide segregation in the Columbus schools that was the result of recent and remote intention ally segregative actions of the Columbus Board. While appearing not to challenge most of the subsidiary findings of historical fact, Tr. of Oral Arg. 7, petitioners dispute many of the factual inferences drawn from these facts by the two courts below. On this record, however, there is no apparent reason to disturb the factual findings and conclusions entered by the District Court and strongly affirmed by the Court of Appeals after its own examination of the record.
Nor do we discern that the judgments entered below rested on any misapprehension of the controlling law. It is urged that the courts below failed to heed the requirements of Keyes, Washington v. Davis, 426 U. S. 229 (1976), and Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Dev. Corp., 429 U. S. 252 (1977), that a plaintiff seeking to make out an equal protection violation on the basis of racial discrimination must show purpose. Both courts, it is argued, considered the requirement satisfied if it were shown that disparate impact would be the natural and foreseeable consequence of the practices and policies of the Board, which, it is said, is nothing more than equating impact with intent, contrary to the controlling precedent.
The District Court, however, was amply cognizant of the controlling cases. It is understood that to prevail the plaintiffs were required to " 'prove not only that segregated schooling exists but also that it was brought about or maintained by intentional state action/ " 429 F. Supp., at 251, quoting Keyes, 413 U. S., at 198 — that is, that the school officials had "intended to segregate." 429 F. Supp., at 254. See also 583 F. 2d, at 801. The District Court also recognized that under those cases disparate impact and foreseeable consequences, without more, do not establish a constitutional violation. See, e. g., 429 F. Supp., at 251. Nevertheless, the District Court correctly noted that actions having foreseeable and anticipated disparate impact are relevant evidence to prove the ultimate fact, forbidden purpose. Those cases do not forbid "the foreseeable effects standard from being utilized as one of the several kinds of proofs from which an inference of segregative intent may be properly drawn." Id., at 255. Adherence to a particular policy or practice, "with full knowledge of the predictable effects of such adherence upon racial imbalance in a school system is one factor among many others which may be considered by a court in determining whether an inference of segregative intent should be drawn." Ibid. The District Court thus stayed well within the requirements of Washington v. Davis and Arlington Heights. See Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts v. Feeney, 442 U. S. 256, 279 n. 25 (1979).
It is also urged that the District Court and the Court of Appeals failed to observe the requirements of our recent decision in Dayton I, which reiterated the accepted rule that the remedy imposed by a court of equity should be commensurate with the violation ascertained, and held that the remedy for the violations that had then been established in that case should be aimed at rectifying the "incremental segregative effect", of the discriminatory acts identified. In Dayton I, only a few apparently isolated discriminatory practices had been found; yet a systemwide remedy had been imposed without proof of a systemwide impact. Here, however, the District Court repeatedly emphasized that it had found purposefully segregative practices with current, systemwide impact. 429 F. Supp., at 252, 259-260, 264, 266; App. to Pet. for Cert. 95; 583 F. 2d, at 799. And the Court of Appeals, responding to similar arguments, said:
"School board policies of systemwide application neces sarily have systemwide impact. 1) The pre-1954 policy of creating an enclave of five schools intentionally designed for black students and known as 'black' schools, as found by the District Judge, clearly had a 'substantial'— indeed, a systemwide — impact. 2) The post-1954 failure of the Columbus Board to desegregate the school system in spite of many requests and demands to do so, of course, had systemwide impact. 3) So, too, did the Columbus Board's segregative school construction and siting policy as we have detailed it above. 4) So too did its student assignment policy which, as shown above, produced the large majority of racially identifiable schools as of the school year 1975-76. 5) The practice of assigning black teachers and administrators only or in large majority to black schools likewise represented a systemwide policy of segregation. This policy served until July 1974 to deprive black students of .opportunities for contact with and learning from white teachers, and conversely to deprive white students of similar opportunities to meet, know and learn from black teachers. It also served as discriminatory, systemwide racial identification of schools." 583 F. 2d, at 814.
