Opinion ID: 764702
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: validity of the district court's modification of the

Text: CONSENT DECREE 33 In Board of Education of Oklahoma City Public Schools Independent School District No. 89 v. Dowell, 498 U.S. 237, 111 S.Ct. 630, 112 L.Ed.2d 715 (1991), Petitioner, the Board of Education of Oklahoma City, sought dissolution of a decree entered by the district court imposing a school desegregation plan. The district court granted relief over the objection of the Respondents, African-American students and their parents. The Tenth Circuit reversed, relying on the grievous wrong standard enunciated by the Supreme Court in United States v. Swift & Co., 286 U.S. 106, 119, 52 S.Ct. 460, 76 L.Ed. 999 (1932) (Nothing less than a clear showing of grievous wrong evoked by new and unforeseen conditions should lead us to change what was decreed after years of litigation with the consent of all concerned.). See Dowell v. Board of Educ. of Okla. City Pub. Schs., Indep. Sch. Dist. No. 89, 890 F.2d 1483, 1490 (10th Cir.1989) (quoting Swift, 286 U.S. at 19), rev'd, 498 U.S. 237, 111 S.Ct. 630, 112 L.Ed.2d 715 (1991). The Supreme Court reversed, however, establishing that the Swift standard does not govern school desegregation cases. The Court reasoned: 34 Considerations based on the allocation of powers within our federal system, we think, support our view that ... Swift does not provide the proper standard to apply to injunctions entered in school desegregation cases. Such decrees, like the one in Swift, are not intended to operate in perpetuity. Local control over the education of children allows citizens to participate in decisionmaking, and allows innovation so that school programs can fit local needs.... The legal justification for displacement of local authority by an injunctive decree in a school desegregation case is a violation of the Constitution by the local authorities. Dissolving a desegregation decree after the local authorities have operated in compliance with it for a reasonable period of time properly recognizes that necessary concern for the important values of local control of public school systems dictates that a federal court's regulatory control of such systems not extend beyond the time required to remedy the effects of past intentional discrimination. 35 498 U.S. at 248. 36 In the instant matter, the late Judge Battisti in 1979 ordered that all schools in the Cleveland School District fall within the 15% deviation from racial ratios of the district as a whole. See Reed, 472 F.Supp. 615, 617 (N.D.Ohio 1979). By 1983, only ten schools were outside the 15% parameter, and every school had a racial ratio within 22% of the district-wide average. Two years later, in 1985, the district court approved a Five-Year Facilities Utilization Plan developed by Defendants to ensure that the School District remained in compliance with the 15% limitation. The Plan directed annual compliance reviews to monitor and analyze the desegregated status of individual schools, and to plan student reassignments or other measures as necessary to maintain racial balances within acceptable ranges. These reviews and readjustments resulted in extremely high levels of compliance in excess of 90% throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s. This astonishing success no doubt served at least as part of the basis for Dr. Gordon Foster's conclusion in 1988 that Cleveland was the only majority Black, large city system in the country which is totally desegregated. In addressing the small percentage of noncompliant schools, the Court's Office on School Monitoring and Community Relations concluded that no evidence suggests that this is the result of discrimination on the basis of race in the assignment of students. 37 As a result of the early successes of both the Plan and Phase One's parental choice initiative and model community schools, the district court implemented Vision 21, which greatly expanded the role of parental choice in student assignments. The parties' 1994 settlement agreement and the district court's Order of May 25, 1994 both acknowledge the importance of Vision 21 as the linchpin of the parties' agreement. Termination Order, 934 F.Supp. 1533, 1543 (N.D.Ohio 1996) (Vision 21 was approved and adopted in its entirety without modifications or amendments and became the bedrock foundation of the negotiated court-appointed Settlement Agreement.) (emphasis added). 38 From the start, both parties agreed that: (1) Vision 21 was to be implemented in such a manner as to comply with the court's desegregation order; (2) Vision 21 was designed to increase substantially the opportunity for all students in the District to receive a high-quality education in a desegregated environment; and (3) Vision 21 was the first step toward the gradual implementation of a controlled-choice student assignment plan. Id. (citing parties' Joint Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law). Pursuant to an agreement between the parties approved by the court, a partial implementation of Vision 21 was commenced in the 1993-94 school year, during which 41 schools exceeded the 15% remedial mandate. This came as no surprise. As the district court noted, both the parties and the Court understood that Vision 21 would result in greater short-term noncompliance with the 15% limitation and a reemergence of schools with 90% or more African-American enrollment. See id. It was, however, contemplated that the two student-school assignment policies were nevertheless compatible and that available attractive alternative parental enrollment inducements would result in parental elections that would, within the two-year period imposed by section 6.3 of the Consent Decree, return all school-student enrollments to within relative +-15% compliance with the