However, over the 18-year span of the case, the court ordered remedies that were focused instead on improving educational facilities and programs inside KCMSD.

The Supreme Court ruled that while direct imposition of taxes is indeed beyond judicial authority, the district court could order the school district to levy the same tax: "Authorizing and directing local government institutions to devise and implement remedies not only protects the function of these institutions but, to the extent possible, also places the responsibility for solutions to the problems of segregation upon those themselves who have created the problem."

The Supreme Court added, "To hold otherwise would fail to take account of the obligations of local governments, under the Supremacy Clause, to fulfill the requirements that the Constitution imposes upon them.

The Supreme Court majority interpreted Brown v. Board of Education as restricting only de jure segregation and referred to Milliken v. Bradley and other precedents as applying only to intra-district desegregation.

The Court looked to Board of Education of Oklahoma City Public Schools v. Dowell for the decisive question of "'whether the [constitutional violator] ha[s] complied in good faith with the desegregation decree since it was entered, and whether the vestiges of past discrimination ha[ve] been eliminated to the extent practicable.'"