Court Opinion

ID: 8941336
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-27 07:58:38.709429+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:09:44.830323
License: Public Domain

ALLGOOD, Senior District Judge,
concurring specially:
I concur in the judgment of the court, and add the following:
No matter how artfully phrased, demands by predominately black universities, or by persons attempting to assert their interests, which draw their students, faculty and staff from predominately white market areas, for preferential treatment or status as vicarious victims of prior discrimination, presuppose that such universities have some legally protectable interest in remaining predominately black, and that the predominately black university must be one of the mechanisms through which prior unlawful racial separation and its vestiges are corrected. State created institutions have no such right, and the State is not limited in that way. It may well be that problems with the quality of some public educational institutions are so pervasive and ingrained that black students will be hurt, not helped by the perpetuation of those institutions.
This case could go a long way toward deciding the future of the university system in this State.
If, under appropriate standards and legal principles, liability of the State of Alabama, or any of its institutions is upheld, an issue not before us on this appeal, the District Court will be charged with approving an appropriate remedy, giving due deference to suggestions made by state authorities. See generally Swann v. Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 15-16, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 1275-76, 28 L.Ed.2d 554 (1971). If, in that event, in submitting a plan the State concludes that the most effective, educationally sound, and least expensive manner to remedy a violation is to close some colleges, or to merge them under the boards of the State flagship institutions, I see no constitutional or statutory barriers to that being done. Cf. Ayers v. U.S., 769 F.2d 311 (5th Cir.1985). However, that question must be left for another day. In the meantime, all parties to this expensive suit have a duty to and should strive for a negotiated solution to it.