Opinion ID: 427620
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Dual System

Text: 22 East Baton Rouge Parish operated separate schools for white and black children by force of law prior to 1954. Parish officials must therefore bear the continuing duty to eliminate root and branch the system-wide effects of that discrimination and to create a unitary school system untainted by the past. Green v. County School Board, 391 U.S. 430, 437-38, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 1694, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968); see Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman, 443 U.S. 526, 537, 99 S.Ct. 2971, 2979, 61 L.Ed.2d 720 (1979); Swann, 402 U.S. at 15, 91 S.Ct. at 1275; Ross v. Houston Independent School District, 699 F.2d 218, 225 (5th Cir.1983). Until that unitary system has been achieved, a district court overseeing the desegregation effort must retain jurisdiction to insure that the present effects of past segregation are completely removed. Green, 391 U.S. at 439, 88 S.Ct. at 1695; Ross, 699 F.2d at 225. When this case was last before us, we vacated the lower court's judgment declaring the EBRP school system unitary and dismissing the case. 570 F.2d 1260 (5th Cir.1978). We now must determine whether the district court correctly held on remand that vestiges of the dual system remain in the EBRP public schools. 23 We have noted in this case and in many others Swann 's general presumption against the maintenance of a system with substantially one-race schools. Swann, 402 U.S. at 26, 91 S.Ct. at 1281. E.g., Tasby v. Wright, 713 F.2d 90, 94 (5th Cir.1983) (Tasby III ); Valley v. Rapides Parish School Board, 646 F.2d 925, 937 (5th Cir.1981) (Valley I ), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 939, 102 S.Ct. 1430, 71 L.Ed.2d 650 (1982); Anderson v. Dougherty County Board of Education, 609 F.2d 225 (5th Cir.1980); Davis, 570 F.2d at 1263. Swann places the burden squarely on the Board to demonstrate that the remaining one-race schools are not vestiges of past segregation. 402 U.S. at 26, 91 S.Ct. at 1281; Tasby III, 713 F.2d at 94. If further desegregation is reasonable, feasible, and workable, Swann, 402 U.S. at 31, 91 S.Ct. at 1283, then it must be undertaken, for the continued existence of one-race schools is constitutionally unacceptable when reasonable alternatives exist. Ross, 699 F.2d at 228; Lemon v. Bossier Parish School Board, 566 F.2d 985, 987 (5th Cir.1978); see Swann, 402 U.S. at 26, 91 S.Ct. at 1281 (requiring every effort to achieve the greatest possible degree of actual desegregation). 24 One-race schools unquestionably remained in the EBRP school system at the time the district court determined that the system was not yet unitary. Although the system's 1978-1979 student population was 40% black and 60% white, over half the parish's 113 schools served student bodies over 90% one race and over half of the parish's school children attended schools in which theirs was the majority race by at least that disproportionate a margin. Indeed, only 35 schools in the parish served student bodies less than 80% one race. As the district court put it, one is entitled to be surprised that after 16 years of desegregation efforts by the school board, 78 [schools] (70 percent of all schools) were still at least 80 percent black or 80 percent white. 498 F.Supp. at 584 n. 3. This Board labored under an exacting burden to show that so throughly segregated a system was not the vestigial consequence of past discrimination. 25 The Board's major justification for the continued existence of so many one-race schools is that they result from the perfectly normal phenomenon of ethnic residential preference and impaction for which school officials bear no responsibility. The argument fails both on its own premise and as a principle of law. First, the district court found and the undisputed facts reveal that the Board's pattern of school construction and closings since 1954 has contributed substantially to perpetuating the racial segregation imposed by law prior to Brown I. 498 F.Supp. at 584. Twenty-two all-black schools existed in the parish in 1954. Of those, 12 remained over 95% black when the district court granted summary judgment 26 years later. The Board has built 76 new schools since 1954, fully 73 of which opened to serve student bodies over 90% one race. Of the 36 new schools built since desegregation efforts began in 1963, at least 21 had student bodies over 90% one race in 1980. Thus, the Board has apparently located its new schools to serve single-race attendance districts. Furthermore, despite an annual redistricting process, the Board has routinely reacted to overcrowding in certain of its schools, generally those serving white neighborhoods, by erecting temporary classrooms rather than by redrawing district lines to send children to underused school facilities in other neighborhoods. The racial isolation of many of the schools in the EBRP system, therefore, is in this important respect the result of the Board's conduct since 1954. See Swann, 402 U.S. at 20-21, 91 S.Ct. at 1278-79. 