Opinion ID: 201118
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Historical background: alleged presumption of discriminatory intent

Text: 39 Plaintiffs claim that because the Old Plan was unconstitutional, and the New Plan perpetuates the Old Plan's effects in violation of defendants' alleged duty to eliminate their duel [sic] assignment system of the Old Plan, we should infer that the New Plan was adopted with a discriminatory intent. To support this contention, plaintiffs quote two bedrock Supreme Court desegregation cases from the 1970s: Dayton Bd. of Educ. v. Brinkman, 443 U.S. 526, 99 S.Ct. 2971, 61 L.Ed.2d 720 (1979) ( Dayton II ); and Keyes v. School Dist., 413 U.S. 189, 93 S.Ct. 2686, 37 L.Ed.2d 548 (1973). The very language plaintiffs quote from these cases, as well as their significantly different facts, demonstrate the inaptness of these cases. 40 As plaintiffs point out, the Keyes Court held that there is a high probability that where school authorities have effectuated an intentionally segregative policy in a meaningful portion of the school system, similar impermissible considerations have motivated their actions in other areas of the system. Keyes, 413 U.S. at 208, 93 S.Ct. 2686. Plaintiffs quote Dayton II for the proposition that such a system is under a continuing duty to eradicate the effects of that system, and [ ] the systemwide nature of the violation furnished prima facie proof that current segregation in the [ ] schools was caused at least in part by prior intentionally segregative official acts. Dayton II, 443 U.S. at 536, 99 S.Ct. 2971 (internal citation omitted). 41 Keyes and Dayton II were ongoing school desegregation cases that involved purposeful discrimination by school systems attempting to avoid their affirmative obligation to undo systemic discrimination under Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483, 495, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954) ( Brown I ) (holding that the concept of separate but equal has no place in public education) and Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 349 U.S. 294, 301, 75 S.Ct. 753, 99 L.Ed. 1083 (1955) ( Brown II ) (ordering an end to segregated public education with all deliberate speed.). That was the status of the Boston school desegregation case at the time of the initial liability findings in 1974 and the remedial plan in 1976. See Morgan v. Kerrigan, 509 F.2d 580, 593-94 (1st Cir.1974)(relying in part on Keyes in upholding liability); Morgan v. Kerrigan, 530 F.2d 401, 425 (1st Cir.1976)(relying in part on Keyes in upholding the remedial plan). 42 This case arises in a completely different context. After going through school desegregation, Boston was found in 1987 to have achieved a unitary school assignment system. See Morgan, 831 F.2d at 318. The defendants here acted not with the intent to maintain a system of de jure segregation, but with the purpose of maintaining the post-segregation unitary system. Indeed, the Old Plan, toward this end, incorporated aspects of the Boston school desegregation plan that were constitutionally compelled. 14 Additionally, when the school committee adopted the Old Plan for the 1989 school year, the questionable constitutionality of such race-conscious efforts to minimize the tendency to resegregate was far from clear. 43 In essence, plaintiffs would like to limit the relevant history of this case to the period following the adoption of the Old Plan. However, there is also a relevant history of de jure discrimination against minorities that predates 1989, as the long history of the BPS desegregation litigation shows. In consequence, the present-day Boston school system really faces two legacies — the system it administered for decades that intentionally discriminated against minorities to maintain an unequal and segregated system, and the system it administered for ten years that subjected seat assignments to racial guidelines to maintain the racial integration achieved during the intervening twelve years of court-ordered desegregation. 44 There is no gainsaying that the system still must confront the fallout from its days of over-serving what were traditionally white communities and under-serving what were traditionally minority, then mostly black, communities. As the BCF IV court stated: Any assignment plan in the Boston School system is, and will be for the foreseeable future, constrained by the mismatch between school capacity and neighborhood demand, due in part to demographic shifts, and in part to the dual system's legacy of over-serving what were historically white neighborhoods. BCF IV, 260 F.Supp.2d at 325. 45 We decline to adopt plaintiffs' circumscribed view of history. Likewise, we decline to find that plaintiffs have established a prima facie case of discriminatory intent in the adoption of the New Plan simply because the Old Plan was constitutionally unsound. Over forty years ago, the Supreme Court advised federal courts that context matters: 46 [I]n dealing with claims under broad provisions of the Constitution, which derive content by an interpretive process of inclusion and exclusion, it is imperative that generalizations, based on and qualified by the concrete situations that gave rise to them, must not be applied out of context in disregard of variant controlling facts. 47 Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339, 343-44, 81 S.Ct. 125, 5 L.Ed.2d 110 (1960) (evaluating the validity of a redistricting plan under, inter alia, the Equal Protection Clause). Here, BPS voluntarily discontinued use of the Old Plan once it concluded that the plan was constitutionally suspect — in fact, within eight months of our decision in Wessmann — and replaced it with a racially neutral assignment system that was designed to maximize, not minimize, the equitable distribution of seats in the public schools. 48 We recognize that [b]enign intentions do not immunize government action, Raso, 135 F.3d at 16, and we do not suggest otherwise. There is no doubt that governmental policies that employ racial classifications for the distribution of benefits, or otherwise evince racial discrimination, should be subjected to strict scrutiny review. If plaintiffs could make such a showing, we would not hesitate to apply strict scrutiny to the New Plan. However, by declining to extend the reach of Keyes, Dayton II, and similar cases beyond their facts to create a presumption of racially discriminatory purpose in the adoption of the New Plan, we simply refuse to conflate vastly dissimilar cases. 49