Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/550

 502us2$26D 01-22-99 08:32:58 PAGES OPINPGT

392

RUFO v. INMATES OF SUFFOLK COUNTY JAIL Opinion of the Court

with success if the defendants had offered opposition.” Swift, 286 U. S., at 116–117. Within these constraints, the public interest and “[c]onsiderations based on the allocation of powers within our federal system,” Dowell, supra, at 248, require that the district court defer to local government administrators, who have the “primary responsibility for elucidating, assessing, and solving” the problems of institutional reform, to resolve the intricacies of implementing a decree modification. Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294, 299 (1955). See also Missouri v. Jenkins, 495 U. S. 33, 50–52 (1990); Milliken II, 433 U. S., at 281.14 Although state and local officers in charge of institutional litigation may agree to do more than that which is minimally required by the Constitution to settle a case and avoid further litigation, a court should surely keep the public interest in mind in ruling on a request to modify based on a change in conditions making it substantially more onerous to abide by the decree. To refuse modification of a decree is to bind all future officers of the State, regardless of their view of the necessity of relief from one or more provisions of a decree that might not have been entered had the matter been litigated to its conclusion. The District Court seemed to be of the view that the problems of the fiscal officers of the State were only marginally relevant to the request for modification in this case. 734 F. Supp., at 566. Financial constraints may not be used to justify the creation or perpetuation of constitutional violations, but they are a legitimate concern of government defendants in institu14 The concurrence mischaracterizes the nature of the deference that we would accord local government administrators. As we have stated, see supra, at 383, the moving party bears the burden of establishing that a significant change in circumstances warrants modification of a consent decree. No deference is involved in this threshold inquiry. However, once a court has determined that a modification is warranted, we think that principles of federalism and simple common sense require the court to give significant weight to the views of the local government officials who must implement any modification.