Nor do we perceive any misuse of Keyes, where we held that purposeful discrimination in a substantial part of a school system furnishes a sufficient basis for an inferential finding of a systemwide discriminatory intent unless otherwise rebutted, and that given the purpose to operate a dual school system one could infer a connection between such a purpose and racial separation in other parts of the school system. There was no undue reliance here on the inferences permitted by Keyes, or upon those recognized by Swann. Furthermore, the Board was given ample opportunity to counter the evidence of segre-gative purpose and current, systemwide impact, and the findings of the courts below were against it in both respects. 429 F. Supp., at 260; App. to Pet. for Cert. 95, 102, 105.
Because the District Court and the Court of Appeals committed no prejudicial errors of fact or law, the judgment appealed from must be affirmed.
So ordered.
A similar group of plaintiffs was allowed to intervene, and the original plaintiffs were allowed to file an amended complaint that was certified as a class action. 429 F. Supp. 229, 233-234 (SD Ohio 1977); App. 50.
The Court of Appeals vacated the judgment against the state defendants and remanded for further proceedings regarding those parties. 583 F. 2d 787, 815-818 (CA6 1978). No issue with respect to the state defendants is before us now.
Petitioners also argue that the District Court erred in requiring that every school in the system be brought roughly within proportionate racial balance. We see no misuse of mathematical ratios under our decision in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U. S. 1, 22-25 (1971), especially in light of the Board's failure to justify the continued existence of "some schools that are all or predominantly of one race . . . ." Id., at 26; see App. to Pet. for Cert. 102-103. Petitioners do not otherwise question the remedy if a systemwide violation was properly found.
In 1871, pursuant to the requirements of state law, Columbus maintained a complete separation of the races in the public schools. 429 F. Supp., at 234-235. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled in 1888 that state law no longer required or permitted the segregation of schoolchildren. Board of Education v. State, 45 Ohio St. 555, 16 N. E. 373. Even prior to that, in 1881, the Columbus Board abolished its separate schools for black and white students, but by the end of the first decade of this century it had returned to a segregated school policy. Champion Avenue School was built in 1909 in a predominantly black area and was completely staffed with black teachers. Other black schools were established as the black population grew. The Board gerrymandered attendance zones so that white students who lived near these schools were assigned to or could attend white schools, which often were further from their homes. By 1943, a total of five schools had almost exclusively black student bodies, and each was assigned an all-black faculty, often through all-white to all-black faculty transfers that occurred each time the Board came to consider a particular school as a black school. 429 F. Supp., at 234-236.
Both our dissenting Brethren and the separate concurrence of Mr. Justice Stewart put great weight on the absence of a statutory mandate or authorization to discriminate, but the Equal Protection Clause was aimed at all official actions, not just those of state legislatures. "[N]o agency of the State, or of the officers or agents by whom its powers are exerted, shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Whoever, by virtue of public position under a State government, . . . denies or takes away the equal protection of the laws . . . violates the constitutional inhibition; and as he acts in the name and for the State, and is clothed with the State's power, his act is that of the State." Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339, 347 (1880). Thus, in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356 (1886), the discriminatory application of an ordinance fair on its face was found to be unconstitutional state action. Even actions of state agents that may be illegal under state law are attributable to the State. United States v. Price, 383 U. S. 787 (1966); Screws v. United States, 325 U. S. 91 (1945). Our decision in Keyes v. School Dist. No. 1, Denver, Colo., 413 U. S. 189 (1973), plainly demonstrates in the educational context that there is no magical difference between segregated schools mandated by statute and those that result from local segregative acts and policies. The presence of a statute or ordinance commanding separation of the races would ease the plaintiff's problems of proof, but here the District Court found that the local officials, by their conduct and policies, had maintained a dual school system in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court of Appeals agreed, and we fail to see why there should be a lesser constitutional duty to eliminate that system than there would have been had the system been ordained by law.
