6 There is simply no foundation in the record, then, for the majority's accusation that the only basis for the District Court's order was some desire to achieve a racial balance in the Detroit metropolitan area. Wright, U.S. 1016 The creation of the school districts in Metropolitan Detroit either maintained existing segregation or caused additional segregation. Supp., at 595. 1043 (ED Tex. Footnote 12 Indeed, that one of the purposes of the transportation restriction was to impede desegregation was evidenced when the Michigan Legislature amended the State Transportation Aid Act to cover intracity transportation but expressly prohibited the allocation of funds for cross-busing of students within a school district to achieve racial balance. 2 in Michigan. . ." . 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. Laws 340.461-340.468. U.S., at 26 Earn Transferable Credit & Get your Degree. 73-435, Allen Park Public Schools et al. 484 F.2d, at 249. 8, 2, 3. 411 Glickstein & Want, Inequality in School Financing: The Role of the Law, 25 Stan. 402 In school segregation 413 Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion leading to prompt formulation of a decree directed to eliminating the segregation found to exist in Detroit city schools, a remedy which has been delayed since 1970. As the District Court stated: "From the initial ruling [on segregation] to this day, the basis of the proceedings has been and remains the violation: de jure school segregation. Justice Thurgood Marshall, who was the attorney for Brown in Brown v. Board of Education clearly articulated the stakes in this issue in his separate dissent. Thus, in 1960, of Detroit's 251 ; Green, BURGER, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which STEWART, BLACKMUN, POWELL, and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined. U.S. 717, 736] U.S. 717, 729] 0000004173 00000 n
About 40% of the residents of the two suburban counties included in the desegregation plan work in Wayne County, in which Detroit is situated. While in 1960, 68% of all schools were 90% or more one race, by 1970, 71.6% of the schools fell into that category. ] See 1 Michigan Senate Journal, 1968, p. 423. Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, [418 All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners. As to distance, the average statewide bus trip is 8 1/2 miles one way, and in some parts of the tri-county area, students already travel for one and a quarter hours or more each way. It is conceivable that ghettos develop on their own without any hint of state action. 73-435 and 73-436. 1, 1955 Report of the Attorney General 561 (Kavanagh); 1961-1962 Report of the Attorney General 533 (Kelley). All rights reserved. And given the 1,000 or so consolidations of school districts which have taken place in the past, it is hard to believe that the State has not already devised means of solving most, if not all, of the practical problems which the Court suggests consolidation would entail. (1972) (one or more school districts created and maintained for one race). Nor can it be said that the State is free from any responsibility for the disparity between the racial makeup of Detroit and its surrounding suburbs. It can be supported only by drastic expansion of the constitutional right itself, an expansion without any support in either constitutional principle or precedent.''. 391 Const., Art. bear the initial burden of coming forward with a proposal that promises to work." 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. 0000008896 00000 n
Footnote 3 . Google Chrome, 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. 1 That these broad principles have developed in the context of dual school systems compelled or authorized by state statute at the time of Brown v. Board of Education, More significantly, the District Court recognized that in the context of a community which historically had a school system marked by rigid de jure segregation, the likely effect of a Detroit-only plan would be to "change a school system which is now Black and White to one that would be perceived as Black . Since no inventory of school buses existed, a Detroit-only plan was estimated to require the purchase of 900 buses to effectuate the necessary transportation. (1969). the State denies equal protection of the laws when its public agencies, acting in its behalf, invidiously discriminate. ] 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.