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33 Wayne L. Rev. 1693 (1986-1987)

handle is hein.journals/waynlr33 and id is 1707 raw text is: THE PROFOUND IMPACT OF MILLIKEN v. BRADLEY Robert A. Sedlert INTRODUCTION: THE CONSTITUTION AND METROPOLITAN DESEGREGATION Certain constitutional decisions of the United States Supreme Court have a profound impact on American society because they de- termine the constitutional validity of governmental policies and prac- tices that directly shape the nature of our society. Brown v. Board of Education' was such a decision. While Brown itself dealt only with the constitutionality of state-mandated racial segregation in the pub- lic schools of seventeen southern and border states, the effect of the Court's holding in that case was to invalidate all state-imposed racial segregation and with it the official structure of societal racism that existed in the southern part of the nation.2 In retrospect then, Brown was not so much a decision about racial segregation in education as it was a decision about the meaning of racial equality under the fourteenth amendment. In the years following Brown, the Court dealt more specifically with the nature of the constitutional right of children to attend schools that were in fact racially integrated. In this context, a ra- cially integrated school means a school that has a substantial num- ber of both black and white students in attendance, so that the school is not racially identifiable with respect to student composi- t Professor of Law, Wayne State University. B.A. 1956, J.D. 1959, University of Pittsburgh. Ms. Ann Warner, a third-year student at Wayne State University Law School, provided valuable assistance in analyzing the studies and data dealing with white flight and academic achievement. I. 347 U.S. 483 (1954). 2. In a series of per curiam decisions following Brown, the Court invalidated state-imposed segregation with respect to all public facilities. See, e.g., New Orleans City Park Improvement Ass'n v. Deteige, 358 U.S. 54 (1958); Holmes v. City of Atlanta, 350 U.S. 879 (1955); Mayor & City Council of Baltimore v. Dawson, 350 U.S. 877 (1955). In my view, Brown, the companion case of Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 (1954), and the above per curiam decisions, are best explained by the rationale that state-imposed segregation is necessarily unconstitutional because it restricts the liberty of blacks and whites to associate with each other in public facili- ties, and such a restriction is not reasonably related to any proper governmental objective. Sedler, The Constitution and School Desegregation: An Inquiry into the Nature of the Substantive Right, 68 Ky. L.J. 879, 940-44 (1979-1980). 1693

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