Significance: In this case the Supreme Court authorized the use of busing as a tool for desegregating public schools. The ruling also provided guidelines that federal judges should use for ordering desegregation.
Background: After the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, many southern school districts tried to find ways to avoid desegregating their public schools. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district was a large geographical region that included both rural and urban areas and served about 84,000 students. About 30 percent of the school population was African American. Most of the African Americans lived in one part of the city. The Board of Education created a plan to desegregate their schools that included free bus transfers and geographic zoning. Despite these measures, over half of the black students continued to attend schools with few white students or teachers. A federal judge ordered the Charlotte school district to enact a new desegregation program that involved busing about 13,000 students in more than 100 new buses. The Board of Education argued that this program would be an unreasonable financial burden on the school district.
Decision: This case was argued on October 12, 1970, and decided on April 20, 1971, by a vote of 9 to 0. Chief Justice Warren Burger spoke for the Court, which approved the federal plan for desegregation. The Court placed some restrictions on the scope of federal power to enforce desegregation but also stated that once violations had been found, federal judges had the right to require school districts to use methods like busing and mathematical ratios to desegregate schools.
Excerpt from the Opinion of the Court: “The District Court's conclusion that assignment of children to the school nearest their home serving their grade would not produce an effective dismantling of the dual system is supported by the record. Thus the remedial techniques used in the District Court's order were within that court's power to provide equitable relief; implementation of the decree is well within the capacity of the school authority. The decree provided that the buses used to implement the plan would operate on direct routes…. This system compares favorably with the transportation plan previously operated in Charlotte…. In these circumstances, we find no basis for holding that the local school authorities may not be required to employ bus transportation as one tool of school desegregation. Desegregation plans cannot be limited to the walk-in school.”
