In the recent appeals by school officials in Dowell (1991) and Freeman (1992) to be released from federal court busing orders, the Supreme Court emphasized that federal judicial supervision of local school systems was intended to be temporary as necessary to eliminate the vestiges of unconstitutional de jure systems. Those decisions allow a district court to withdraw its supervision over such a school district in the area of school assignments, upon compliance in that area of school operations, while maintaining supervision in other areas.

It follows that a neighborhood school plan can be sought by such a school district, even though it results in some racial "imbalance" in some schools caused by independent demographic factors, upon a proper showing by it to the supervising trial court. But making that showing will not be an easy task, as stated in concurrence by Justice Scalia in Freeman, 112 S.Ct. at 1450:

Our decision... will have little effect, however, upon the many other school districts throughout the country that are still being supervised by federal judges, since it turns upon the extraordinarily rare circumstance of a finding that no portion of the current racial imbalance is a remnant of prior de jure discrimination. While it is perfectly appropriate for the Court to decide this case on that narrow basis, we must resolve — if not today, then soon — what is to be done in the vast majority of other districts, where, though our cases continue to profess that judicial oversight of school operations is a temporary expedient, democratic processes remain suspended, with no prospect of restoration, 38 years after... (Brown I).