The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 1972 on a case involving changes in boundaries of a county school district in Virginia which had been operated as a dual school system. Two weeks after a federal district Court ordered a school-pairing plan, the Emporia City Council announced that city's intention to operate an independent school system. The Supreme Court forbade the breakaway. The same day the Court invalidated a North Carolina statute that authorized creation of a new school district for the city of Scotland Neck. The Supreme Court had not treated the extent of the power of federal courts to order remedies for segregation which would affect directly school districts other than the one at bar in a given case. If a formerly de jure segregated district contains at the time of adjudication such a high per cent of blacks that meaningful racial mixing cannot take place because of the small per cent of whites attending the district's schools, does the federal Constitution require that adjacent districts heavily populated by whites participate in remediating the situation? By a five-to-four vote, on July 25, 1974, the Supreme Court in what has come to be known as the "Detroit case" answered, in effect, "not if those surrounding districts were not themselves involved in discriminatory acts". (Author/JM)