Court Opinion

ID: 9426526
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:18:12.653255+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:01.480817
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Marshall,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan joins, dissenting.
I cannot agree with the Court that the District Court’s refusal to modify the “no majority of any minority” provision of its order was erroneous. Because at the time of the refusal “racial discrimination through official action,” Swann v. Board of Education, 402 U. S. 1, 32 (1971), had apparently not yet been eliminated from the Pasadena school system, it is my view that the District Court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to dissolve a major part of its order.
*442In denying petitioners’ motion for modification of the 1970 desegregation order, the District Court described a 3-year pattern of opposition by a number of the members of the Board of Education to both the spirit and letter of the Pasadena Plan. It found that “the Pasadena Plan has not had the cooperation from the Board that permits a realistic measurement of its educational success or failure.” 375 F. Supp. 1304, 1308 (CD Cal. 1974) (footnote omitted). Moreover, the 1974 Board of Education submitted to the District Court an alternative to the Pasadena Plan, which, at least in the mind of one member of the Court of Appeals, “would very likely result in rapid resegregation.” 519 F. 2d 430, 435 (CA9 1975). I agree with Judge Ely that there is “abundant evidence upon which the district judge, in the reasonable exercise of his discretion, could rightly determine that the 'dangers’ which induced the original determination of constitutional infringements in Pasadena have not diminished sufficiently to require modification or dissolution of the original Order.” Id., at 434.
The Court’s conclusion that modification of the District Court’s order is mandated is apparently largely founded on the fact that during the Pasadena Plan’s first year, its implementation did result in no school’s having a majority of minority students. According to the Court, it follows from our decision in Swann, supra, that as soon as the school attendance zone scheme had been successful, even for a very short period, in fulfilling its objectives, the District Court should have relaxed its supervision over that aspect of the desegregation plan. It is irrelevant to the Court that the system may not have achieved “ 'unitary’ status in all other respects such as the hiring and promoting of teachers and administrators.” Ante, at 438 n. 5.
In my view, the Court, in so ruling, has unwarrantedly extended our statement in Swann that “[n] either school *443authorities nor district courts are constitutionally required to make year-by-year adjustments of the racial composition of student bodies once the affirmative duty to desegregate has been accomplished and racial discrimination through official action is eliminated from the system.” 402 U. S., at 31-32 (emphasis added). That statement recognizes on the one hand that a fully desegregated school system may not be compelled to adjust its attendance zones to conform to changing demographic patterns. But on the other hand, it also appears to recognize that until such a unitary system is established, a district court may act with broad discretion — discretion which includes the adjustment of attendance zones — so that the goal of a wholly unitary system might be sooner achieved.
In insisting that the District Court largely abandon its scrutiny of attendance patterns, the Court might well be insuring that a unitary school system in which segregation has been eliminated “root and branch,” Green v. County School Board, 391 U. S. 430, 438 (1968), will never be achieved in Pasadena. For at the point that the Pasadena system is in compliance with the aspects of the plan specifying procedures for hiring and promoting teachers and administrators, it may be that the attendance patterns within the system will be such as to once again manifest substantial aspects of a segregated system. It seems to me singularly unwise for the Court to risk such a result.
We have held that “[o]nce 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.” Swann v. Board of Education, supra, at 15. As the Court recognizes, ante, at 432, there is no issue before us as to the validity of the District Court’s original judgment that unconstitutional segregation existed in the Pasadena *444school system. Thus, there is no question as to there being both a “right and a violation.” Moreover, at least as of the time that the District Court acted on the request for modification, the violation had not yet been entirely remedied. Particularly, given the breadth of discretion normally accorded a district court in fashioning equitable remedies, I see no reason to require the District Court in a case such as this to modify its order prior to the time that it is clear that the entire violation has been remedied and a unitary system has been achieved.1 We should not compel the District Court to modify its- order unless conditions have changed so much that “dangers, once substantial, have become attenuated to a shadow.” United States v. Swift & Co., 286 U. S. 106, 119 (1932). I, for one, cannot say that the District Court was in error in determining that such attenuation had not yet taken place and that modification of the order would “surely be to sign the death warrant of the Pasadena Plan and its objectives.” 375 P. Supp., at 1309. Accordingly, I dissent.2

 In the course of final argument, the District Judge did make the spontaneous statement that the 1970 order "meant to me that at least during my lifetime there would be no majority of any minority in any school in Pasadena.” As did the Court of Appeals, I disapprove the statement to the extent that it suggests that continuous redistricting can be required “even after the court has determined that its plan has been effectively implemented and racial discrimination [has been] eliminated from the system.” 519 F. 2d, at 438 (emphasis added).

 While I dissent from the Court’s opinion, I do acknowledge the narrowness of its holding. Ante, at 435. For instance, the Court intimates that it would view this case differently if the demographic changes were themselves a product of a desegregation order. Ibid. Moreover, as the Court observes, this case does not involve an attendance-zone requirement calling “for defendants to submit ‘step at a time’ plans by definition incomplete at inception.” Ibid.