Horne v. Flores

with whom Justice Stevens, Justice Souter, and Justice Ginsburg join, dissenting.

The Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, the President of the Arizona Senate, and the Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives (the petitioners here) brought a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(5) motion in a Federal District Court asking the court to set aside a judgment (and accompanying orders) that the court had entered in the year 2000. The judgment held that the State of Arizona’s plan for funding its English Language Learner program was *473arbitrary, and therefore the State had failed to take “appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation by its” Spanish-speaking public school students “in its instructional programs.” 20 U. S. C. § 1703(f); Castaneda v. Pickard, 648 F. 2d 989, 1010 (CA5 1981) (interpreting “appropriate action” to include the provision of “necessary” financial and other “resources”). The moving parties argued that “significant change[s] either in factual conditions or in law,” Rufo v. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail, 502 U. S. 367, 384 (1992), entitled them to relief. The State of Arizona, the Arizona Board of Education, and the original plaintiffs in the case (representing students from Nogales, Arizona) opposed the superintendent’s Rule 60(b)(5) motion. They are respondents here.

The District Court, after taking evidence and holding eight days of hearings, considered all the changed circumstances that the parties called to its attention. The court concluded that some relevant “changes” had taken place. But the court ultimately found those changes insufficient to warrant setting aside the original judgment. The Court of Appeals, in a carefully reasoned 41-page opinion, affirmed that district court determination. This Court now sets the Court of Appeals’ decision aside. And it does so, it says, because “the lower courts focused excessively on the narrow question of the adequacy of the State’s incremental funding for [English-learning] instruction instead of fairly considering the broader question, whether, as a result of important changes during the intervening years, the State was fulfilling its obligation” under the Act “by other means.” Ante, at 439 (emphasis added).

The Court reaches its ultimate conclusion — that the lower courts did not “fairly consider” the changed circumstances— in a complicated way. It begins by placing these cases in a category it calls “institutional reform litigation.” Ante, at 447. It then sets forth special “institutional reform litigation” standards applicable when courts are asked to modify *474judgments and decrees entered in such cases. It applies those standards, and finds that the lower courts committed error.

I disagree with the Court for several reasons. For one thing, the “institutional reform” label does not easily fit these cases. For another, the review standards the Court enunciates for “institutional reform” cases are incomplete and, insofar as the Court applies those standards here, they effectively distort Rule 60(b)(5)’s objectives. Finally, my own review of the record convinces me that the Court is wrong regardless. The lower courts did “fairly consider” every change in circumstances that the parties called to their attention. The record more than adequately supports this conclusion. In a word, I fear that the Court misapplies an inappropriate procedural framework, reaching a result that neither the record nor the law adequately supports. In doing so, it risks denying schoolchildren the English-learning instruction necessary “to overcome language barriers that impede” their “equal participation.” 20 U. S. C. § 1703(f).

I

A

To understand my disagreement with the Court, it is unfortunately necessary to examine the record at length and in detail. I must initially focus upon the Court’s basic criticism of the lower courts’ analysis, namely, that the lower courts somehow lost sight of the forest for the trees. In the majority’s view, those courts — as well as this dissent — wrongly focused upon a subsidiary matter, “incremental” English-learning program “funding,” rather than the basic matter, whether “changes” had cured, or had come close to curing, the violation of federal law that underlay the original judgment. Ante, at 439. In the Court’s view, it is as if a district court, faced with a motion to dissolve a school desegregation decree, focused only upon the school district’s failure to pur*475chase 50 decree-required school buses, instead of discussing the basic question, whether the schools had become integrated without need for those 50 buses.

Thus the Court writes that the lower courts focused so heavily on the original decree’s “incremental funding” requirement that they failed to ask whether “the State was fillfilling its obligation under” federal law “by other means.” Ibid. And the Court frequently criticizes the Court of Appeals for having “focused almost exclusively on the sufficiency of incremental funding,” ante, at 452; for “confining the scope of its analysis to” the “incremental funding requirement,” ante, at 453; for having “asked only whether changed circumstances affected [English-learning] funding and, more specifically . . . incremental funding,” ibid.; for inquiring only “into whether the deficiency in ... incremental funding that the District Court identified in 2000 had been remedied,” ante, at 454; and (in case the reader has not yet gotten the point) for “focusing so intensively on Arizona’s incremental... funding,” ante, at 455. The Court adds that the District Court too was wrong to have “asked only whether petitioners had satisfied the original declaratory judgment order through increased incremental funding.” Ibid.

