Byron White

“ 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. ”

“ Board of Education which entail the same sensitivity to the interest of parents in the education their children receive as would an inter-district plan which is likely to employ the very same methods. There is no reason to suppose that the District Court, which has not yet adopted a final plan of desegregation, would not be as capable of giving or as likely to give sufficient weight to the interest in community participation in schools in an inter-district setting, consistent with the dictates of the Fourteenth Amendment. ”

“ The task is not to devise a system of pains and penalties to punish constitutional 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. ”

“ 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 Detroit school district is both large and heavily populated. It covers 139.6 square miles, encircles two [p765] 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. [1] 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. ”

“ School District No. 1, Denver, Colorado, 413 U.S. 189 (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 ”

“ If restructuring is required to meet constitutional requirements, local authority may simply be redefined in terms of whatever configuration is adopted, with the parents of the children attending schools in the newly demarcated district or attendance zone continuing their participation in the policy management of the schools with which they are concerned most directly. ”

“ 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." ”

“ City of Detroit cannot be accomplished within the corporate geographical limits of the city. Ibid.
The District Court therefore considered extending its remedy to the suburbs. After hearings, it concluded that a much more effective desegregation plan could be implemented if the suburban districts were included. ”

“ 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. ”