Freeman v. Pitts’s Empirical Analysis
1992
Citation profile
345 federal appellate · 59 district · 42 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 906 later decisions (22 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2025 · most notably Grupo Mexicano Desarrollos v. Alliance Bond Fund Inc, Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)
345 federal appellate · 59 district · 42 state decisions — followed in 12 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Appellate journey
reviewedPitts ex rel. Pitts v. Freeman (from Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al. · Washington v. Davis · Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education · Brown v. Board of Education · Green v. County School Board of New Kent County
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 906 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Racial balance is not to be achieved for its own sake.”
112 later decisions quote this exact passage“A history of good-faith compliance is evidence that any current racial imbalance is not the product of a new de jure violation, and enables the district court to accept the school board’s representation that it has accepted the principle of racial equality and will not suffer intentional discrimination in the future.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“'was intended as a temporary measure to remedy past discrimination,'”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.