Opinion ID: 772626
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Wrong Legal Standard

Text: 61 With the foregoing principles and standards in mind, we turn to the case before us. Appellants argue, inter alia, 26 that the district court committed reversible error by relying upon our opinion in Lockett v. Board of Education of Muscogee County, 92 F.3d 1092 (11th Cir.1996) (Lockett I). 27 In Lockett I, a panel of this Court reversed a district court's finding of unitary status and ordered the district court to retain jurisdiction ... to monitor the progress of the school district's desegregation efforts until the school district could show that it ha[d] desegregated its schools to the maximum extent practicable. Id. at 1101 (emphasis added). Lockett I was subsequently vacated by the same panel. See Lockett II, 111 F.3d at 840-45. 62 The district judge, in relying on Lockett I, applied the wrong legal standard. The law does not require, as stated in Lockett I, that a school board eliminate the vestiges of past discrimination to the maximum extent practicable. 92 F.3d at 1101 (emphasis added). Rather, the law merely requires that the vestiges of past discrimination be eliminated to the extent practicable. Lockett II, 111 F.3d at 842 (emphasis added); accord Jenkins, 515 U.S. at 90, 115 S.Ct. at 2050; 28 Freeman, 503 U.S. at 492, 112 S.Ct. at 1446; Dowell, 498 U.S. at 250, 111 S.Ct. at 638; United States v. Georgia, 171 F.3d 1344, 1347 (11th Cir.1999); Lee, 963 F.2d at 1425. The district judge incorrectly referred to the maximum extent practicable (or possible) standard at least 12 times in her opinion of October 24, 1998, and four times in her order of December 4, 1998. See Manning, 24 F.Supp.2d at 1287, 1289, 1290, 1292, 1293, 1301, 1312, 1326, 1334, 1335; Manning, 28 F.Supp.2d at 1356, 1359, 1360. 63 Accordingly, the critical issue is whether the district judge's repeated use of the wrong legal standard sufficiently tainted or infected the findings of fact so as to strip those findings of the insulation normally accorded under Rule 52(a). See supra Part II.A; Corley, 566 F.2d at 1001. We would not permit an inadvertent use of language by a district court to constitute reversible error. Here, however, we are persuaded that the district judge's mistake is more than mere inadvertence. 29 As we discuss immediately below, the district judge's findings on student assignments and good faith were tainted (and thus stripped of Rule 52(a) protection) because the district judge held Appellants to a higher standard than the law requires. 64