Opinion ID: 2967474
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Strict Ratios

Text: Even if I could conclude that a magnet-centered plan was permitted under prior court orders, the plan implemented by CMS is nonetheless ultra vires because it combines a rigid ratio of sixty percent white and forty percent black with a policy decreeing that slots reserved for one race will not be filled by students of another race. J.A. XXXII-15,702.9 In 1970, the district court issued a desegregation order to CMS, noting that the order was not based upon any requirement of ‘racial balance.’ Swann, 311 F. Supp. at 267 (emphasis added). The court reiterated that efforts should be made to reach a 71-29 ratio in the various schools so that there will be no basis for contending that one school is racially different from the others, but . . . that variations from the norm may be unavoidable. Id. at 267-68 (internal quotation marks omitted). On appeal, the Supreme Court affirmed the guidelines set forth in the district court’s order and also addressed the subject of racial quotas. See Swann, 402 U.S. at 23-25. With regard to the district court’s goal of achieving a racial balance of seventy-one percent white and twenty-nine percent black, the Court took care to note that [t]he constitutional command to desegregate schools does not mean that every school in every community must always reflect the racial composition of the school system as a whole. Swann, 402 U.S. at 24. But central to the issue now before us, the Court held that had the district court 9 My colleagues in the majority on this issue eloquently argue that CMS was permitted to take race-conscious measures when complying with desegregation orders. With this I agree—a school district under order to desegregate must of course take race into account when assigning students. The primary question regarding the magnet program, however, is whether CMS ran afoul of the Supreme Court’s prohibitions against inflexible ratios, not whether race-conscious measures are permissible. 52 BELK v. CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG BOARD OF EDUCATION require[d], as a matter of substantive constitutional right, any particular degree of racial balance or mixing, that approach would be disapproved and we would be obliged to reverse. Id. See also Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Bd. of Educ. v. Scott, 404 U.S. 1221, 1227 (1971) (Burger, C.J., in chambers) (describing as disturbing the school board’s understanding that it was required to achieve a fixed ‘racial balance’ that reflected the total composition of the school district). The goal was upheld, only upon the condition that use made of mathematical ratios was no more than a starting point in the process of shaping a remedy, rather than an inflexible requirement. Swann, 402 U.S. at 25. Just two years after the Supreme Court, in this very case, made clear that strict ratios were unacceptable, the district court, in a carefully worded order permitting CMS to create optional schools, approved an intentionally flexible enrollment formula of about or above 20% black students. Swann, 379 F. Supp. at 1104 (emphasis added). The district court recognized that the actual enrollment of the optional school may have to be guided by its racial composition and by the number drawn from each other school area, not by considerations of space and program only. Id. at 1108. Additionally, the district court’s order directed that [r]eassignments to optional schools must not jeopardize the racial composition of any other school. Id. These modifications, however, at no time set a racial ratio of the type disapproved of by the district court in its earlier orders and by the Supreme Court in its 1971 review of the district court’s 1970 order.10 10 I also disagree with the assertion that the Supreme Court’s disapproval of inflexible racial quotas as a desegregation tool is solely a limitation on a district court’s remedial power. While the Swann Court did imply that a school board, exercising its discretion, could conclude . . . that in order to prepare students to live in a pluralistic society each school should have a prescribed ratio of Negro to white students reflecting the proportion for the district as a whole, 402 U.S. at 16, this is certainly not the state of the law today nor was it the state of the law in 1992 when the magnet plan was adopted. At the very least, the Supreme Court decisions in Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 476 U.S. 267, 283 (1986) (plurality opinion applying strict scrutiny to a school board’s BELK v. CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG BOARD OF EDUCATION 53 CMS asserts that the inflexible racial limits adopted in the 1992 magnet-centered plan were countenanced by the 1974 order discussing optional schools.11 In making this argument, CMS ignores the district court’s choice of words in the 1974 order (about or above 20% black students), see Swann, 379 F. Supp. at 1104, and points to an attachment to the order designated as Exhibit A. This exhibit, a proposed pupil assignment plan drafted by CMS and a citizens advisory group, called for optional school enrollment at or above approximately a 20% black ratio. Id. at 1108 (emphasis added). From this language, CMS concludes that strict quotas were permitted. CMS’s concentration on just a portion of the relevant language (at or above) edits