HOW DID THE COURT ADDRESS GENDER?
In Personnel Administrators of Massachusetts v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256 (1979), the court held on legitimate and worthy purposes. See also Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Developments Corp., 429 U.S. 252 (1977).
The court cited the issue of zoning.
The courts main Intent of purpose focused on the remedies and problems of school segregation.
The court discussed that if a court finds that there is an equal protection violation, it then must fashion a remedy.
Furthermore, the remedy is simply invalidating the discriminatory law.
The court cited Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303 (1879), and Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), stating that in some cases, the court must go further and fashion an injunction.
In Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294 (1955), the court ruled that school authorities have the primary responsibility for elucidating, assessing, and solving these problems; courts will have to consider whether the action of school authorities constitutes good faith implementation of the governing constitutional principles.
The court concluded that because of their proximity to local conditions and the possible need for further hearings, the courts which originally heard these cases can best perform this judicial appraisal.
The court held it appropriate to remand the cases to those courts.
The court reversed the judgment, remanding the cases to the District Courts to take such proceedings and enter such orders and decrees consistent with this opinion as are necessary and proper to admit to public schools on a racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed the parties to these cases.
Moreover, the court stated 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.
Furthermore, the court held judicial authority enters only when local authority defaults.
In Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974), the issue is whether a federal court may impose a multidistrict, area wide remedy to a single-district segregation problem without any finding that the other included school districts have failed to operate unitary school systems within their districts. Moreover, the court stated that without any claim or finding that the boundary lines of any affected school district established the fostering racial segregation in public schools. In addition, the court ruled that without any finding that the included districts committed acts effecting segregation within the other districts, and without a meaningful opportunity for the propriety of a multidistrict remedy or on the question of constitutional violations by those neighboring districts.
The court stated the controlling principle consistently expounded in our holdings is that the scope of the remedy determining the nature and extent of the constitutional violation.
Moreover, before the boundaries of separate and autonomous school districts may be set aside by consolidating the separate units for remedial purposes or by imposing a cross-district.
In specific, the court stated that it must be shown that racially discriminatory acts of the state or local school districts or of a single school district have been a substantial cause of inter-district segregation. Thus, an inter-district remedy might be in order where the racially discriminatory acts of one or more school districts caused racial segregation in an adjacent district, or where district lines have been deliberately drawn on the basis of race.
The court ruled that in such circumstances an inter-district remedy would be appropriate to eliminate the inter-district segregation directly caused by the constitutional violation.
In converse, without an inter-district violation and inter-district effect, there is no constitutional wrong calling for an inter-district remedy.
Moreover, with no showing of significant violation by the fifty-three outlying school districts and no evidence of any inter-district violation or effect, the court went beyond the original theory of the case as framed by the pleadings and mandated a metropolitan area remedy.
Furthermore, to approve the remedy ordered by the court, it would impose on the outlying districts, not shown to have committed any constitutional violation, a wholly impermissible remedy based on a standard not hinted at in Brown I and II or any holding of this court.
In Milliken, the court precludes an inter-district remedy unless there is proof of an inter-district violation.
The court implied a multidistrict remedy be formulated for those districts whose own policies fostered discrimination or if state law caused the inter-district segregation. Otherwise, the remedy can include only those districts found to violate the Constitution.
In Milliken, the defense based its argument on the traditional principle that a court has the authority to impose a remedy only after it has proven that the person or entity violated the law. Furthermore, the critics of Milliken argue that the segregated pattern in major metropolitan areas, blacks in the city and whites in the suburbs, did not occur by accident, but rather was the product of myriad government policies.
In Pasadena City Board of Education v. Spangler, 427 U.S. 424 (1976), the court stated that “having once implemented a racially neutral attendance pattern in order to remedy the perceived constitutional violations on the part of the defendants, the District Court had fully performed its function of providing the appropriate remedy for previous racially discriminatory attendance patterns.”
In Board of Education of Oklahoma City Public Schools v. Dowell, 498 U.S. 237 (1991), the court discussed the issue of “Unitary.”
The court stated a unitary school district is one that has met the mandate of Brown v. Board of Education (1955). Some courts have used it to identify a school district that has completely remedied all vestiges of past discrimination.
However, some courts have used “unitary” to describe any school district that has currently desegregated student assignments, whether or not that status is solely the result of a court-imposed desegregation plan.
In addition, such a school district could be called unitary and nevertheless still contain vestiges of past discrimination. The court implied a belief that a desegregation decree cannot be lifted so long as conditions likely to inflict the stigmatic injury condemned in Brown I persist and there remain feasible methods of eliminating such conditions.
In Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U.S. 467 (1992), the Supreme Court said that once a portion of a desegregation order is not met, the federal court should cease its efforts as to that part and remain involved only as to those aspects of the plan that have not been achieved.
The Supreme Court held that once a desegregation order is complied with, the federal court effort should be ended.
In addition, the court ruled disparity in test scores is not a basis for continued federal court involvement.
The most recent Supreme Court decision concerning remedies for segregation involved whether school districts may choose to use race as a factor in assigning students to achieve diversity in schools. The court in a 5-4 decision said no.
In Parents involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 127 S. Ct. 2738 (2007), the school district relies upon an individual student’s race in assigning that student to a particular school, so that the racial balance at the school falls within a predetermined range based on the racial composition of the school district as a whole.
