Opinion ID: 1320911
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Absence of Local Districts

Text: The district court's finding of an EEOA violation is unreliable because the district court failed to adequately address this circuit's 1982 remand instructions. In 1982, this court questioned whether intervenors' EEOA claim could be appropriately addressed absent local school districts as parties. Specifically, we concluded that there exists little if any practical or logical justification for attempting to deal on a statewide basis with the problems presented by this case. LULAC II, 680 F.2d at 373-74. See also note 4, supra. And we remanded the action to the district court with the following instructions: [T]he language problems to be met will necessarily vary by district.... [W]hether the effect of a local language program, state-mandated or not, constitutes appropriate action to deal with language barriers faced by the students of a given school district will of necessity be an essentially local question.... We fail to see how [a question of Section 1703(f) compliance] can be properly resolved in the absence of the school district concerned or how [it] can effectively be dealt with on a statewide basis.... [W]e therefore direct the district court to determine ... what questionsif anypresented by the case are subject to resolution on a statewide basis before proceeding further on the remand that we mandate. Id. at 374. In light of this court's analysis of the evidence below, we conclude that the issues raised by intervenors' EEOA claim have not been properly addressed in the absence of individual school districts as parties. This court notes that intervenors identified fourteen LULAC members who were parents of one or more LEP students. Those parents represent, in total, twenty LEP students attending schools within three individual school districts. See also note 5, supra. Not one of these school districts is named as a party to this action or located within the Eastern District of Texas. Further, because no school district is a party to the present litigation, the issue remains as to whether the district court constitutes an appropriate district court capable of asserting jurisdiction over intervenors' claim. See 20 U.S.C. § 1708 (The appropriate district court of the United States shall have and exercise jurisdiction of proceedings instituted under [this statute]. (emphasis added)). The district court improperly relied on its remedial jurisdiction under the Modified Order to assert jurisdiction over intervenors' supplemental EEOA claim; thus, it failed to adequately address whether it constituted an appropriate district court pursuant to Section 1708. Congress did not define appropriate district court in the statute, and there is little legislative history or judicial precedent on the issue. We conclude that an appropriate district court is normally the district court in which a local school district, as a party to the action, is located. And once one or more local districts are added as parties in this litigation, the district court should reconsider whether it constitutes an appropriate district court for jurisdictional purposes or if the case should, instead, be handled in a forum that constitutes a proper venue for such additional parties.