The problem with this basic criticism is that the State’s provision of adequate resources to its English-learning students, i. e., what the Court refers to as “incremental funding,” has always been the basic contested issue in these cases. That is why the lower courts continuously focused attention directly upon it. In the context of these cases they looked directly at the forest, not the trees. To return to the school desegregation example, the court focused upon the heart of the matter, the degree of integration, and not upon the number of buses the school district had purchased. A description of the statutory context and the history of these eases makes clear that the Court cannot sensibly drive a *476wedge (as it wishes to do) between what it calls the “incremental funding” issue and the uncured failure to comply with the requirements of federal law.

1

The lawsuit filed in these cases charged a violation of subsection (f) of §204 of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, 88 Stat. 515, 20 U. S. C. § 1703(f). Subsection (f) provides:

“No State shall deny equal educational opportunity to an individual on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin by—

“(f) the failure by an educational agency to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation by its students in its instructional programs.”

The provision is part of a broader Act that embodies principles that President Nixon set forth in 1972, when he called upon the Nation to provide “equal educational opportunity to every person,” including the many “poor” and minority children long “doomed to inferior education” as well as those “who start their education under language handicaps.” See Address to the Nation on Equal Educational Opportunity and Busing, 8 Weekly Comp, of Pres. Doc. 590, 591 (emphasis added) (hereinafter Nixon Address).

In 1974, this Court wrote that to provide all students “with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum” will “effectively foreclos[eJ” those “students who do not understand English . . . from any meaningful education,” making a “mockery of public education.” Lau. v. Nichols, 414 U. S. 563, 566 (emphasis added). The same year Congress, reflecting these concerns, enacted subsection (f) of the Act — a subsection that seeks to “remove language ... barri*477ers” that impede “true equality of educational opportunity.” H. R. Rep. No. 92-1335, p. 6 (1972).

2

In 1981, in Castaneda v. Pickard, 648 F. 2d 989, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit interpreted subsection (f). It sought to construe the statutory word “appropriate” so as to recognize both the obligation to take account of “the need of limited English speaking children for language assistance” and the fact that the “governance” of primary and secondary education ordinarily “is properly reserved to . . . state and local educational agencies.” Id., at 1008, 1009.

The court concluded that a court applying subsection (f) should engage in three inquiries. First, the court should “ascertain” whether the school system, in respect to students who are not yet proficient in English, “is pursuing” an English-learning program that is “informed by an educational theory recognized as sound by some experts in the field or, at least, deemed a legitimate experimental strategy.” Ibid. Second, that court should determine “whether the programs and practices actually used by [the] school system are reasonably calculated to implement effectively the educational theory adopted by the school,” which is to say that the school system must “follow through with practices, resources and personnel necessary to transform” its chosen educational theory “into reality.” Id., at 1010 (emphasis added). Third, if practices, resources, and personnel are adequate, the court should go on to ascertain whether there is some indication that the programs produce “results,” i. e., that “the language barriers confronting students are actually being overcome.” Ibid.

Courts in other Circuits have followed Castaneda’s approach. See, e. g., Gomez v. Illinois State Bd. of Educ., 811 F. 2d 1030, 1041 (CA7 1987); United States v. Texas, 680 F. 2d 356, 371 (CA5 1982); Valeria G. v. Wilson, 12 F. Supp. 2d *4781007, 1017-1018 (ND Cal. 1998). No Circuit has denied its validity. And no party in these cases contests the District Court’s decision to use Castaneda’s three-part standard in these cases before us.

3

The plaintiffs in these cases are a class of English language learner students, i. e., students with limited proficiency in English, who are enrolled in the school district in Nogales, a small city along the Mexican border in Arizona in which the vast majority of students come from homes where Spanish is the primary language. In 1992, they filed the present lawsuit against the State of Arizona, its board of education, and the superintendent, claiming that the State had violated subsection (f), not by failing to adopt proper English-learning programs, but by failing “to provide financial and other resources necessary” to make those programs a practical reality for Spanish-speaking students. App. 7, ¶20 (emphasis added); see Castaneda, supra, at 1010 (second, i. e., “resource,” requirement). In particular, they said, “[t]he cost” of programs that would allow those students to learn effectively, say, to read English at a proficient level, “far exceeds the only financial assistance the State theoretically provides.” App. 7, ¶ 20(a).

