Desegregation plans failed to reduce segregation because of demographic and doctrinal limits

Evidence

In the late 1960s, plaintiffs began to sue to promote racial integration in education nationwide. As a result, by 1991 more than half of all public-school students were attending school in districts that had formal desegregation plans. Yet because of changing demographics, white flight, and the Supreme Court’s rejection of interdistrict busing, these efforts did not result in a significant decline in racial segregation. … By 2009, the percentage of black schoolchildren attending majority white public schools was lower than at any time since 1968, and this trend has continued. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 3039

Categorization

• QUESTION: Key structural question for the course: when court-ordered remedies collide with residential geography, does the judiciary have any workable tool left?
• XREF: connects to: Neighborhoods isolated from city and white support could not sustain segregation — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 222