109

93-1823--DISSENT

34 MISSOURI v. JENKINS

today, and holding that courts ordering relief from unconstitutional segregation may, with an appropriate factual predicate, exercise just the authority that the Court today eliminates.

Two terms after Milliken, we decided Hills v. Gautreaux, 425 U. S. 284 (1976), in a unanimous opinion by Justice Steart. The District Court in Gautreaux had found that the United States Department of Housing and and Urban Development (HUD) and the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) had maintained a racially segregated system of public housing within the City of Chicago, in violation of various constitutional and statutory provisions. There was no indication that the violation had produced any effects outside the city itself. The issue before us was whether "the remedial order of the federal trial court [might] extend beyond Chicago's territorial boundaries." Id., at 286. Thus, while JUSTICE O'CONNOR suggests that Gautreaux may not have addressed the propriety of a remedy with effects going beyond the district in which the constitutional violation had occurred, ante at 4-5, her suggestion cannot be squared with our express understanding of the question we were deciding: "the permissibility in light of Milliken of 'inter-district relief for discrimination in public housing in the absence of a finding of an inter-district violation.'" Gautreaux, supra, at 292.

HUD argued that the case should turn on the same principles governing school desegregation orders and that, under Milliken I, the DIstrict Court's order could not look beyond Chicago's city limits, because it was only within those limits that the constitutional violation had been committed. 425 U. S., at 296-297. We agreed with HUD that the principles of Milliken apply outside of the school desegregation context, 425 U. S., at 294, and n. 11, but squarely rejected its restricted interpretation of those principles and its view of limited equitable authority to remedy segregation. We held that a district