The students sought a declaration that the State had “systematically . . . failed or refused to provide fiscal as well as other resources sufficient to enable” the Nogales Unified School District and other “similarly situated [school] districts” to “establish and maintain” successful programs for English learners. Id., at 10, ¶ 28. And they sought an appropriate injunction requiring the provision of such resources. The state defendants answered the complaint. And after resolving disagreements on various subsidiary issues, see id., at 19-30, the parties proceeded to trial on the remaining disputed issue in the case, namely, whether the State and its education authorities “adequately fund and oversee” their English-learning program. Flores v. Ari*479zona, 172 F. Supp. 2d 1225, 1226 (Ariz. 2000) (emphasis added).

In January 2000, after a 3-day bench trial, the District Court made 64 specific factual findings, including the following:

(1) The State assumes that its school districts need (and will obtain from local and statewide sources) funding equal to a designated “base level amount” per child — reflecting the funding required to educate a “typical” student, Flores v. Arizona, 516 F. 3d 1140, 1147 (CA9 2008) — along with an additional amount needed to educate each child with special educational needs, including those children who are not yet proficient in English. 172 F. Supp. 2d, at 1227-1228.

(2) In the year 2000, the “base level amount” the State assumed necessary to educate a typical child amounted to roughly $3,174 (in year 2000 dollars). Id., at 1227.

(3) A cost study conducted by the State in 1988 showed that, at that time, English-learning programming cost school districts an additional $424 per English-learning child. Id., at 1228. Adjusted for inflation to the year 2000, the extra cost per student of the State’s English-learning program was $617 per English-learning child.

(4) In the year 2000, the State’s funding formula provided school districts with only $150 to pay for the $617 in extra costs per child that the State assumed were needed to pay for its English-learning program. Id., at 1229.

The record contains no suggestion that Nogales, or any other school district, could readily turn anywhere but to the State to find the $467 per-student difference between the amount the State assumed was needed and the amount that it made available. See id., at 1230. Nor does the record contain any suggestion that Nogales or any other school district could have covered additional costs by redistributing “base level,” typical-child funding it received. (In the year 2000, Arizona, compared with other States, provided the third-lowest amount of funding per child. U. S. Dept. of Ed*480ucation, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, T. Snyder, S. Dillow, & C. Hoffman, Digest of Education Statistics 2008, Ch. 2, Revenues and Expenditures, Table 184, http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009020.pdf (hereinafter 2008 Digest) (all Internet materials as visited June 28, 2009, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file).)

Based on these and related findings, the District Court concluded that the State’s method of paying for the additional costs associated with English-learning education was “arbitrary and capricious and [bore] no relation to the actual funding needed.” 172 F. Supp. 2d, at 1239. The court added that the State’s provision of financial resources was “not reasonably calculated to effectively implement” the English-learning program chosen by the State. Ibid. Hence, the State had failed to take “appropriate action” to teach English to non-English-speaking students, in that it had failed (in Castaneda’s words) to provide the “practices, resources, and personnel” necessary to make its chosen educational theory a “reality.” 172 F. Supp. 2d, at 1238-1239; see also § 1703(f); Castaneda, 648 F. 2d, at 1010.

The District Court consequently entered judgment in the students’ favor. The court later entered injunctions (1) requiring the State to “prepare a cost study to establish the proper appropriation to effectively implement” the State’s own English-learning program, and (2) requiring the State to develop a funding mechanism that would bear some “reasonably]” or “rational relatio[n] to the actual funding needed” to ensure that non-English-speaking students would “achieve mastery” of the English language. See, e. g., Flores v. Arizona, 160 F. Supp. 2d 1043, 1045, 1047 (Ariz. 2000); No. CV-92-596-TUCACM, 2001 WL 1028369, *2 (D. Ariz., June 25, 2001) (emphasis added).

The State neither appealed nor complied with the 2000 declaratory judgment or any of the injunctive orders. When, during the next few years, the State failed to produce either a study of the type ordered or a funding program rationally related to need for financial resources, the court imposed a *481series of fines upon the State designed to lead the State to comply with its orders. Flores v. Arizona, 405 F. Supp. 2d 1112, 1120 (Ariz. 2005).

