Revisiting Milliken v. Bradley : Michigan v. the City of Detroit

In the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Milliken v. Bradley (1974), its majority held that “no single tradition in public education is more deeply rooted than local control.” The court’s opinion overturned US District Court judge Stephen Roth’s order for metropolitan desegregation to remedy segregation in Detroit. Histories of the Milliken decision have often narrated its meaning and consequence through metropolitan histories of segregation, but the legal issue at the heart of Judge Roth’s holding and the court’s decision to overturn it concerned the state’s educational authority and whether state constitutional violations enabled more expansive remedies. This article retraces the policy and legal history of state power in producing segregation and inequality before and after the Milliken decision. It illustrates how the Supreme Court’s reasoning produced a political situation in which State policymakers could uphold segregation and inequality without consequence when isolating Detroit’s schools for intervention.