out the word approximately, which does not suggest rigidity. Even if Exhibit A could be read as requiring rigid quotas, CMS disregards the fact that the district court approved the guidelines subject to the further conditions stated in the 1974 order. Id. at 1103. With the Supreme Court’s admonition about strict quotas in mind, the district court chose its language carefully, observing that optional schools should have about or above 20% black students. Id. at 1104. Hence, it is the district court’s understanding and modification of the pupil assignment plan that controls, not CMS’s tortured reading. Under a just construction, it is clear that the 1974 order did not approve a use of race to the extent that CMS could deny eager race-based layoff program), and City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469, 494 (1989) (applying strict scrutiny to a racial set-aside program), should have alerted CMS that it could not rely on the pluralistic society passage from the 1971 opinion when crafting a magnet admissions policy that was outside the scope of the desegregation orders. By 1992 such a use of race was not merely discretionary. Prevailing case law required that the racial classification be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling state interest. See J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. at 494. And as demonstrated in section III.B, the admissions policy was in no sense narrowly tailored. 11 In contending that rigid ratios were not used by CMS, several of my colleagues observe that not a single magnet school achieved the precise ratio of sixty percent white students and forty percent black students. This is not surprising insofar as the policy was designed to leave seats vacant. The very act of leaving seats vacant will compel a deviation from the stated goal. However, this in no way undermines a finding of rigidity. Instead, such a result illustrates the policy’s inflexibility. 54 BELK v. CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG BOARD OF EDUCATION applicants an otherwise available slot in a magnet program solely on account of the applicant’s race. Both the district court and the Supreme Court in this very case consistently rejected the use of such rigid racial quotas. I also find no authorization for the board’s adoption of the magnet schools program in the Supreme Court’s 1971 approval in Swann of a majority-to-minority transfer policy that would prevent, for example, an African-American child in a majority white school from transferring to a majority black school because the transfer would increase the degree of segregation in the affected schools. See Swann, 402 U.S. at 26. Because the majority-to-minority transfer policy, like the magnet admissions policy, prevents a child from enrolling in the public school of his choice, CMS argues that the magnet admissions policy is permissible. By definition, however, CMS’s specialized magnet programs are not tantamount to conventional public schools. While a child denied a transfer from one conventional school to another still receives the same general education, a child denied admission to a specialized magnet program does not receive a similar benefit in a conventional school. In other words, an education in a magnet school offering, for example, foreign language immersion, is not interchangeable with an education in a conventional public school.12 Hence, the effect of the magnet admissions policy is far different from the majority-to-minority transfer policy. Unfortunately, the end result of the challenged magnet schools admissions policy is placement of racial quotas ahead of educating students—an inappropriate result nowhere countenanced in the district court’s orders or in the Supreme Court’s desegregation decisions. Cf. Wright v. Council of the City of Emporia, 407 U.S. 451, 463 (1972) (holding that courts should not approve a desegregation plan 12 I recognize that parents might perceive that one fungible conventional school is superior to another because of a number of intangibles such as the reputation of teachers or the newness of facilities. However, these personal preferences do not rise to a level of constitutional significance. See Hampton v. Jefferson County Bd. of Educ., 102 F. Supp. 2d 358, 380 n.43 (W.D. Ky. 2000). Magnet schools, on the other hand, are a completely different animal and therefore the admissions process used must be more closely scrutinized. BELK v. CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG BOARD OF EDUCATION 55 if the plan offers ‘quality education’ to some children, [but] has a substantial adverse effect upon the quality of education available to others). In fact, Brown I struck down segregated schooling because children were denied equal educational opportunities. See Brown I, 347 U.S. at 493. While school boards were permitted to use race in assigning students in order to convert to a unitary system, see North Carolina State Bd. of Educ. v. Swann, 402 U.S. 43, 46 (1971) (holding that the use of race in pupil assignments is one tool absolutely essential to fulfillment of [a school board’s] constitutional obligation to eliminate existing dual school systems), neither the Brown opinions nor the district court orders implementing them ever contemplated that remedial use of race, like the old dual system, would deny some students educational opportunities solely because of their race. See