In early 2006, the state legislature began to consider HB 2064, a bill that, among other things, provided for the creation of a “Task Force” charged to develop “cost-efficient” methods for teaching English. The bill would also increase the appropriation for teaching English to students who needed to learn it (though it prohibited the spending of any increase upon any particular student for more than two years). In March 2006, the petitioners here (the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, the President of Arizona’s Senate, and the Speaker of its House of Representatives) asked the District Court (1) to consider whether HB 2064, as enacted, would satisfy its judgment and injunctive orders, (2) to forgive the contempt fine liability that the State had accrued, and (3) to dissolve the injunctive orders and grant relief from the 2000 judgment. Motion of Intervenors To Purge Contempt, Dissolve Injunctions, Declare the Judgment and Orders Satisfied, and Set Aside Injunctions as Void in No. CV-92-596-TUC-RCC (D. Ariz., Mar. 24, 2006), Dkt. No. 422, pp. 1-2 (hereinafter Motion To Purge).

The dissolution request, brought under Rule 60(b)(5), sought relief in light of changed circumstances. The “significant changed circumstances” identified amounted to changes in the very circumstances that underlay the initial finding of violation, namely, Arizona’s funding-based failure to provide adequate English-learning educational resources. The moving parties asserted that “Arizona has poured money” into Nogales as a result of various funding changes, id, at 5. They pointed to a 0.6% addition to the state sales tax; to the dedication of a portion of the State’s share of Indian gaming proceeds to Arizona school districts; to the increase in federal funding since 2001; and to HB 2064’s increase in state-provided funding. Id, at 5-8. The parties said that, in light of these “dramatic” additions to the funding available for education in Arizona, the court should *482“declare the judgment and orders satisfied, and ... relieve defendants from the judgment and orders under Rule 60(b)(5).” Id., at 8.

In April 2006, the District Court held that HB 2064 by itself did not adequately satisfy the court’s orders; it denied the request to forgive the fines; but it did not decide the petitioners’ Rule 60(b)(5) motion. In August 2006, the Court of Appeals ordered the District Court to decide that motion, and, in particular, to consider whether changes to “the landscape of educational funding ... required modification of the original court order or otherwise had a bearing on the appropriate remedy.” Flores v. Rzeslawski, 204 Fed. Appx. 580, 582 (CA9 2006) (memorandum).

In January 2007, the District Court held a hearing that lasted eight days and produced an evidentiary transcript of 1,684 pages. The hearing focused on the changes that the petitioners said had occurred and justified setting aside the original judgment. The petitioners pointed to three sets of changed circumstances — all related to “practices, resources, and personnel” — which, in their view, showed that the judgment and the related orders were no longer necessary. They argued that the changes had brought the State into compliance with the Act’s requirements. The three sets of changes consisted of (1) increases in the amount of funding available to Arizona school districts; (2) changes in the method of English-learning instruction; and (3) changes in the administration of . the Nogales school district. These changes, the petitioners said, had cured the resource-linked deficiencies that were noted in the District Court’s 2000 judgment, 172 F. Supp. 2d, at 1239, and rendered enforcement of the judgment and related orders unnecessary.

Based on the hearing and the briefs, the District Court again found that HB 2064 by itself did not cure the “resource” problem; it found that all of the changes, resource-related and otherwise, including the new teaching and administrative methods, taken together, were not sufficient *483to warrant setting aside the judgment or the injunctive orders; and it denied the Rule 60(b)(5) motion for relief. Flores v. Arizona, 480 F. Supp. 2d 1157, 1164-1167 (Ariz. 2007). The Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s conclusions, setting forth its reasons, as I have said, in a lengthy and detailed opinion. The state superintendent, along with the Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives and the President of the Arizona Senate, sought certiorari, and we granted the petition.

B

Five conclusions follow from the description of these cases I have just set forth. First, the Rule 60(b)(5) “changes” upon which the District Court focused included the “changed teaching methods” and the “changed administrative systems” that the Court criticizes the District Court for ignoring. Compare ante, at 459-461, 465-467, with Parts III-A, III-C, infra. Those changes were, in the petitioners’ view, related to the “funding” issue, for those changes reduced the need for increased funding. See Motion To Purge 7. I concede that the majority of the District Court’s factual findings focused on funding, see ante, at 455-456. But where is the legal error, given that the opinion clearly shows that the District Court considered, “Tocus[ed]’” upon, and wrote about all the matters the petitioners raised? Ante, at 456-457; 480 F. Supp. 2d, at 1160-1161.

