DECISION BY 5 TO 4
US Sup Ct, in 5‐4 ruling involving Detroit, Mich, and its suburbs, raises major hurdles to merging city and suburban schools for racial integration by all but banning busing of children across school dist lines for desegregation; ruling viewed by supporters of school integration as most serious setback since ‘54 Sup Ct decision banning separate but equal educ facilities; rejection of concept of met school dist in Detroit appears likely to have profound long‐range impact on number of Northern cities where suits are already under way to combine suburban and urban dists to achieve integration; decision would bar busing across any school dist lines for integration, except where both dists were discriminating; justices divided along pol lines, with 5 Repub appointees in majority and 4 Dem appointees in minority; Chief Justice Burger, writing majority opinion, concludes that concededly illegal segregation in city system cannot be eased by combining it with white or mostly white suburbs, even if that is only apparent way to introduce better soc balance; Justice Marshall, in unusually bitter dissent, charges majority with ‘emasculation of our const guarantee of equal protection’ and calls ruling ‘giant step backward’ in school desegregation; as immediate consequence of Detroit ruling, Ct vacates decision requiring city of Louisville, Ky, to merge its school system with surrounding county and a small adjacent city; Burger, for majority, held that integration plan involving more than 1 school dist could be justified only if discriminatory acts in 1 dist produced segregation in other, or where dist lines had been deliberately drawn to separate races; NAACP counsel Nathaniel R Jones comments (L)