Brown I, 347 U.S. at 493 (holding that an educational opportunity provided by the state must be made available to all on equal terms); see also Bakke, 438 U.S. at 305 (Powell, J.) (When a classification denies an individual opportunities or benefits enjoyed by others solely because of his race or ethnic background, it must be regarded as suspect.).13 Indeed, in bringing suit in 1965, the Swann plaintiffs, in accord with the Brown opinions, simply asked that CMS convert into a unitary nonracial system wherein the educational opportunities offered by [CMS] are made available to students without regard to race or color. J.A. XXXIII-16,162 (original complaint filed by the Swann plaintiffs). An admissions policy that uses rigid racial quotas to deny an available, unclaimed slot in a specialized magnet school to a child, whether black or white, on account of the child’s race cannot be squared with the district court’s orders or the Supreme Court’s desegregation decisions. Since 1971 it has been perfectly clear that mathematical ratios may be used as a starting point in the process of shaping a remedy, but not as an inflexible requirement. See Swann, 13 Though the present case was brought on behalf of a white child denied admission to a magnet school, the policy as written could have just as easily denied a black child admission to the magnet school. See Hampton v. Jefferson County Bd. of Educ., 102 F. Supp. 2d 358, 377 (W.D. Ky. 2000) (racial quota in a magnet school resulting in black students being denied admission even though the school was several hundred students below capacity). 56 BELK v. CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG BOARD OF EDUCATION 402 U.S. at 25. The district court took heed of this admonition in 1974 when it permitted the creation of optional schools with about or above 20% black students. Swann, 379 F. Supp. at 1104 (emphasis added). However, CMS in 1992 ran afoul of the rule announced by the Supreme Court when it crafted strict racial ratios designed to leave open magnet school seats empty, rather than permitting waitlisted students to compete for the slots. Because nothing short of intellectual gymnastics can transform the clear meaning of the Supreme Court’s Swann opinion or the district court’s 1974 order into vehicles countenancing the rigid use of racial ratios, I agree with the district court that the policy is ultra vires and that CMS officials are not entitled to immunity. B. Equal Protection Having determined that the CMS officials are not entitled to immunity for the implementation of the strict race-based magnet school assignment policy, I now turn to the question of whether the officials’ act of implementing the policy without prior court approval, albeit while under an order to desegregate schools, runs afoul of the Equal Protection clause. I would hold that it does. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, [n]o State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. U.S. Const. amend XIV, § 1. By guaranteeing equal protection, the Amendment recognizes that [d]istinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality. Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, 100 (1943). The Supreme Court has refused to make exceptions for so-called benign racial classifications, see Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200, 227 (1995), and the Court has made clear that all racial classifications, imposed by whatever federal, state, or local governmental actor, must be analyzed by a reviewing court under strict scrutiny, id.14 14 The Supreme Court’s application of strict scrutiny has indeed been unwavering. In Adarand, the Court refused to apply a lesser standard of scrutiny to racial classifications enacted by Congress. Though Congress itself is charged with enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment’s promise of BELK v. CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG BOARD OF EDUCATION 57 To survive strict scrutiny, CMS’s use of race in the magnet admissions program must (1) serve a compelling governmental interest and (2) be narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. Tuttle v. Arlington County Sch. Bd., 195 F.3d 698, 704 (4th Cir. 1999), cert. dismissed, 120 S. Ct. 1552 (2000). CMS avers that the magnet admissions policy was adopted to remedy the effects of the dual school system previously operated in Mecklenburg County. Without question, remedying equal protection via appropriate legislation, U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 5, the Supreme Court in interpreting the Fifth Amendment held Congress to the same rigorous standards applicable to states and localities. See Adarand, 515 U.S. at 224 (observing that any person, of whatever race, has the right to demand that any governmental actor subject to the Constitution justify any racial classification subjecting that person to unequal treatment under the strictest judicial scrutiny). CMS and the Swann plaintiffs contend that strict scrutiny does not apply when a school district is under court order to dismantle the dual system. Such an approach, however, ignores two of the three pillars of Supreme Court’s equal protection analysis: skepticism of all racial preferences and consistent application of heightened scrutiny regardless of the race of the person burdened or benefitted. See Adarand, 515 U.S. at 223-24. Contrary to the assertions of CMS