Second, the District Court and the Court of Appeals focused more heavily upon “incremental funding” costs, see ante, at 452-456, for the reason that the State’s provision for those costs — i. e., its provision of the resources necessary to run an adequate English-learning program — was the basic contested issue at the 2000 trial and the sole basis for the District Court’s finding of a statutory violation. 172 F. Supp. 2d, at 1226. That is, the sole subsection (f) dispute in the cases originally was whether the State provides the “practices, resources and personnel necessary” to implement its English-learning program. Castaneda, 648 F. 2d, at 1010. *484To be sure, as the Court points out, changes other than to the State’s funding system could demonstrate that Nogales was receiving the necessary resources. See, e. g., ante, at 459-461. But given the centrality of “resources” to these cases, it is hardly surprising that the courts below scrutinized the State’s provision of “incremental funding,” but without ignoring the other related changes to which the petitioners pointed, such as changes in teaching methods and administration (all of which the District Court rejected as insufficient). See Part III, infra.

Third, the type of issue upon which the District Court and Court of Appeals focused lies at the heart of the statutory demand for equal educational opportunity. A State’s failure to provide the “practices, resources and personnel necessary” to eliminate the educational burden that accompanies a child’s inability to speak English is precisely what the statute forbids. See Castaneda, supra, at 1010 (emphasizing the importance of providing “resources”); Nixon Address 593 (referring to the importance of providing “financial support”). And no one in these cases suggests there is no need for those resources, e. g., that there are no extra costs associated with English-learning education irrespective of the teaching method used. English-learning students, after all, not only require the instruction in “academic content areas” like math and science that “typical” students require, but they also need to increase their proficiency in speaking, reading, and writing English. This language-acquisition instruction requires particular textbooks and other instructional materials, teachers trained in the school’s chosen method for teaching English, special assessment tests, and tutoring and other individualized instruction — all of which resources cost money. Brief for Tucson Unified School District et al. as Amici Curiae 10-13; Structured English Immersion Models of the Arizona English Language Learners Task Force, http://www.ade.state.az.us/ELLTaskForce/2008/SEIModels 05-14-08.pdf (describing Arizona’s requirement that *485English-learning students receive four hours of language-acquisition instruction per day from specially trained teachers using designated English-learning materials); Imazeki, Assessing the Costs of Adequacy in California Public Schools, 3 Educ. Fin. & Pol’y 90, 100 (2008) (estimating that English-learning students require 74% more resources than typical students). That is why the petitioners, opposed as they are to the District Court’s judgment and orders, admitted to the District Court that English learners “need extra help and that costs extra money.” See 480 F. Supp. 2d, at 1161.

Fourth, the “resource” issue that the District Court focused upon when it decided the Rule 60(b)(5) motion and the statutory subsection (f) issue that lies at the heart of the court’s original judgment (and the plaintiffs’ original complaint) are not different issues, as the Court claims. See ante, at 457-459. Rather, in all essential respects they are one and the same issue. In focusing upon the one, the District Court and Court of Appeals were focusing upon the other. For all practical purposes, changes that would have proved sufficient to show the statutory violation cured would have proved sufficient to warrant setting aside the original judgment and decrees, and vice versa. And in context, judges and parties alike were fully aware of the modification/ violation relationship. See, e. g., Intervenor-Defendants’ Closing Argument Memorandum, No. CV-92-596-TUC-RCC (D. Ariz., Mar. 13,2007), Dkt. No. 631, p. 1 (arguing that factual changes had led to “satisfaction]” of the judgment).

To say, as the Court does, that “[f]unding is merely one tool that may be employed to achieve the statutory objective,” ante, at 459, while true, is beside the point. Of course, a State might violate the Act in other ways. But one way in which a State can violate the Act is to fail to provide necessary “practices, resources and personnel.” And that is the way the District Court found that the State had violated the Act here. Thus, whatever might be true of some other *486case, in these cases the failure to provide adequate resources and the underlying subsection (f) violation were one and the same thing.

