Opinion ID: 313353
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Constitutional Violations

Text: 37 (A) Constitutional violations found to have been committed by the Detroit Board of Education: 38 (1) Segregative zoning and assignment practices. 39 (a) The District Judge found that the Detroit Board of Education formulated and modified attendance zones to create or perpetuate racial segregation. He also found that the feeder system for junior and senior high schools was designed to maintain rather than eliminate black or white schools at the higher levels. Its practice of shaping school attendance zones on a north-south rather than an east-west orientation resulted in attendance zone boundaries conforming to racial dividing lines. 40 (b) He further found that the Detroit Board of Education's policies involved a substantial number of instances of transporting black children past white schools with available school space. 41 He also found that it was the policy of the Board of Education to create optional attendance areas which permitted white students to transfer to all white or predominately white schools located nearer the city limits. 42 The District Judge also found that the policies of the Detroit Board of Education (and State Board of Education) concerning school construction in some instances had the purpose of segregating students on a racial basis and in many others resulted in maintaining or increasing segregation. 43 The District Judge's findings of fact pertaining to alteration of zones and feeder patterns are as follows: 44 The Board has created and altered attendance zones, maintained and altered grade structures and created and altered feeder school patterns in a manner which has had the natural, probable and actual effect of continuing black and white pupils in racially segregated schools. The Board admits at least one instance where it purposefully and intentionally built and maintained a school and its attendance zone to contain black students. Throughout the last decade (and presently) school attendance zones of opposite racial compositions have been separated by north-south boundary lines, despite the Board's awareness (since at least 1962) that drawing boundary lines in an east-west direction would result in significant integration. The natural and actual effect of these acts and failures to act has been the creation and perpetuation of school segregation. There has never been a feeder pattern or zoning change which placed a predominantly white residential area into a predominately black school zone or feeder pattern. Every school which was 90% or more black in 1960, and which is still in use today, remains 90% or more black. 338 F.Supp. at 588. 45 The legal conclusion of the District Judge is as follows: 46 5. The Board's practice of shaping school attendance zones on a north-south rather than an east-west orientation, with the result that zone boundaries conformed to racial residential dividing lines, violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Northcross v. Board of Ed. of Memphis, 6 Cir., 333 F.2d 661. 338 F.Supp. at 592-593. 47