and the Swann plaintiffs, the approach I would adopt does not deprive a school board under court order of the necessary tools required to establish a unitary school system. The point of carefully examining the interest asserted by the government in support of a racial classification, and the evidence offered to show that the classification is needed, is precisely to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate uses of race in governmental decisionmaking. . . . Strict scrutiny does not trea[t] dissimilar race-based decisions as though they were equally objectionable; to the contrary, it evaluates carefully all governmental race-based decisions in order to decide which are constitutionally objectionable and which are not. Id. at 228 (internal citations omitted) (alteration in original). This careful evaluation demanded by the Supreme Court will preserve inviolate proper desegregation remedies while ensuring that in the process of desegregating a government actor does not stand equal protection on its head by denying some students educational opportunities solely because of their race. 58 BELK v. CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG BOARD OF EDUCATION the effects of past discrimination is a compelling state interest. See City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469, 493 (1989). In reviewing whether a policy is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest, a court considers factors such as: (1) the necessity of the policy and the efficacy of alternative race neutral policies; (2) the planned duration of the policy; (3) the relationship between the numerical goal and the percentage of minority group members in the relevant population; (4) the flexibility of the policy, including the provision of waivers if the goal cannot be met; and (5) the burden of the policy on innocent third parties. See United States v. Paradise, 480 U.S. 149, 171 (1987) (plurality opinion). Like the district court, I would hold that the CMS magnet admissions policy is not narrowly tailored to the compelling interest of remedying past discrimination. First, the magnet admissions policy was not necessary to comply with the court’s order to dismantle the dual educational system. CMS had a number of options available to it that would not have deprived children, solely on account of their race, an available seat in a specialized magnet program. Instead, CMS opted for rigid racial limits that were clearly prohibited by the district court’s orders and the Supreme Court’s desegregation decisions. Nor is there evidence in the record that added flexibility or a waiver provision would have undermined the use of magnet schools as a desegregation technique. The evidence simply does not reveal that the magnet admissions policy used was the only efficacious option available to CMS. Second, this circuit has emphasized that [t]he use of racial preferences must be limited so that they do not outlast their need; they may BELK v. CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG BOARD OF EDUCATION 59 not take on a life of their own. Hayes v. North State Law Enforcement Ass’n, 10 F.3d 207, 216 (4th Cir. 1993) (internal quotation marks omitted). Like the district court, I can find no mention of the duration that CMS would use racially segregated lotteries, vacancies, and waiting lists. Capacchione, 57 F. Supp. 2d at 290. In light of CMS’s desire to remain under court order for the indefinite future, see supra Part II.H, the lack of a duration for the magnet admissions policy is not surprising. CMS was apparently content, in a number of instances, to leave available magnet seats empty despite the waiting lists. Third, I agree with the district court that the 60-40 numerical goal is related to the relevant population, i.e., the racial composition of schoolchildren in CMS. Capacchione, 57 F. Supp. 2d at 289. However, there is no evidence that CMS considered the practicability of achieving this precise ratio in every magnet school, id. at 290, or the very real danger that magnet schools would be underutilized because seats would be left open despite an abundance of applicants. The result of the admissions policy is but another indication that the CMS administration, in the words of former Superintendent Murphy, was more focused on balance than on [educational] outcomes. J.A. VI2687. Fourth, the district court aptly described the inflexibility in the magnet admissions policy: The Court is hard-pressed to find a more restrictive means of using race than a process that results in holding seats vacant while long waiting lists full of eager applicants are virtually ignored. Capacchione, 57 F. Supp. 2d at 289. The policy is indeed restrictive, but it also borders on obduracy. The policy contained no written waiver provision which, once again, shows a lack of concern that these highly specialized schools could and would be underutilized. Finally, the innocent parties affected are children denied magnet slots solely because of their race and parents who must wait for months without knowing where their children eventually will be placed. Id. at 290. A child’s education is one of the greatest concerns of the family, and CMS unnecessarily causes much agonizing when it places children of the wrong color on waiting lists while it 60 BELK v. CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG BOARD OF EDUCATION actively recruits children of the