Fifth, the Court is wrong when it suggests that the District Court ordered “increased incremental funding,” ante, at 455; when it faults the District Court for effectively “dictating state or local budget priorities,” ante, at 448; when it claims that state officials welcomed the result “as a means of achieving appropriations objectives,” ante, at 447, n. 3; and when it implies that the District Court’s orders required the State to provide a “particular level of funding,” ante, at 469. The District Court ordered the State to produce a plan that set forth a “reasonable” or “rational” relationship between the needs of English-learning students and the resources provided to them. The orders expressed no view about what kind of English-learning program the State should use. Nor did the orders say anything about the amount of “appropriations” that the State must provide, ante, at 447, n. 3, or about any “particular funding mechanism,” ante, at 455, that the State was obligated to create. Rather, the District Court left it up to the State “to recommend [to the legislature] the level of funding necessary to support the programs that it determined to be the most effective.” 160 F. Supp. 2d, at 1044. It ordered no more than that the State (whatever kind of program it decided to use) must see that the chosen program benefits from a funding system that is not “arbitrary and capricious,” but instead “bear[s] a rational relationship” to the resources needed to implement the State’s method. No. CV-92-596-TUCACM, 2001 WL 1028369, *2.

II

Part I shows that there is nothing suspicious or unusual or unlawful about the lower courts having focused primarily upon changes related to the resources Arizona would devote to English-learning education (while also taking account of all the changes the petitioners raised). Thus the Court’s *487basic criticism of the lower court decisions is without foundation. I turn next to the Court’s discussion of the standards of review the Court finds applicable to “institutional reform” litigation.

To understand my concern about the Court’s discussion of standards, it is important to keep in mind the well-known standards that ordinarily govern the evaluation of Rule 60(b)(5) motions. The Rule by its terms permits modification of a judgment or order (1) when “the judgment has been satisfied,” (2) “released,” or (3) “discharged”; when the judgment or order (4) “is based on an earlier judgment that has been reversed or vacated”; or (5) “applying [the judgment] prospectively is no longer equitable.” No one can claim that the second, third, or fourth grounds are applicable here. The relevant judgment and orders have not been released or discharged; nor is there any relevant earlier judgment that has been reversed or vacated. Thus the only Rule 60(b)(5) questions are whether the judgment and orders have been satisfied, or, if not, whether their continued application is “equitable.” And, as I have explained, in context these come down to the same question: Is continued enforcement inequitable because the defendants have satisfied the 2000 declaratory judgment or at least have come close to doing so, and, given that degree of satisfaction, would it work unnecessary harm to continue the judgment in effect? See supra, at 485-486.

To show sufficient inequity to warrant Rule 60(b)(5) relief, a party must show that “a significant change either in factual conditions or in law” renders continued enforcement of the judgment or order “detrimental to the public interest.” Rufo, 502 U. S., at 384. The party can claim that “the statutory or decisional law has changed to make legal what the decree was designed to prevent.” Id., at 388; see also Railway Employees v. Wright, 364 U. S. 642, 651 (1961). Or the party can claim that relevant facts have changed to the point where continued enforcement of the judgment, order, or de*488cree as written would work, say, disproportionately serious harm. See Rufo, supra, at 384 (modification may be appropriate when changed circumstances make enforcement “substantially more onerous” or “unworkable because of unforeseen obstacles”).

The Court acknowledges, as do I, as did the lower courts, that Rufo’s “flexible standard” for relief applies. The Court also acknowledges, as do I, as did the lower courts, that this “flexible standard” does not itself define the inquiry a court passing on a Rule 60(b)(5) motion must make. To give content to this standard, the Court refers to Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U. S. 267, 282 (1977), in which this Court said that a decree cannot seek to “eliminat[e] a condition that does not violate” federal law or “flow from such a violation,” ante, at 450 (internal quotation marks omitted), and to Frew v. Hawkins, 540 U. S. 431, 441 (2004), in which this Court said that a “consent decree” must be “limited to reasonable and necessary implementations of federal law,” ante, at 450 (emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted). The Court adds that in an “institutional reform litigation” case, a court must also take account of the need not to maintain decrees in effect for too long a time, ante, at 448-450, the need to take account of “sensitive federalism concerns,” ante, at 448, and the need to take care lest “consent decrees” reflect collusion between the private plaintiffs and the state defendants at the expense of the legislative process, ante, at 449.

Taking these cases and considerations together, the majority says the critical question for the lower courts is “whether ongoing enforcement of the original order was supported by ah ongoing violation of federal law (here [subsection (f)]).” Ante, at 454. If not — i e., if a current violation of féderal law cannot be detected — then “ ‘responsibility for discharging the State’s obligations [must be] returned promptly to the State.’” Ante, at 452.