Remedial Order. Id. These hopes were not founded upon mere speculation; rather, the School District took numerous affirmative steps to implement an aggressive restructuring program in order to harmonize the 15% parameter with Vision 21's broadly expanded parental student school enrollment choice. The Defendants provided for an increase in the number of magnet schools; they created community model schools, such as Afro-Centric/Multicultural Immersion Schools; they created guaranteed residential zones around the newly-created community model schools; they reassigned students, overriding parental choice in some instances in order to effect a more favorable distribution in certain schools; they afforded transfer priorities to students in overcrowded middle schools; they advertised magnet schools to attract underrepresented races; and they modified residential feeder patterns to improve racial balance at particular schools throughout the district. 39 Despite the school district's considerable efforts, parental choice served as a powerful foil to continued compliance with the 15% parameter during the 1990s. Following an open hearing on April 19-20, 1995, Special Master Daniel McMullen issued a report that reflected prevailing community standards within the Cleveland School District. The report disclosed that an overwhelming majority (86%) of African-American parents considered their right to choose to send their children to neighborhood schools more important than busing for racial balance within the district as a whole, so long as such choice did not result in an inferior quality of education for their children. The Defendants soon realized that their initial hope of reconciling the 15% parameter with Vision 21 was unfounded and that the School District would be unable to satisfy the student assignment requirements of the Consent Decree. As the district court stated: 40 [T]he record confirms that despite the initial optimism of the Court and the parties to harmonize the +-15% component in the Consent Decree with the implementation of the criteria of Vision 21 also incorporated into the Consent Decree, it became obvious that the intractable mathematical ratio of +-15% reflected in sections 5 and 6 was, and is, in conflict with the innovative community-supported initiatives of Vision 21. Experience dictates that the conflicting philosophies have become irreconcilable. Two years of implementing the student assignment provisions of Vision 21 have confirmed that the +-15% standard incorporated into sections 5 and 6 of the Consent Decree is outdated and cannot be balanced with the innovative concepts of Vision 21 of that Decree. 41 Termination Order, 934 F.Supp. at 1544. 42 Under Rufo v. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail, 502 U.S. 367, 112 S.Ct. 748, 116 L.Ed.2d 867 (1992), a consent decree may properly be modified, inter alia, when enforcement of the decree without modification would be detrimental to the public interest. 502 U.S. at 384. When Vision 21 and its prescriptions for parental choice were first introduced, it was widely acclaimed by both sides as a progressive, innovative educational program designed to comply with Judge Battisti's order to develop both creative educational curricula in reading and other programs designed to correct the effects of prior segregated schooling. In fact, Vision 21 was so universally accepted by the people of Cleveland that the parties to this litigation incorporated it, without modification, as a centerpiece of the Consent Decree of May 25, 1994. 43 We wish it were possible to reconcile the inherent conflict between the mandate of the 15% student assignment limitation imposed by Judge Battisti's 1978 Remedial Order, as incorporated into sections 5 and 6 of the Consent Decree of May 25, 1994, and Vision 21's school choice provisions. Experience clearly indicates, however, that the two approaches are inherently irreconcilable. The district court found that [t]his realization represents a material factual change and unforeseen circumstance which compels the Court to conclude that 'enforcement of the decrees without the proposed modification would be detrimental to the public interest.'  Termination Order, 934 F.Supp. at 1545 (quoting Rufo, 502 U.S. at 384-85). We agree. 44 The Supreme Court has made clear that [o]nce a court has determined that changed circumstances warrant a modification of a consent decree, the focus should be on whether the proposed modification is tailored to resolve the problem created by the change in circumstances. A court should do no more, for a consent decree is a final judgment that may be reopened only to the extent that equity requires. Rufo, 502 U.S. at 391-92. In the instant matter, Defendants have not sought to rewrite the agreement in toto. On the contrary, they seek only to modify sections 5 and 6 of the Consent Decree, which establish officially the inflexible 15% parameter by which the racial composition of each school is measured. As the district court emphasized, the remainder of the Consent Decree remains intact and its terms, conditions, responsibilities, and liabilities continue to bind the parties and are calculated to survive beyond the Court's supervision and control of the Cleveland School District. Termination Order, 934 F.Supp. at 1546. We therefore agree that the district court's modification of the Consent Decree was suitably tailored, Rufo, 502 U.S. at 391, to the changed circumstances. Because this Court does not find that the district court erred in its determinations either that enforcement of the decree without modification would be detrimental to the public interest, id. at 384, or that the proposed modifications were suitably tailored to the changed circumstances, it cannot be said that the lower court abused its discretion in modifying the decree. 45