## Facts

- Private plaintiffs sued Tennessee officials in 1968, alleging a racially dual system of tax-supported public higher education, particularly involving Tennessee State University (historically Black) and the University of Tennessee–Nashville (predominantly White).
- The United States intervened under 42 U.S.C. § 2000h-2 to support enforcement of federal civil-rights law in dismantling segregation.
- Over many years, multiple remedial plans were attempted, and the district court found they failed to achieve meaningful desegregation.
- The district court ordered a merger of TSU and UT–N as part of the remedy, and that order was affirmed in earlier appellate proceedings.
- After the merger order, the parties negotiated a comprehensive stipulation that the district court entered as a consent decree.
- The district court found a compelling interest in eliminating residual effects of de jure segregation in Tennessee higher education and found lesser measures had not worked.
- The decree included a cooperative professional-education program intended to increase Black enrollment in professional schools, requiring admission of selected Black candidates who completed undergraduate requirements and met minimum admissions standards, with a goal of 75 Black professional-school candidates annually for five years.
- Only the United States objected to the consent decree’s professional-schools component, arguing it exceeded equitable remedial power and violated equal protection.

## Issues

1. Whether the district court exceeded its equitable remedial authority by approving, via consent decree, a race-conscious cooperative program aimed at increasing Black enrollment in professional schools to remedy de jure segregation in public higher education.
2. Whether the professional-education program violated the Equal Protection Clause by creating impermissible race-based preferences if Black underrepresentation in professional schools was not a vestige of the prior dual system.

## Decision

- The Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court’s approval of the consent decree.
- The court held the district court acted within its broad equitable authority to eradicate vestiges of de jure segregation in public higher education.
- The court held the professional-education program did not violate equal protection because it served a compelling remedial interest and was sufficiently limited and connected to identified vestiges of segregation.
- The court deferred to the district court’s fact-finding that ongoing disparities, including in professional-school enrollment, were traceable to prior state-sponsored segregation and that less intrusive remedies had failed.

## Legal Principles

- A state found to have maintained de jure segregation in public education bears an affirmative duty to eliminate all vestiges of state-imposed segregation; that duty applies to public higher education.
- Once a constitutional violation is established, district courts possess broad equitable power to craft remedies reasonably related to curing the violation and its effects, especially where prior efforts have proven ineffective.
- Race-conscious remedial measures may be permissible when supported by a compelling remedial interest and sufficiently constrained to address identified effects of prior de jure segregation.
- Appellate courts generally defer to a district court’s approval of a negotiated consent decree and its factual findings in long-running desegregation litigation absent clear error.

## Conclusion

The Sixth Circuit upheld a consent decree addressing Tennessee’s continuing vestiges of de jure segregation in public higher education, including a time-limited, standards-based professional-schools program designed to increase Black participation, concluding the remedy fell within equitable desegregation powers and satisfied equal protection requirements.


Geier v. Alexander, 801 F.2d 799 (6th Cir. 1986)