26 The Board's reliance on housing patterns as justification for the continued existence of one-race schools is not only factually but legally unsound. The Board does not argue at this juncture that residential patterns rendered further desegregation of the remaining one-race schools unworkable. Instead, it contends that EBRP school officials bore no responsibility to eliminate the many one-race schools that existed in 1980 because the racial identifiability of those schools was caused neither by actions of the Board nor by the prior dual system but by actions of private individuals who chose to live in racially homogeneous neighborhoods. 27 Until it has achieved the greatest degree of desegregation possible under the circumstances, the Board bears the continuing duty to do all in its power to eradicate the vestiges of the dual system. That duty includes the responsibility to adjust for demographic patterns and changes that predate the advent of a unitary system. Lee v. Macon County Board of Education, 616 F.2d 805, 810 (5th Cir.1980); United States v. Board of Education of Valdosta, 576 F.2d 37, 38 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 1007, 99 S.Ct. 622, 58 L.Ed.2d 684 (1978). The racial isolation of some schools, whether existing before or developing during the desegregation effort, may render disestablishment of certain one-race schools difficult or even impossible. Until all reasonable steps have been taken to eliminate remaining one-race schools, however, ethnic housing patterns are but an important factor to be considered in determining what further desegregation can reasonably be achieved; they do not work to relieve the Board of its constitutional responsibilities. Valley I, 646 F.2d at 937. Changes in neighborhood ethnicity taking place after school officials have transformed their system into a unitary one need not be remedied, of course, for school officials are under no duty to adjust for the purely private acts of those who chose to vote with their feet. Pasadena County Board of Education v. Spangler, 427 U.S. 424, 435-37, 96 S.Ct. 2697, 2704-05, 49 L.Ed.2d 599 (1976); Swann, 402 U.S. at 31-32, 91 S.Ct. at 1283-84. But until it can show that all reasonable steps have been taken to eliminate remaining one-race schools, the Board must in its pursuit of a unitary system respond as much as reasonably possible to patterns and changes in the demography of the parish. 28 The Board also urges a finding of unitariness on the familiar ground that desegregation of the remaining one-race schools, over half the schools in the parish, would drive families from the parish and white children from its public schools. This is not a case like Ross v. Houston Independent School District, 699 F.2d 218 (5th Cir.1983), or Calhoun v. Cook, 522 F.2d 717 (5th Cir.), reh'g denied, 525 F.2d 1203 (5th Cir.1975), in which residential patterns, population migration, or the departure of white students from the system rendered further desegregation of one-race schools unfeasible. Rather, this is a case in which by 1980 the desegregation of the public schools had simply not yet been achieved. The Board's legitimate fear that white students would depart the public school system during the difficult period of active desegregation was cause for deep concern and creative solutions but could not justify a retard in the process of dismantling the dual system. United States v. Scotland Neck City School Board, 407 U.S. 484, 490-91, 92 S.Ct. 2214, 2218, 33 L.Ed.2d 75 (1972). 29 Finally, the Board contends that the racial disparity existing in the EBRP school system is not the result of intentional discrimination and can therefore not ground suit under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Board supports its argument by citing several cases requiring proof of intentional discrimination in order to state a claim under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. City of Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55, 100 S.Ct. 1490, 64 L.Ed.2d 47 (1980); Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 97 S.Ct. 555, 50 L.Ed.2d 450 (1977); Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 96 S.Ct. 2040, 48 L.Ed.2d 597 (1976). Cases such as these simply do not apply where a statutory dual [school] system has ever existed. United States v. Texas Education Agency, 564 F.2d 162, 165 & n. 2 (5th Cir.1977) (Austin III ) (quoting Keyes v. School District No. 1, 413 U.S. 189, 201, 93 S.Ct. 2686, 2694, 37 L.Ed.2d 548 (1973)), cert. denied, 443 U.S. 915, 99 S.Ct. 3106, 61 L.Ed.2d 879 (1979). [T]he measure of the post-Brown I conduct of a school board under an unsatisfied duty to liquidate a dual system is the effectiveness, not the purpose, of the actions in decreasing or increasing the segregation caused by the dual system. As was clearly established in Keyes and Swann, the Board had to do more than abandon its discriminatory purpose. 9 Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman, 443 U.S. at 538, 99 S.Ct. at 2979 (citations omitted). See Price v. Denison Independent School District, 694 F.2d 334, 378 (5th Cir.1982) (on suggestion for rehearing). 30 Upon consideration, we entirely agree with and uphold the district court's determination that the EBRP school system as it existed in 1980 remained tainted with the vestiges of the statutory dual system. So many one-race schools with so profound an impact on the students in the parish was unacceptable under Brown I, Swann, and their progeny. The district court properly held that more could well be done to alleviate the incidence of one-race schools in the parish. We now turn to the plan imposed by the district court to achieve that end.