1993—In furtherance of his 1985 desegregation plan for the Kansas City, Missouri, School District—a plan that will become (according to the description embraced by Chief Justice Rehnquist) the “most ambitious and expensive remedial program in the history of school desegregation”—federal district judge Russell G. Clark orders the state of Missouri to fund salary increases for school-district staff in order to improve the “desegregative attractiveness” of the school district to non-minority students outside the district. By the time the Supreme Court reviews this and similar orders, the total salary assistance that Clark will have required the state of Missouri to provide will exceed $200 million.
In its 1995 decision in Missouri v. Jenkins, the Supreme Court will rule, by a 5-to-4 vote, that Clark’s orders of salary increases exceed his “admittedly broad discretion.”