Opinion ID: 3155557
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Remand, Pretrial Motions, and the Bench Trial

Text: On remand, the district court permitted additional discovery; then both parties moved for summary judgment. The district court denied Lewis’s motion and granted in part and denied in part the Board’s motion. Two aspects of the district court’s ruling are relevant here. First, the district court “conclude[d] 10 Importantly, these statistics appear only in Lewis’s submissions on summary judgment. Lewis appears to have derived these statistics from data compiled by Bridget Thomas, a “concerned parent,” whose children attended schools within the District and who testified as a lay witness at trial. There is no mention of these statistics in Lewis’s post-trial briefing or in his appellate briefs. 11 Case: 15-30030 Document: 00513274476 Page: 12 Date Filed: 11/17/2015 No. 15-30030 that the School Board’s consideration of projected racial and socioeconomic data prior to voting does not amount to a racial classification.” It correspondingly denied “Lewis’[s] request that the Court review Option 2f under strict scrutiny on this basis” and granted “[t]he School Board’s request that the Court dismiss Lewis’[s] claim that Option 2f employs a racial classification.” Second, the district court denied “the School Board’s request that the Court dismiss Lewis’[s] remaining Equal Protection claim on th[e] basis” that “Lewis cannot establish that [his children] were treated differently than similarly situated students of a different race”—namely, white students in the Dutchtown and St. Amant feeder zones. Despite announcing that it was “unable to consider all of the evidence presented until after a full trial on the merits,” the district court “conclude[d],” based on “the evidence presented here, [the] context of this matter, and factors considered by the School Board when it adopted Option 2f,” that the plaintiff’s children “are, in fact, similarly situated to white students in the Dutchtown High School and St. Amant High School feeder zones.” The case proceeded to a three-day bench trial. At the opening of the trial, the Board orally requested that the district court reconsider several of its rulings in its summary-judgment order, including its conclusion on the “similarly situated” issue. The district court denied the Board’s requests without prejudice to the Board’s right to reurge them in its post-trial briefs. Lewis made no request that the district court reconsider its ruling that Option 2f did not employ racial classifications. At trial, Lewis called ten witnesses: five members of the Board who voted on Option 2f, Demographics Application Specialist Duplechein, Lewis, Lewis’s son, Bridget Thomas (a “concerned parent” who compiled statistics on the rezoning options), and Dr. Percy Bates (an expert witness in educational 12 Case: 15-30030 Document: 00513274476 Page: 13 Date Filed: 11/17/2015 No. 15-30030 psychology). The Board, in turn, called two witnesses: Patrice Pujol, current Superintendent of the Board, and former Superintendent Songy. Following post-trial briefing, the district court issued Rule 52 findings of fact and conclusions of law. The court’s findings of fact are summarized in Part I(A), supra. The court opened its conclusions of law with a summary of Lewis’s theory: “Here, the gravamen of Lewis’s section 1983 claim is that the School Board has denied nonwhite students in the East Ascension High School attendance zone equal educational opportunities, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, by adopting a school rezoning plan that ‘feeds’ a disproportionate number of at-risk students into the East Ascension High School attendance zone.” The court then held that: (1) Option 2f does not employ explicit racial classifications, (2) Lewis failed to prove that nonwhite students in the East Ascension attendance zone are similarly situated to white students in the Dutchtown and St. Amant attendance zones, and, in turn, that Option 2f accords disparate treatment to similarly situated students of a different race, and (3) even if Lewis had proven that Option 2f treats similarly situated students differently on the basis of race, the record evidence does not support the conclusion that Option 2f has had a discriminatory effect on nonwhite students in the East Ascension feeder zone. Accordingly, the court omitted discussion of whether the Board acted with a discriminatory purpose. In addition, the court did not identify the level of scrutiny it would apply to Lewis’s challenge to Option 2f; it held only that “Lewis has not satisfied his burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that [the Board’s] adoption of Option 2f violates the Equal Protection Clause.” Lewis timely appealed.