Even more recently, the Court specifically rejected the claim that a new school district, which admittedly would operate a unitary school system within its borders, was beyond the reach of a court-ordered desegregation plan *776 for other school districts, where the effectiveness of the plan as to the other districts depended upon the availability of the facilities and student population of the new district. This increase in the proportion of Negro students was the highest of any major Northern city. From this the court concluded that the plan "would not accomplish desegregation. Boundary lines may be bridged where there has been a constitutional violation calling for interdistrict relief, but the notion that school district lines may be casually ignored or treated as a mere administrative convenience is contrary to the history of public education in our country. Acts of 1973. Schools with 65% and more Negro students will stand in sharp and obvious contrast to schools in neighboring districts with less than 2% Negro enrollment. See supra, at 725-726.
[13]*732 Thereafter, and following the completion of hearings on the Detroit-only desegregation plans, the District Court issued the four rulings that were the principal issues in the Court of Appeals. Ultimately, it is unresponsive to the goal of attaining the utmost actual desegregation consistent with restraints of practicability and thus augurs the frequent frustration of the remedial powers of the federal courts. This is a task which few, if any, judges are qualified to perform and one which would deprive the people of control of schools through their elected representatives. [1] As this Court stated in Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294, 300: "[E]quity has been characterized by a practical flexibility in shaping its remedies and by a facility for adjusting and reconciling public and private needs. Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430, 437-438 (1968). The boundaries of the Detroit School District, which are coterminous with the boundaries of the city of Detroit, were established over a century ago by neutral legislation when the city was incorporated; there is no evidence in the record, nor is there any suggestion by the respondents, that either the original boundaries of the Detroit School District, or any other school district in Michigan, were established for the purpose of creating, maintaining, or perpetuating segregation of races. Even then the District Court maximized school authority participation by appointing a panel representing both plaintiffs and defendants to develop a plan. George T. Roumell, Jr., and C. Nicholas Revelos filed a brief for respondents Board of Education for the School District of the city of Detroit et al. [2] The District Court's ruling on the Detroit-only desegregation plans is set out in full by the Court of Appeals, id., at 242-245, and is not otherwise officially reported. It does not question the District Court's findings that any feasible Detroit-only plan would leave many schools 75 to 90 percent black and that the district would become progressively more black as whites left the city. The complaint also alleged that the Detroit Public School System was and is segregated on the basis of race as a result of the official policies and actions of the defendants and their predecessors in office, and called for the implementation of a plan that would eliminate "the racial identity of every school in the [Detroit] system and . .' No single tradition in public education is more deeply rooted than local control over the operation of schools; local autonomy has long been thought essential both to the maintenance of community concern and support for public schools and to *742 quality of the educational process. did not have a place for adequate high school facilities." . Milliken v. Bradley , 418 U.S. 717 ( 1974 ). Notwithstanding a record showing widespread and pervasive racial segregation in the educational system provided by the State of Michigan for children in Detroit, this Court holds that the District Court was powerless to require the State to remedy its constitutional violation in any meaningful fashion.
" 484 F.2d 215, 244, 243. ." 905, 907 (1917). 484 F. 2d, at 249. [5] The State, for example, was found to have failed, until the 1971 Session of the Michigan Legislature, to provide authorization or *727 funds for the transportation of pupils within Detroit regardless of their poverty or distance from the school to which they were assigned; during this same period the State provided many neighboring, mostly white, suburban districts the full range of state-supported transportation. . denied, 409 U.S. 844 (1972). Government Action or Statute in Question: Did federal courts have the authority to impose a multi-district desegregation plan on schools outside the Detroit area? School district lines, however innocently drawn, will surely be perceived as fences to separate the races when, under a Detroit-only decree, white parents withdraw their children *805 from the Detroit city schools and move to the suburbs in order to continue them in all-white schools. See also Swann, supra. The State had also stood in the way of past efforts to desegregate the Detroit city schools. . [12] According to the District Court, intervention was permitted under Fed. The rest are all within 8 miles of the Detroit city limits. The result is that the State of Michigan, the entity at which the Fourteenth Amendment is directed, has successfully insulated itself from its duty to provide effective desegregation remedies by vesting sufficient power over its public schools in its local school districts. [10] 257.811 (c), 340.361, 340.781, 340.782, 388.371. Instead, Negro children will continue to attend all-Negro schools.
[20] Under the Michigan School Code of 1955, the local school district is an autonomous political body corporate, operating through a Board of Education popularly elected. ALLEN PARK PUBLIC SCHOOLS et al., Petitioners, v. ... as 741. This Court now reverses the Court of Appeals. . By and Through Bd. , 377 U.S. 218 ( 1964 ), Wallace v. United States , 389 U.S. 215 ( 1967 ), Green v. County School Board , 391 U.S. 430 ( 1968 ), Raney v. Board of Ed. . In light of the high concentration of Negro students in Detroit, the District Judge's finding that a Detroit-only remedy cannot effectively cure the constitutional violation within the city should be enough to support the choice of an interdistrict remedy. of Ed. The District Court's consideration of this case began with its finding, which the majority accepts, that the State of Michigan, through its instrumentality, the Detroit Board of Education, engaged in widespread purposeful acts of racial segregation in the Detroit School District. This finding of a violation of the Equal Protection Clause was upheld by the Court of Appeals, and is accepted by this Court today. The Federal Government has classified the tri-county area as a Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, indicating that it is an area of "economic and social integration." Pet. [24] Apparently, when the District Court, sua sponte, abruptly altered the theory of the case to include the possibility of multidistrict relief, neither the plaintiffs nor the trial judge considered amending the complaint to embrace the new theory. The very evil that Brown I was aimed at will not be cured, but will be perpetuated for the future. Metropolitan treatment of metropolitan problems is commonplace.