Court Opinion

ID: 9426960
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:20.300358+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:04.093934
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
concurring in the judgment.
The Court today reaffirms the authority of the federal courts “to grant appropriate relief of this sort [i. e., busing] when constitutional violations ón the part of school officials are proved. Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver, Colorado, 413 U. S. 189 (1973) . . . .” Ante, at 410. In this case, however, the violations actually found by the District Court were not sufficient to justify the remedy imposed. Indeed, *422none of the parties contends otherwise. Respondents nowhere argue that the three “cumulative violations” should by themselves be sufficient to support the comprehensive, sys-temwide busing order imposed. Instead, they urge us to find that other, additional actions by the School Board appearing in the record should be used to support the result. The United States, as amicus curiae, concedes that the “three-part 'cumulative’ violation found by the district court does not support its remedial order,” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 21, and also urges us to affirm the busing order by resort to other, additional evidence in the record. Under this circumstance, I agree with the result reached by the Court. I do so because it is clear from the holding in this case, and that in Milliken v. Bradley, ante, at 288, also decided today, that the “broad and flexible equity powers” of district courts to remedy unlawful school segregation continue unimpaired.
This case thus does not turn upon any doubt of power in the federal courts to remedy state-imposed segregation. Rather, as the Court points out, it turns upon the “proper allocation of functions between the district courts and the courts of appeals within the federal judicial system.” Ante, at 409. . As the Court recognizes, the task of the district ■courts and courts of appeals is a particularly difficult one in school desegregation cases, ante, at 420. Although the efforts of both the District Court and the Court of Appeals in this protracted litigation deserve our commendation, it is plain that the proceedings in the two courts resulted in a remedy going beyond the violations so far found.
On remand, the task of the District Court, subject to review by the Court of Appeals, will be to make further findings of fact from evidence already in the record, and, if appropriate, as supplemented by additional evidence. The additional facts, combined with those upon which the violations already found are based, must then be evaluated to determine what relief is appropriate to remedy the re-*423suiting unconstitutional segregation. In making this determination, the courts of course “need not, and cannot, close their eyes to inequalities, shown by the record, which flow from a longstanding segregated system.” Milliken v. Bradley, ante, at 283.
Although the three violations already found are not of themselves sufficient to support the broad remedial order entered below, this is not to' say that the three violations are insignificant. While they are not sufficient to justify the remedy imposed when considered solely as unconstitutional actions, they clearly are very significant as indicia of intent on the part of the School Board. As we emphasized in Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver, Colo., 413 U. S. 189, 207 (1973): “Plainly, a finding of intentional segregation as to a portion of a school system is not devoid of probative value in assessing the school authorities’ intent with respect to other parts of the same school system.” Once segregative intent is found, the District Court may more readily conclude that not only blatant, but also subtle actions — and in some circumstances even inaction — justify a finding of unconstitutional segregation that must be redressed by a remedial busing order such as that imposed in this case.
If it is determined on remand that the School Board’s unconstitutional actions had a “systemwide impact,” then the court should order a “systemwide remedy.” Ante, at 420. Under Keyes, once a school board’s actions have created a segregated dual school system, then the school board “has the affirmative duty to desegregate the entire system 'root and branch.’ ” 413 U. S., at 213. Or, as stated by the Court today in Milliken, the school board must “take the necessary steps 'to eliminate from the public schools all vestiges of state-imposed segregation.’ ” Ante, at 290 (quoting Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U. S. 1, 15 (1971)). A judicial decree to accomplish this result must be formulated with great sensitivity to the practicalities of the *424situation, without ever losing sight of the paramount importance of the constitutional rights being enforced. The District Court must be mindful not only of its “authority to grant appropriate relief,” ante, at 410, but also of its duty to remedy fully those constitutional violations it finds. It should be flexible but unflinching in its use of its equitable powers, always conscious that it is the rights of individual schoolchildren that are at stake, and that it is the constitutional right to equal treatment for all races that is being protected.