73

93-1823--CONCUR

MISSOURI v. JENKINS

initial and most important aspect of any remedy will be to eliminate any invidious racial distinctions in matters such as student assignments, transportation, staff, resource allocation, and activities. This element of most desegregation decrees is fairly straightforward and has not produced many examples of overreaching by the district courts. It is the "compensatory" ingredient in many desegregation plans that has produced many of the difficulties in the case before us.

Having found that segregation "has caused a system wide reduction in student achievement in the schools of the KCMSD," 639 F. Supp., at 24, the District Court ordered the series of magnet school plans, educational programs, and capital improvements that the Court criticizes today because of their interdistrict nature. In ordering these programs, the District Court exceeded its authority by benefitting those who were not victims of discriminatory conduct. KDMSD as a whole may have experienced reduced achievement levels, but raising the test scores of the entire district is a goal that is not sufficiently tailored to restoring the victims of segregation to the position they would have occupied absent discrimination. A school district cannot be discriminated against on the basis of its race, because a school district has no race. It goes without saying that only individuals can suffer from discrimination, and only individuals can receive the remedy.

Of course, a district court may see fit to order necessary remedies that have the side effect of benefitting those who were not victims of segregation. But the court cannot order broad remedies that indiscriminately benefit a school district as a whole, rather than the individual students who suffered from discrimination. Not only do such remedies tend to indicate "efforts to achieve broader purposes lying beyond" the scope of the violation, "Swann, 402 U. S., at 22, but they also force