Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U.S. 267 (1977)

Milliken v. Bradley

No. 76-447

Argued March 22, 1977
Decided June 27, 1977
433 U.S. 267

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

Syllabus

After this Court, in Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (Milliken I), determined that an inter-district remedy for de jure segregation in the Detroit school system exceeded the constitutional violation, and remanded the case for formulation of a decree, the District Court promptly ordered submission of desegregation plans limited to the Detroit school system. After extensive hearings the court, in addition to a plan for student assignment, included in its decree educational components, proposed by the Detroit School Board, in the areas of reading, in-service teacher training, testing, and counseling. The court determined that these components were necessary to carry out desegregation, and directed that the costs were to be borne by the Detroit School Board and the State. The Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s order concerning the implementation of and cost sharing for the four educational components.

Held:

1. As part of a desegregation decree, a district court can, if the record warrants, order compensatory or remedial educational programs for schoolchildren who have been subjected to past acts of de jure segregation. Here the District Court, acting on substantial evidence in the record, did not abuse its discretion in approving a remedial plan going beyond pupil assignments and adopting specific programs that had been proposed by local school authorities. Pp. 279-288.

(a) "In fashioning and effectuating [desegregation] decrees, the courts will be guided by equitable principles," Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294, 300, and, in applying such principles, federal courts are to focus on the nature and scope of the violation, the fact that the decree must be remedial, and the interests of state and local authorities in managing their own affairs. Pp. 280-281.

(b) Where, as here, a constitutional violation has been found, the remedy does not "exceed" the violation if the remedy is tailored to cure the "condition that offends the Constitution," Milliken I, supra at 738, i.e., Detroit’s de jure segregated school system. Matters other than pupil assignment must on occasion be addressed by federal courts to eliminate the effects of prior segregation, United State v. MontgomeryCounty Board of Education, 395 U.S. 225, and federal courts have, over the years, required inclusion of remedial programs in desegregation plans, when the record warrants, to remedy the direct consequences of dual school systems. Pp. 281-288.

2. The requirement that the state defendants pay one-half the additional costs attributable to the four educational components does not violate the Eleventh Amendment, since the District Court was authorized to provide prospective equitable relief, even though such relief requires the expenditure of money by the State. Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 668. Pp. 288-290.

3. The Tenth Amendment’s reservation of nondelegated powers to the States is not implicated by a federal court’s judgment enforcing the express prohibitions of unlawful state conduct enacted by the Fourteenth Amendment, nor are principles of federalism abrogated by the decree. P. 291.

540 F.2d 229, affirmed.

BURGER, C.J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BRENNAN, STEWART, WHITE, MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, REHNQUIST, and STEVENS, JJ., joined. MARSHALL, J., filed a concurring opinion, post, p. 291. POWELL, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 292.