The Law: Desegreation: A Historic Reversal

Desegregation: A Historic Reversal

Should suburban residents be drawn into the struggles of big cities to achieve racial balance in their schools? Last week the Supreme Court answered that emotional question in the negative. In a far-reaching and bitterly fought decision that came a day after the Watergate-tapes opinion, the court voted 5 to 4 against a plan to desegregate Detroit's primarily black school system by merging it with the mostly white systems of three surrounding counties.

As in many other big cities, the exodus of white middle-class residents to the suburbs has left Detroit with a school enrollment that is 70% black. Four years ago, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sued to equalize the racial composition of schools within Detroit's city limits. Federal District Judge Stephen D. Roth (who died three weeks ago at the age of 66) approved of that goal, but went even further; he ordered the busing of thousands of Detroit's black students to classes in 53 school systems outside city limits, including such upper-class suburban enclaves as Bloomfield Hills, Grosse Pointe and Birmingham. An appeals court upheld much of the plan, and last fall the state and two threatened suburban school districts appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court.

No Power. For the majority, Chief Justice Warren Burger ruled that the original 1972 Detroit cross-district busing plan was improper because whatever the situation in Detroit itself, the school systems in the surrounding suburbs had not been accused of unlawful segregation. Concluded Burger: "Where the schools of only one district have been affected, there is no constitutional power in the courts to decree relief balancing the racial composition of that district's schools with those of the surrounding districts."

In sum, the ruling meant that busing from one community-wide school district to another is not a proper remedy for school segregation in Detroit or, by implication, in any other city. Burger's opinion left one small avenue open to cross-district busing: a court could order it in cases where intentional segregation in one district leads to a "significant segregative effect in another district." One example might be where district lines are clearly and intentionally drawn on the basis of race. Otherwise, Burger argued, school-district boundary lines should not be treated casually by judges because "no single tradition in public education is more deeply rooted than local control."