Court Opinion

ID: 9458757
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:00:38.527348+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:52.902087
License: Public Domain

*883BELL, COLEMAN, AINSWORTH, GODBOLD, MORGAN, CLARK, INGRAHAM, and RONEY, Circuit Judges
(specially concurring):
We concur in the result reached in the opinion prepared by Judge Wisdom to the extent of reversing and remanding the cause to the district court with direction that the dual school system and all discriminatory segregation against Mexican-American and black students be eliminated “at once” and that the Austin Independent School District “operate now and hereafter” only a unitary non-discriminatory school system. Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, 1969, 396 U.S. 19, 20, 90 S.Ct. 29, 24 L.Ed.2d 19.
In our view the remedy which the district court is required to formulate should be formulated within the entire context of the opinion in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg Board of Education, 1971, 402 U.S. 1, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554, and the companion case of Davis v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County, 1971, 402 U.S. 33, 91 S.Ct. 1289, 28 L.Ed.2d 577.
In giving effect to Swann we have in mind that the Supreme Court has placed the primary responsibility for desegregating public schools on the “informed judgment” of the district courts. It is necessary, however, in the appellate process, where many complicated school cases involving urban school systems are within the jurisdiction of this court, that some definitive direction be given with respect to the remedy which is to be fashioned in the district courts. This is particularly true where the school systems are organized as is Austin on a neighborhood basis with no transportation being furnished now except in the rural parts of the system.
There are two key passages in Swann which have to do with the remedy which is appropriate in school desegregation cases and we read these as being concomitant. The first is concerned with the power of the federal courts. The other pertains to the constitutional duty of the school authorities. With respect to power the Supreme Court said:
“[A] school desegregation case does not differ fundamentally from other cases involving the framing of equitable remedies to repair the denial of a constitutional right. The task is to correct, by a balancing of the individual and collective interests, the condition that offends the Constitution.
In seeking to define even in broad and general terms how far this remedial power extends it is important to remember that judicial powers may be exercised only on the basis of a constitutional violation. Remedial judicial authority does not put judges automatically in the shoes of school authorities whose powers are plenary. Judicial authority enters only when local authority defaults.
School authorities are traditionally charged with broad power to formulate and implement educational policy and might well conclude, for example, that in order to prepare students to live in a pluralistic society each school should have a prescribed ratio of Negro to white students reflecting the proportion for the district as a whole. To do this as an educational policy is within the broad discretionary powers of school authorities; absent a finding of a constitutional violation, however, that would not be within the authority of a federal court. As with any equity case, the nature of the violation determines the scope of the remedy. 402 U.S. at 15-16, 91 S.Ct. at 1276.
The difference between the broad power of the school boards in making student assignments and the limitations on the power of the federal courts is explicit and at once apparent from Swann. In the federal courts, the nature of the violation determines the scope of the remedy.
Having defined the power of the district court in fashioning desegregation plans, the Supreme Court turned in Swann to the question of the constitutional duty of the school authorities and *884the responsibility of the district courts. It was said :
“. . .it should be clear that the existence of some small number of one-race, or virtually one-race, schools within a district is not in and of itself the mark of a system that still practices segregation by law. The district judge or school authorities should make every effort to achieve the greatest possible degree of actual desegregation and will thus necessarily be concerned with the elimination of one-race schools. No per se rule can adequately embrace all the difficulties of reconciling the competing interests involved ; but in a system with a history of segregation the need for remedial criteria of sufficient specificity to assure a school authority’s compliance with its constitutional duty warrants a presumption against schools that are substantially disproportionate in their racial composition. Where the school authority’s proposed plan for conversion from a dual to a unitary system contemplates the continued existence of some schools that are all or predominately of one race, they have the burden of showing that such school assignments are genuinely nondiscriminatory. The court should scrutinize such schools, and the burden upon the school authorities will be to satisfy the court that their racial composition is not the result of present or past discriminatory action on their part.” 402 U.S. at p. 26, 91 S.Ct. at p. 1281.
Given these principles, and the other definitive instructions contained in Swann and Davis, we have concluded that the district court should proceed to eliminate the dual school system as it has existed in Austin together with any and all discriminatory segregation which exists against Mexican-American and black students on the following basis:
(1) It is the prerogative and duty of those local officials having charge of the AISD to formulate and implement student assignment plans.
