Fisher

In 1974, African American and Mexican American students sued the Tucson, Arizona, school system, alleging intentional segregation and unconstitutional discrimination on the basis of race and national origin. For some 30 years after the parties settled in 1978, Tucson’s schools operated subject to a federally enforced desegregation decree. In a careful review of the progress under the decree, the district court concluded that the school district had failed to act in good faith compliance with its desegregation obligations, but nonetheless declared the Tucson school system “unitary” and terminated court jurisdiction. Because Supreme Court precedent requires continuing court supervision under these circumstances, we reverse and remand.

I

In the wake of the Brown decisions, federal courts fashioned and enforced desegregation decrees to ensure that school districts that once operated “state-compelled dual systems” performed their “affirmative duty to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a unitary system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch.” Green v. Cnty. Sch. Bd. of New Kent Cnty., Va., 391 U.S. 430, 437-38 , 88 S.Ct. 1689 , 20…