The circle of racial segregation in schools has completed itself based on the more recent Supreme Court cases pervasively weakening the welfare of African-American and other students of color as regards an appropriate education. The tenor of the federal courts, though at one ten year period in the 1960's and 1970's serving as a champion of equal educational opportunity rights, have now determined that the vehicle for supporting those rights, a desegregation decree, may not operate in perpetuity. The lawsuit has a short locus of points and soon after state and local control of schools must be restored. This legal phenomenon is not a new one. As noted in this article, southern state officials were sanguine about the language of "Brown II," decided in 1955; changes could be arranged at the pace decided by the wrongdoers themselves and corrective efforts could be premised upon the social and economic conditions of the region. While "Brown I," "Green," "Swann," and "Keyes" required compliance in realistic time, state rights notwithstanding, the more recent Supreme Court decisions have engaged in local authority restoration thereby excusing failure or intended desire not to achieve desegregation. Lower courts have gotten the message, and have been quite willing to dismiss school desegregation lawsuits. Local control is returning. One ten-year study of district court opinions and the appeals of these opinions demonstrated that nearly every request for unitary status was granted. They note that while unitary status is a goal, and not a condition precedent, a return to local control is the intended outcome. Protection from the invidious effects of a segregated education, hence, is bounded by local control of education.