Milliken v. Bradley

A federal district court ruled in 1971 that the city of Detroit was racially segregated because of official policies and state actions. To establish a unitary nonracial school system, the court ordered the Detroit school board to submit a Detroit-only desegregation plan and also a plan that covered 3 counties and 85 surrounding school districts. The court determined that a metropolitan plan was appropriate since a Detroit-only plan was inadequate to accomplish desegregation; therefore the desegregation remedy would go beyond the district's limits of Detroit. A panel was appointed by the court to produce a plan that would place 53 of the 85 suburban school districts into a desegregation plan with Detroit. The U.S. Court of Appeals of the Sixth District upheld the district court's desegregation remedy plan of having interdistrict busing and combining the 53 districts plus Detroit into one system. The Court of Appeals ruled in 1972 that this was an appropriate remedial plan within the equity powers of the federal district court.

The case was appealed to the Supreme Court. The Court agreed to hear the case

Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, writing for the majority, ruled that it was improper to impose a multidistrict remedy unless there was evidence that the adjoining districts had not operated unitary school systems and had committed acts of segregation. If it could be established that the 53 districts were involved in racial segregation or some constitutional violation, then a multidistrict desegregation plan may be appropriate.

The 5–4 decision was delivered by a sharply divided Court. Justice Potter Stewart noted this when he filed his concurring opinion. He stated, “I think it appropriate, in view of some of the extravagant language of the dissenting opinion, to state briefly my understanding of what it is the Court [Page 563]decided today.” He went on to say that it violated common sense to include school districts that were not in the original desegregation lawsuit against Detroit that had not engaged in unconstitutional discrimination. Justice Stewart did say that an interdistrict remedy could be proper or even necessary if the factual situation showed purposeful racial discrimination by all parties.