The dissenters in this ease claim a better grasp of the historical and ultimate facts than the two courts below had. But on the issue of whether there was a dual school system in Columbus, Ohio, in 1954, on the record before us we are much more impressed by the views of the judges who have lived with the case over the years. Also, our dissenting Brothers' suggestion that this Court should play a special oversight role in reviewing the factual determinations of the lower courts in school desegregation cases, post, at 491-492 (RehNQUist, J., dissenting), asserts an omnipotence and omniscience that we do not have and should not claim.
It is argued that Dayton I, 433 U. S. 406 (1977), implicitly overruled or limited those portions of Keyes and Swann approving, in certain circumstances, inferences of general, systemwide purpose and current, system-wide impact from evidence of discriminatory purpose that has resulted in substantial current segregation, and approving a systemwide remedy absent a showing by the defendant of what part of the current imbalance was not caused by the constitutional breach. Dayton I does not purport to disturb any aspect of Keyes and Swann; indeed, it cites both cases with approval. On the facts found by the District Court and affirmed by the Court of Appeals at the time Dayton first came before us, there were only isolated instances of intentional segregation, which were insufficient to give rise to an inference of systemwide institutional purpose and which did not add up to a facially substantial systemwide impact. Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman (Dayton II), post, at 531, and n. 5.
Despite petitioners' avowedly strong preference for neighborhood schools, in times of residential racial transition the Board created optional attendance zones to allow white students to avoid predominantly black schools, which were often closer to the homes of the white pupils. For example, until well after the time the complaint was filed, petitioners allowed students in "a small, white enclave on Columbus' predominantly black near-east side . to escape attendance at black" schools. 429 F. Supp., at 244. The court could perceive no racially neutral reasons for this optional zone. Id., at 245. "Quite frankly, the Near-Bexley Option appears to this Court to be a classic example of a segregative device designed to permit white students to escape attendance at predominantly black schools." Ibid.
This technique was applied when neighborhood schools would have tended to desegregate the involved schools. In the 1960's, a group of white students were bused past their neighborhood school to a "whiter" school. The District Court could "discern no other explanation than a racial one for the existence of the Moler discontiguous attendance area for the period 1963 through 1969." Id., at 247. From 1957 until 1963, students living in a predominantly white area near Heimandale Elementary School attended a more remote, but identifiably white school. Id., at 247-248.
Gerrymandering of boundary lines also continued after 1954. The District Court found, for instance, that for one area on the west side of the city containing three white schools and one black school the Board had altered the lines so that white residential areas were removed from the black school's zone and black students were contained within that zone. Id., at 245-247. The Court found that the segregative choice of lines was not justified "as a matter of academic administration" and "had a substantial and continuing segregative impact upon these four west side schools." Id., at 247.
Another example involved the former Mifflin district that had been absorbed into the Columbus district. The Board staff presented two alternative means of drawing necessary attendance zones: one that was desegre-gative and one that was segregative. The Board chose the segregative option, and the District Court was unpersuaded that it had any legitimate educational reasons for doing so. Id., at 248-250.
The District Court found that, of the 103 schools built by the Board between 1950 and 1975, 87 opened with racially identifiable student bodies and 71 remained that way at the time of trial. This result was reasonably foreseeable under the circumstances in light of the sites selected, and the Board was often specifically warned that it was, without apparent justification, choosing sites that would maintain or further segregation. Id., at 241-243. As the Court of Appeals noted:
"[T]his record actually requires no reliance upon inference, since, as indicated above, it contains repeated instances where the Columbus Board was warned of the segregative effect of proposed site choices, and was urged to consider alternatives which could have had an integrative effect. In these instances the Columbus Board chose the segregative sites. In this situation the District Judge was justified in relying in part on the history of the Columbus Board's site choices and construction program in finding deliberate and unconstitutional systemwide segregation." 583 F. 2d, at 804.