right color to fill empty magnet school seats. In sum, the magnet admissions policy is not narrowly tailored. The policy is not necessary to dismantle the de jure system, is for an unlimited duration, provides for virtually no flexibility, and burdens innocent children and their families. The policy quixotically purports to establish equal protection of the laws in the realm of public education by denying children an equal opportunity to compete for open, unclaimed slots in CMS’s extraordinary magnet schools. The withholding of seats from white students after all African-American children wishing seats have been given them is most certainly not a narrowly tailored program. Such a result calls to mind why strict scrutiny is used in the first place: Of all the criteria by which men and women can be judged, the most pernicious is that of race. Maryland Troopers Ass’n v. Evans, 993 F.2d 1072, 1076 (4th Cir. 1993). Teaching young children that admission to a specialized academic program with available seats is contingent on their race is indeed pernicious, and CMS’s magnet admissions policy can in no way be described as narrowly tailored to achieve the compelling interest of remedying past discrimination.15 C. Award of Nominal Damages After finding a constitutional violation in the magnet schools, the district court held CMS nominally liable in the amount of one dollar. Capacchione, 57 F. Supp. 2d at 290. CMS argues that the nominal damages awarded were unjustified because the actions resulting in a constitutional violation were taken in good faith. CMS fears that 15 CMS also presented diversity as an alternative compelling state interest. See Capacchione, 57 F. Supp. 2d at 289. In this circuit, it is unsettled whether diversity may be a compelling state interest. See Eisenberg v. Montgomery County Pub. Schs., 197 F.3d 123, 130 (4th Cir. 1999), cert. denied, 120 S. Ct. 1420 (2000). Assuming without deciding whether diversity may be a compelling state interest, I would hold that the magnet admissions policy again fails because it is not narrowly tailored. Whether the interest is remedying past discrimination or diversity, the admissions policy as currently written is in no sense narrow. It is difficult to imagine any interest for which the magnet admissions policy is narrowly tailored. BELK v. CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG BOARD OF EDUCATION 61 the damages award will open the door to numerous suits by other students who could claim that they did suffer actual damages and argue that collateral estoppel prevents CMS from denying liability. Defendants-Appellants’ Brief at 24. Regarding nominal damages, the Supreme Court has observed: Common-law courts traditionally have vindicated deprivations of certain absolute rights that are not shown to have caused actual injury through the award of a nominal sum of money. By making the deprivation of such rights actionable for nominal damages without proof of actual injury, the law recognizes the importance to organized society that those rights be scrupulously observed; but at the same time, it remains true to the principle that substantial damages should be awarded only to compensate actual injury or, in the case of exemplary or punitive damages, to deter or punish malicious deprivations of rights. Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247, 266 (1978) (nominal damages available for denial of procedural due process rights) (footnote omitted); see also Price v. City of Charlotte, 93 F.3d 1241, 1246 (4th Cir. 1996) (stating that the rationale for the award of nominal damages being that federal courts should provide some marginal vindication for a constitutional violation). In the present case there was indeed a constitutional violation. CMS ran afoul of the Equal Protection Clause when it adopted a strict racial quota designed to deny an available, unclaimed slot in a specialized magnet school to a child on account of the child’s race. In order to recover nominal damages, Cristina Capacchione need not prove that absent the unconstitutional policy she would have been admitted to the magnet program. The injury in the present case is not the ultimate inability to enroll in the magnet school, but the inability to compete for seats on an equal basis. See Northeastern Florida Chapter of the Associated Gen. Contractors v. City of Jacksonville, 508 U.S. 656, 666 (1993). Though the two open black seats at the Olde Providence magnet school were eventually awarded to white children, the fact remains that the official magnet admissions policy prohibited children like Cristina from competing for the open slots. In fact, CMS left the two available black seats at Olde Providence 62 BELK v. CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG BOARD OF EDUCATION unfilled for most of the summer while Cristina and over one hundred other white children languished on a waiting list. In Orwellian fashion, CMS marketed Olde Providence as a school to benefit everyone, but in reality permitted only a select few to compete for the benefits bestowed. The nominal award in this case recognizes the importance of equal protection under the law and provides some measure of vindication. As for CMS’s worry about collateral estoppel, liability has already been established, and vacating the nominal damages would not change this. Consequently, I would affirm the district court’s award of nominal damages.