interjected. Chambers said Oklahoma City is a segregated community; no one expects whites to move to the black residential area. But segregated means blacks aren't allowed to move to white areas, Scalia responded.

Kennedy suggested that the busing order had not helped, because the city was back to where it had been. Chambers disagreed, saying the injunction had addressed the practices that caused discrimination, and that Swift and Swann require that the injunction remain in force until the last vestiges of discrimination are removed.

What if the same residential pattern exists 100 years from now? O'Connor inquired. Chambers said the decree should remain in effect until elimination of vestiges that would cause resegregation even under a neutral plan. Forty percent of the black children remain in segregated schools, he noted.

But if a quarter century of busing hasn't helped, how is it justifiable? Scalia demanded. It countered the residential segregation that the court was trying to address, and helped integrate the schools, Chambers responded. The question is how do we ensure that black children are not relegated to all black schools, he added.

So the remedy is permanent, not transitional, Scalia offered. Chambers replied that the desegregation plan is designed to remedy a constitutional violation; we can't say for how long....

The decision was rendered on the issues presented by the parties on Jan. 15, 1991, in Board of Educ. of Oklahoma City P.Sch. v. Dowell, 111 S.Ct. 630, as summarized in the heading:

The Supreme Court, Chief Justice Rehnquist, held that: (1) school district was not required to show grievous wrong evoked by new and unforeseen conditions in order to have desegregation decree dissolved; (2) desegregation decrees are not intended to operate in perpetuity; and (3) in determining whether to dissolve desegregation decree, court