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Volume 8 no. 2 MISSOURI v. JENKINS
In Jenkins the Court held that salary increases for instructional and noninstructional staff ordered as part of a desegregation remedy went beyond the authority of the Court. These initiatives, the Court reasoned, sought to increase the "dese gregation attractiveness" of the school district in order to attract non-minority students not enrolled in the system. Since the lower courts had previously ruled that the only violation was within the district and that there was no interdist rict violation, the remedy exceeded the scope of the violation. In addition, the 5-4 decision, written by Chief Justice Rehnquist, cast doubt on the use of achievement data to determine whether educational disparities caused by segregation had been remed ied.
Background
The Supreme Court's June 12, 1995, decision was the latest action in an ongoing school desegregation case that has been before the federal courts since 1977 and in which the state of Missouri had been held in part responsible for the segregation of the Ka nsas City, Missouri school district (KCMSD). The district court in 1984 had found that action of the state and the KCMSD had caused a systemwide reduction of achievement.
In 1985, the district court fashioned a far-reaching plan that included high-quality educational programs designed to remedy the education harm the court found was caused by segregation. A secondary consideration was "to attract majority students to KCMSD schools in order to provide minority students with a multiracial educational experience." In the same year, however, the district court rejected a claim by plaintiffs that segregative violations had been interdistrict in scope and called for a metropolitan remedy.
The 1985 remedy included the development of magnet schools and other high quality educational programs to improve the students' achievement levels as measured by national achievement tests, and a salary scale to increase the pay of teachers and administra tors "to aid in the recruitment and retention of staff at all levels and areas of responsibility." The state challenged the scope of the District Court's remedial authority.
The Opinions
Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote the five-justice majority opinion which was joined by Justices O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas. The opinion states:
"A district court seeking to remedy an intradistrict violation that has not 'directly caused' significant interdistrict effects...exceeds its remedial authority if it orders a remedy with an interdistrict purpose...
. "The District Court's pursuit of 'desegregative attractiveness' cannot be reconciled with our cases placing limitations on a district court's remedial authority.
The Court held that:
"The District Court's pursuit of the goal of 'desegregative attractiveness' results in so many imponderables and is so far removed from the task of eliminating the racial identifiability of the schools within the KCMSD that we believe it is beyond th e admittedly broad discretion of the District Court. In this posture, we conclude that the District Court's order of salary increases, which was 'grounded in remedying the vestiges of segregation by improving the desegregative attractiveness of the KCMSD ,'...is simply too far removed from an acceptable implementation of a permissible means to remedy previous legally mandated segregation....
"Similar considerations lead us to conclude that the District Court's order requiring the State to continue to fund the quality education programs because student achievement levels were still 'at or below national norms at many grade levels' cannot be sustained....
"Insistence upon academic goals unrelated to the effects of legal segregation unwarrantably postpones the day when the KCMSD will be able to operate on its own....
"It may be that in education, just as it may be in economics, a 'rising tide lifts all boats,' but the remedial quality education program should be tailored to remedy the injuries suffered by the victims of prior de jure segregation.... Minority stud ents in kindergarten through grade 7 in the KCMSD always have attended AAA-rated schools; minority students in the KCMSD that previously attended schools rated below AAA have since received remedial education programs for a period of up to seven years.
"On remand, the District Court must bear in mind that its end purpose is not only 'to remedy the violation' to the extent practicable, but also 'to restore state and local authorities to the control of a school system that is operating in compliance with the Constitution."
In sending the case back, the majority suggested that the lower courts consider the "incremental effect that segregation has had on minority student advancement or the specific goals of the quality education programs."
Justice Thomas in a concurring opinion asserts that "the federal courts...should avoid using racial equality as a pretext for solving social problems that do not violate the Constitution.... The District Court sought to bring new funds and facilities into the KCMSD by finding a constitutional violation on the part of the State where there was none. Federal courts should not lightly assume that States have caused 'racial isolation' in 1984 by maintaining a segregated school in 1954. We must forever put aside the notion that simply because a school district today is black, it must be educationally inferior."
Justice Souter in a dissenting opinion that was joined by Justices Stevens, Ginsburg and Breyer asserts that the majority's disposal of two of the District Court's remedial orders (salary increases and quality education programs) by declaring them interdi strict remedies for intradistrict violations (and thus beyond the court's remedial authority) addresses an issue that the Court did not accept and that was not properly briefed, and on which the Supreme Court denied certiorari in 1989.
Justice Souter states that the questions presently before the Court focused "on two discrete issues: the extent to which a district court may look at students' test scores in determining whether a school district has attained partial unitary status a s to its...educational programs, and whether the particular salary increases ordered by the District Court constitute a permissible component of its order." Thus, Justice Souter states, the majority's consideration of the magnet school remedy and it s limitation on the district court's remedial authority has rendered "an opinion anchored in neither the findings and evidence contained in the record, nor in controlling precedent, which is squarely at odds with the Court's holding today."
Justice Souter also criticizes the Court's assertion that the magnet program and other measures were an improper interdistrict remedy for a intradistrict violation.
"We did not hold, however, that any remedy that takes into account conditions outside of the district in which a constitutional violation has been committed is an 'interdistrict remedy,' and as such improper in the absence of an 'interdistrict violat ion.' To the contrary, by emphasizing that remedies in school desegregation cases are grounded in traditional equitable principles...we left open the possibility that a district court might subject a proven constitutional wrongdoer to a remedy with inten ded effects going beyond the district of the wrongdoer's violation, when such a remedy is necessary to redress the harms flowing from the constitutional violation.
"The Court, nonetheless, reads Milliken I quite differently. It reads the case as categorically forbidding imposition of a remedy on a guilty district with intended consequences in a neighboring innocent district, unless the constitutional vio lation yielded segregative effects in that innocent district....Today's decision therefore amounts to a redefinition of the terms of Milliken I and consequently to a substantial expansion of its limitation on the permissible remedies for prior segr egation."
Justice Souter continues that the Court has "not only rewritten Milliken I" but also Hills v. Gautreaux. In that case, an interdistict remedy (federally subsidized low-income housing) for an intradistrict violation was permitted b ecause it did not override local control by requiring action by "uninvolved governmental units."
Thus the Souter dissent concludes:
"The District Court's remedial measures go only to the operation and quality of schools within the KCMSD, and the burden of those measures accordingly falls only on the two proven constitutional wrongdoers in this case, the KCMSD and the State. And insofar as the District Court has ordered those violators to undertake measures to increase the KCMSD's attractiveness to students from other districts and thereby to reverse the flight attributable to their prior segregative acts, its orders do not repre sent an abuse of discretion, but instead appear 'wholly commensurate with the 'nature and extent of the constitutional violation' [quoting Milliken]"
For further discussion, see CIVIL RIGHTS MONITOR, vol. 7, no.6, February 1995.
  
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