Missouri v. Jenkins

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Missouri v. Jenkins (1995), 515 U.S. 70 (1995), argued 11 Jan. 1995, decided 12 June 1995 by vote of 5 to 4; Rehnquist for the Court joined by O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, O'Connor and Thomas separately concurring, Souter dissenting joined by Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer, Ginsburg separately dissenting.

In a previous appearance, Missouri v. Jenkins (1990), the justices had limited their consideration to disapproving of the federal district court's attempt to raise local and state property taxes to pay for a court‐ordered desegregation plan. This time the Court reviewed the details of what was described as “the most ambitious and expensive remedial program in the history of school desegregation” (p. 78). The plan was self‐consciously designed to attract nonminority students and teachers to move voluntarily from the suburbs to inner‐city schools in the Kansas City school district, that is, to remedy so‐called “white‐flight.” The majority held this purpose and design to indirectly create an interdistrict remedy exceeded the judicial power of the district court, because the constitutional violation—the unlawful segregation by school authorities—was limited to the Kansas City school district. Under the principle of Milliken v. Bradley (1974), such an interdistrict remedy is proper if and only if there was interdistrict segregation.

The dissenters accused the majority of not affording broad discretion and not deferring to district court judges who have lived with these local school desegregation cases for decades. They urged greater respect for creative new remedies addressing the deeply rooted and long‐lasting vestiges of segregation. Otherwise, the federal judiciary would idly stand by while the public schools become resegregated.

Thomas E. Baker

Missouri v. Jenkins (1990), 495 U.S. 33 (1990), argued 30 Oct. 1989, decided 18 Apr. 1990 by vote of 9 to 0; White for the Court, Kennedy, joined by Rehnquist, O'Connor, and Scalia, concurring. As a remedy for segregation in the Kansas City, Missouri, school district, the district court ordered a “magnet school” plan to attract suburban students back to the inner city schools—complete with a planetarium, a twenty‐five‐acre farm, a model United Nations, an art gallery, and swimming pools—at a cost of more than one‐half billion dollars. The state had to pay 75 percent and the district 25 percent, but because the district's portion exceeded state law limits the court also ordered a doubling of the district's property tax.

Declining to review the plan, the Supreme Court unanimously disapproved the order directly raising the property tax. Reasoning from principles of equity and comity and thus avoiding a constitutional holding, Justice Byron White and four other justices approved an indirect remedy to set aside the state law tax limits and allow the district itself to raise the necessary future taxes. Justice Anthony Kennedy and three other justices saw this as a distinction without a difference and would have held that a federal court could not impose a state tax, directly or indirectly.

Five years later the case came back to the High Court. This time, the justices held that the lower federal courts in Missouri had improperly ordered the state to help pay for the showcase desegregation plan for the Kansas City schools.

See also Desegregation Remedies; Injunctions and Equitable Remedies; Lower Federal Courts; Segregation, De Facto.

Thomas E. Baker