Opinion ID: 442149
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Events Subsequent to the First Appeal

Text: 9 On September 21, 1983, United States Representative Sydney Yates proposed the following legislation: 10 There is hereby appropriated $20,000,000 to be derived by transfer from funds available for obligation in fiscal year 1983 in the appropriation for Guaranteed Student Loans, to remain available for obligation until September 30, 1984, to enable the Secretary of Education to comply with the Consent Decree entered in United States District Court in the case of the United States of America against the Board of Education for the City of Chicago (80 C 5124) on September 24, 1980. 11 This provision (the Yates Bill) was incorporated by Congress into H.J. Res. 368, a continuing resolution to provide temporary funding for several federal departments in fiscal year 1984. The President signed H.J. Res. 368 into law on October 1, 1983. Three days later, on October 4, United States Senator Lowell Weicker proposed an amendment to the Yates Bill (the Weicker Amendment), which was adopted by Congress on October 31, 1983, in the following form: 12 No funds appropriated in any act to the Department of Education for fiscal years 1983 and 1984 shall be withheld from distribution to grantees because of the provision of the order entered by U.S. District Court for Northern District of Illinois on June 30, 1983: Provided, that the Court's decree entered on September 24, 1980 shall remain in full force and effect. 13 In response to a motion that the Board submitted after the enactment of the Yates Bill, the district court ruled, on October 5, that as soon as the Secretary of Education obligated to the Board the $20 million allocated by the Yates Bill, the government would be permitted to use $15.66 million in the Department of Education accounts that remained temporarily frozen. On the same day, the United States moved the district court to vacate its 1983 Order and to declare that the $20 million allocated to the Board under the Yates Bill brought the United States into compliance with the Decree. The government renewed this motion on November 10, arguing that in light of the Yates Bill and the Weicker Amendment, no funds beyond the appropriated $20 million were available to the Board for fiscal years 1983 and 1984. The district court denied the government's motion on November 21, 1983.
14 At a status hearing on October 5, 1983, the district court decided that an evidentiary hearing, which originally had been scheduled for August 10, 1983, was still needed to determine the level of funding that the Board required in order to implement its desegregation plan. See Transcript of October 5, 1983, at 13-14. The government contended that the hearing exceeded our remand instructions to the extent that the hearing was to establish the Board's needs and the government's obligations beyond the $20 million allocated by the Yates Bill. See id. at 23; United States' Pre-Trial Brief on Remand Proceeding, dated March 13, 1984. From October 1983 to March 1984, the parties submitted numerous filings in preparation for the hearing, which began on March 23, 1984, and continued for nine days. Witnesses for the Board testified about the programs that the Board had developed under its desegregation plan, the costs of these programs, and the sources of program funding. In addition, the Board presented evidence of lobbying activity undertaken by the Executive Branch with regard to the Yates Bill and the Weicker Amendment. The United States called only one witness, who discussed the use of federal Title I funds for desegregation expenses. 15 On June 8, 1984, the district court issued an extensive opinion (1984 Opinion) in which it reviewed the evidence presented during the hearing. 588 F.Supp. 132. The court found from this evidence that most of the programs under the Board's desegregation plan materially aid the successful implementation of the plan and that the costs of these programs are reasonable under the circumstances. See 1984 Findings of Fact Nos. 210-59. Furthermore, the court found that the level of funding adequate for full implementation of the desegregation plan in the 1984-85 school year is approximately $171.631 million. 1984 Finding of Fact No. 265. Of this amount, the court determined that the Board will not be able to fund $103.858 million, despite the Board's best efforts to do so. Incorporating its 1983 ruling that p 15.1 requires the United States to provide the portion of funding adequate for full implementation of the desegregation plan that the Board cannot provide, see 1984 Conclusions of Law Nos. 6-8, the district court decided that the share ... the United States is obligated to make every good faith effort to find and provide pursuant to [p] 15.1 is $103.858 million. 1984 Conclusion of Law No. 38. 16 Addressing the actions of the United States since the issuance of the 1983 Order, the district court found that the government acted in bad faith by failing to provide funds to the Board, by failing to request congressional appropriations for the Board, by deciding not to reprogram available funds for use by the Board, by deciding not to provide direct grants to local educational agencies for purposes of desegregation, by attempting to make funds unavailable through congressional lobbying efforts during passage of the Yates Bill and the Weicker Amendment, by redrafting administrative regulations regarding the Secretary of Education's Discretionary Fund, and by submitting a plan for supporting the Board's desegregation efforts which, according to the court, contained no adequate suggestions ... for providing further funding. See 1984 Conclusions of Law Nos. 120-21, 123-26. The court ruled that, viewed either alone or in the circumstances of the government's bad faith, [p] 15.1 (as a matter of construction) requires the Executive Branch promptly to undertake some combination of ... lobbying activities to the extent necessary to assure financing adequate for implementation of the [desegregation] [p]lan. 1984 Conclusion of Law No. 142. Such activities include requesting appropriations from Congress and opposing contrary legislative initiatives. 17 After allowing the United States time to respond to its opinion, the district court issued an order on August 13, 1984 (1984 Remedial Order), declaring that, in light of the [ ] present circumstances, the United States has an unconditional obligation to provide Board with $103.858 million for implementation of the [desegregation] [p]lan in school year 1984-85. 1984 Remedial Order at 9. The court further ordered that, in the event the United States failed to provide the funds by August 22, 1984, the United States was permanently enjoined to take all necessary steps to obligate for the use of the Board $17 million in the 1984 Discretionary Fund and $11.775 million in the 1984 Title IV account. Id. at 11-12. Furthermore, the court declared that the United States must formulate an affirmative program each year to assure that up to $103.858 million is placed in an escrow account. Such a program would consist of the identification of available funds, recommendations to Congress, and lobbying activities. Id. at 12-15. 18 The government now appeals the district court's 1984 Opinion and 1984 Remedial Order, and it advances two arguments. First, the United States contends that the district court erred in interpreting p 15.1 as requiring the Executive Branch to engage in legislative activity, to make up the difference between the funds necessary for implementing the desegregation plan and the funds that the Board has budgeted for this purpose, and to award Title IV funds and Discretionary Funds to the Board without regard to other grantees. Second, the government maintains that if the district court's interpretation of p 15.1 is correct, the Decree is unenforceable because it violates the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers. According to the government, the Executive Branch does not have the authority to bargain away its discretion with respect to its legislative activities or to commit unlimited financial assistance to only one grantee, in contravention of the legislative purpose of the desegregation funding statutes.