Local community and civil rights groups, the "Ohio State University Advisory Commission on Problems Facing the Columbus Public Schools, and officials of the Ohio State Board of Education all called attention to the problem [of segregation] and made certain curative recommendations." 429 F. Supp., at 255. This was particularly important because the Columbus system grew rapidly in terms of geography and number of students, creating many crossroads where the Board could either turn toward segregation or away from it. See id., at 243. Specifically, for example, the University Commission in 1968 made certain recommendations that it thought not only would assist desegregation of the schools but also would encourage integrated residential patterns. Id., at 256. The Board itself came to similar conclusions about what could be done, but its response was "minimal." Ibid. See also id., at 264. Additionally, the Board refused to create a site-selection advisory group to assist in avoiding sites with a segregative effect, refused to ask state education officials to present plans for desegregating the Columbus public schools, and refused to apply for federal desegregation-assistance funds. Id., at 257; see id., at 239. The District Court drew "the inference of segregative intent from the Columbus defendants' failures, after notice, to consider predictable racial consequences of their acts and omissions when alternatives were available which would have eliminated or lessened racial imbalance." Id., at 240.
Petitioners have indicated that a few of the recent violations specifically discussed by the District Court involved so few students and lasted for such a short time that they are unlikely to have any current impact. But that contention says little or nothing about the incremental impact of systemwide practices extending over many years. Petitioners also argue that because many of the involved schools were in areas that had become predominantly black residential areas by the time of trial, the racial separation in the schools would have occurred even without the unlawful conduct of petitioners. But, as the District Court found, petitioners' evidence in this respect was insufiicient to counter respondents' proof. See Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Dev. Corp., 429 U. S. 252, 271 n. 21 (1977); Mt. Healthy City Bd. of Education v. Doyle, 429 U. S. 274, 287 (1977). And the phenomenon described by petitioners seems only to confirm, not disprove, the evidence accepted by the District Court that school segregation is a contributing cause of housing segregation. 429 F. Supp., at 259; see Keyes, 413 U. S., at 202-203; Swann, 402 U. S., at 20-21.
Although the District Court in this case discussed in its major opinion a number of specific instances of purposeful segregation, it made it quite clear that its broad findings were not limited to those instances: "Viewing the Court's March 8 findings in their totality, this case does not rest on three specific violations, or eleven, or any other specific number. It concerns a school board which since 1954 has by its official acts intentionally aggravated, rather than alleviated, the racial imbalance of the public schools it administers. These were not the facts of the Dayton case." App. to Pet. for Cert. 94.
Mr. Justice RehNQUist's dissent erroneously states that we have "reliev[ed] school desegregation plaintiffs from any showing of a causal nexus between intentional segregative actions and the conditions they seek to remedy." Post, at 501. As we have expressly noted, both the District Court and the Court of Appeals found that the Board's purposefully discriminatory conduct and policies had current, systemwide impact — an essential predicate, as both courts recognized, for a systemwide remedy. Those courts reveal a much more knowledgeable and reliable view of the facts and of the record than do our dissenting Brethren.
"For example, there is little dispute that Champion, Felton, Mt. Vernon, Pilgrim and Garfield were de jure segregated by direct acts of the Columbus defendants' predecessors. They were almost completely segregated in 1954, 1964, 1974 and today. Nothing has occurred to substantially alleviate that continuity of discrimination of thousands of black students over the intervening decades." 429 F. Supp., at 260 (footnote omitted).
"The finding of liability in this case concerns the Columbus school district as a whole. Actions and omissions by public officials which tend to make black schools blacker necessarily have the reciprocal effect of making white schools whiter. '[I]t is obvious that a practice of concentrating Negroes in certain schools by structuring attendance zones or designating "feeder" schools on the basis of race has the reciprocal effect of keeping other nearby schools predominantly white.' Keyes\_, swpra, at 201]. The evidence in this ease and the factual determinations made earlier in this opinion support the finding that those elementary, junior, and senior high schools in the Columbus school district which presently have a predominantly black student enrollment have been substantially and directly affected by the intentional acts and omissions of the defendant local and state school boards." Id., at 266.