(2) Where a student assignment plan is found to be unconstitutional, as here, because of the existence of segregation which has been imposed by statute or by official act against blacks and an identifiable ethnic group (here the Mexican-American students), it is the duty of the school officials to forthwith formulate and implement such student assignment plan as will remedy the discrimination which has been found to exist. Where one race schools continue to exist, school authorities must show that such schools are not the result of present or past discrimination on their part. Swann, 402 U.S. at 26, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554.
(3) The power of the district, court will depend first upon a finding of the proscribed discrimination in the school system. Swann, 402 U.S. at 16, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554. In determining the fact of discrimination vel non, whether imposed by statute or as a result of official action, the district court must identify the school or schools which are segregated as a result of such discrimination. This identification must be supported by findings of fact. The importance of such a determination will be seen in some populous school districts embracing large geographical areas. There may be segregated schools which are the result of unconstitutional statutes or of official action. There may be other one race schools which are the product of neutral, non-discriminatory forces.1
*885(4) The district court should give the, school officials an opportunity to remedy the discrimination found to exist. Here, it is only in this court that the holding has been made that discriminatory segregation exists against Mexican-American students and that the proposed part-time integration plan of the school district is inadequate as a desegregation plan. Thus the local school officials should be afforded an opportunity to consider the matter anew. In the event the school officials abdicate this responsibility or fail to remedy the discrimination forthwith, the district court is empowered to and should proceed forthwith to remedy the discrimination.
(5) Usually in rural, and in some city school districts where the population is diffused, assignment on a strict neighborhood basis has been sufficient to eliminate discrimination in student assignments. It is apparent that this will not suffice in the AISD although it may suffice as to some schools. To the extent that it does not suffice, the district court will proceed to employ other methods of desegregation.
(6) The pairing or clustering of schools, the realignment of school assignment zones, and the relocation of portable school rooms will be methods of eliminating segregated schools. Pairing or clustering should be of schools in close proximity. The pairing or clustering of schools in close proximity and the realignment of school zones will result merely in an expansion of the neighborhood or community school concept. Such transportation problems as may arise will thereby be minimized. Another method of eliminating segregated schools with little increase in transportation is to restructure the assignment of students already being transported.
(7) If after utilizing the procedures outlined in (5) and (6) above, proscribed segregated schools still exist, the court must consider the pairing or clustering of schools in non-contiguous school zones. Swann, 402 U.S. 28, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554. No such pairing or clustering of non-contiguous school zones may be required until the court has exhausted every other possible remedy which would not involve increased student transportation. Whenever the court must exercise its power to pair or cluster schools located in non-contiguous zones, it must minimize student transportation requirements in such plan as is devised to pair or cluster schools located in non-cóntiguous zones.
The length and time of travel for students under any plan must be considered in light of the age of the children, and the risk to health and probable impingement on the educational process. Swann, 402 U.S. 30-31, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554. The material consideration in assessing the probable effect on health and the educational process as to each particular child will be the time required for transportation as distinguished from distance. Under some plans children will be transported from their neighborhood school to the school of assignment rather than from their homes to the school of assignment. In such event, the time consumed in travel must include the time necessary to reach the neighborhood school or other point of embarkation.
In fashioning transportation plans the school board and district court must avoid invidious discrimination on the basis of race or national origin through the imposition of the burden of desegregation on one or both of the minority groups. Lee v. Macon County Board of Education, 5 Cir., 1971, 448 F.2d 746, 753-754; Mims v. Duval County School Board, 5 Cir., 1971, 447 F.2d 1330, 1331-1332.