One problem with the Court’s discussion of its standards is that insofar as the considerations it mentions are widely *489accepted, the lower courts fully acknowledged and followed them. The decisions below, like most Rule 60(b)(5) decisions, reflect the basic factors the Court mentions. The lower court opinions indicate an awareness of the fact that equitable decrees are subject to a “flexible standard” permitting modification when circumstances, factual or legal, change significantly. 516 F. 3d, at 1163; 480 F. Supp. 2d, at 1165 (citing Rufo, supra, at 383). The District Court’s application of Castaneda’s interpretation of subsection (f), 648 F. 2d, at 1009, along with its efforts to provide state officials wide discretionary authority (about the level of funding and the kind of funding plan), shows considerable sensitivity to “federalism concerns.” And given the many years (at least seven) of state noncompliance, it is difficult to see how the decree can have remained in place too long.

Nor is the decree at issue here a “consent decree” as that term is normally understood in the institutional litigation context. See ante, at 447-450. The State did consent to a few peripheral matters that have nothing to do with the present appeal. App. 19-30. But the State vigorously contested the plaintiffs’ basic original claim, namely, that the State failed to take resource-related “appropriate action” within the terms of subsection (f). The State presented proofs and evidence to the District Court designed to show that no violation of federal law had occurred, and it opposed entry of the original judgment and every subsequent injunctive order, save the relief sought by the petitioners here. I can find no evidence, beyond the Court’s speculation, showing that some state officials have “welcomed” the District Court’s decision “as a means of achieving appropriations objectives that could not [otherwise] be achieved.” Ante, at 447, n. 3. But even were that so, why would such a fact matter here more than in any other case in which some state employees believe a litigant who sues the State is right? I concede that the State did not appeal the District Court’s original order or the ensuing injunctions. But the fact that *490litigants refrain from appealing does not turn a litigated judgment into a “consent decree.” At. least, I have never before heard that term so used.

Regardless, the Court’s discussion of standards raises a far more serious problem. In addition to the standards I have discussed, supra, at 487-488, our precedents recognize other, here outcome-determinative, hornbook principles that apply when a court evaluates a Rule 60(b)(5) motion. The Court omits some of them. It mentions but fails to apply others. As a result, I am uncertain, and perhaps others will be uncertain, whether the Court has set forth a correct and workable method for analyzing a Rule 60(b)(5) motion.

First, a basic principle of law that the Court does not mention — a principle applicable in these cases as in others — is that, in the absence of special circumstances (e. g., plain error), a judge need not consider issues or factors that the parties themselves do not raise. That principle of law is longstanding, it is reflected in Blackstone, and it perhaps comes from yet an earlier age. 3 Commentaries on the Laws of England 455 (1768) (“[I]t is a practice unknown to our law,” when examining the decree of an inferior court, “to examine the justice of the . . . decree by evidence that was never produced below”); Clements v. Macheboeuf, 92 U. S. 418, 425 (1876) (“Matters not assigned for error will not be examined”); see also Savage v. United States, 92 U. S. 382, 388 (1876) (where a party with the “burden ... to establish” a “charge . . . fails to introduce any . . . evidence to support it, the presumption is that the charge is without any foundation”); McCoy v. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology, 950 F. 2d 13, 22 (CA1 1991) (“It is hornbook law that theories not raised squarely in the district court cannot be surfaced for the first time on appeal” for “[o]verburdened trial judges cannot be expected to be mind readers”). As we have recognized, it would be difficult to operate an adversary system of justice without applying such a principle. See Duignan v. United States, 274 U. S. 195, 200 (1927). But the majority *491repeatedly considers precisely such claims. See, e. g., ante, at 463-465 (considering significant matters not raised below); ante, at 470-472 (same).

Second, a hornbook Rule 60(b)(5) principle, which the Court mentions, ante, at 447, is that the party seeking relief from a judgment or order “bears the burden of establishing that a significant change in circumstances warrants” that relief. Rufo, 502 U. S., at 383 (emphasis added); cf. Board of Ed. of Oklahoma City Public Schools v. Dowell, 498 U. S. 237, 249 (1991) (party moving for relief from judgment must make a “sufficient showing” of change in circumstances). But the Court does not apply that principle. See, e. g., ante, at 466-468, and n. 20 (holdi