(8) As the Supreme Court made clear in Swann, the requirement of “. any particular degree of racial balance or mixing . . . ” as a matter of substantive constitutional right would be disapproved. 402 U.S. at 24, 91 S.Ct. *886at 1280. Such racial balance as may result from the pairing or clustering or rezoning of schools is constitutionally permitted as “an interim corrective measure.” Swann, 402 U.S. at 27, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554.2
An overall amelioration of any possible discrimination will tend to be accomplished by the use of the mandatory majority to minority transfer provision of Swann, supra, 402 U.S. at 36-37, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554, heretofore ordered by the district court. Such a provision will guarantee to both races an unfettered right to attend schools with members of an opposite race or identifiable ethnic group, and with transportation provided. The district court is directed to constitute a tri-ethnic committee in the school district to foster the use of the majority to minority transfer.3
We have previously outlined the requirements of desegregating school systems from the standpoint of faculty, staff, transportation, extracurricular activities, and facilities. Singleton v. Jackson Municipal Separate School District, 5 Cir., 1970, 419 F.2d 1211. See also Carter v. West Feliciana Parish School Board, 5 Cir., 1970, 432 F.2d 875, 878-879, explicating the Singleton rule to preserve and maintain a non-discriminatory merit system in faculty selection and retention. This left only the question of student assignment and we know from experience that this question has resolved itself principally into student assignment in urban school districts. Fidelity to the principles announced in Swann and Davis and the use of the approach outlined herein offers the best promise of promptly resolving the student assignment question posed in an urban school district such as Austin.
WISDOM, Circuit Judge,
with whom JOHN R. BROWN, Chief Judge, and GEWIN, GOLDBERG, DYER, and SIMPSON, Circuit Judges, join:
The remaining judges on the Court join in Judge Bell’s special opinion concurring in the result but formulating the so-called remedy as if there were no record before the Court. Judges Wisdom, Coleman, and Simpson constituted the original panel in the instant case. Judges Gewin, Goldberg, and Dyer constituted the original panel in Cisneros v. Corpus Christi Independent School District, No. 71-2397, 5 Cir., 459 F.2d 13, a companion en banc case released simultaneously with the instant case.
VIII. Discussion of Judge Bell’s Special Opinion
The vice in the special opinion is its irrelevance. The opinion consists of abstract admonitions most of them old-hat to this Court, so general as to be unrelated to the facts and the issues in this ease. The so-called steps to be taken to desegregate are the steps always taken in a school desegregation case.
The case took six days to try. There are numerous exhibits including important statistics showing the students and teachers by ethnic group in each school in Austin. A series of maps show population patterns over the years and site locations of all the schools. The case was well briefed by the parties, inter-venors, and amici curiae. The record is as complete today as it will be a year from now when the same issues will be presented. The questions cry for settle*887ment. Instead of the judicial resolution of controverted issues squarely before the Court, the majority opinion produces generalized statements that would be innocuous except that the looseness of their language opens the way for recalcitrant school boards to evade the Supreme Court’s mandate in Swann:
“The district judge or sehool authorities should make every possible effort to achieve the greatest possible degree of actual desegregation and will thus necessarily be concerned with the elimination of one-race schools.”
The important issue in this case, as in Cisneros, is whether Mexican-Ameri-cans, who never were subjected to statutory segregation, are entitled to the same benefits of school desegregation as blacks or whites. The district judge in this case recognized that in Austin Mex-ican-Americans are an identifiable ethnic minority, but because he found no de jure segregation afforded them no relief. The Court is under the inescapable duty to face this issue: indeed, the Court must say that the district judge was clearly erroneous in applying an improper standard. In the opinion on the merits we demonstrated that “de jure” segregation is not limited to statutory segregation; the actions of the school board constituted “state action” within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Cisneros is in accord and boldly discards the de facto-de jure dichotomy. I concur in the substantive holdings in Cisneros, but I prefer to apply the term “state action” to the Board’s acts .and to regard the Board’s discrimination against Mexican-Americans as de jure discrimination.
The special opinion does not meet this issue or deal with the merits in any way. As Judge Godbold correctly noted in his opinion, “The validity of the de facto-de jure dichotomy remains unanswered” in Judge Bell’s opinion for the majority. Judge Bell does employ the words “official action” (not a term of art, as is “state action”), but without identifying the acts, in spite of a record that unquestionably shows the state action that was discriminatory. For example, the majority does not discuss the proven fact that the AISD promoted segregation by locating black schools in black areas, Mexican-American schools in Mexican-American areas and assigning students and teachers to those schools on the basis of their race. To confuse the AISD and district court further the opinion takes great pains to state that there may be “one race schools which are the product of neutral, non-discriminatory forces”.
The special opinion speaks of formulating the remedy “within the entire context” of Swann, but conspicuously absent is any reference to Swann’s emphasis on the affirmative constitutional duty imposed on school officials. The affirmative duty doctrine, on which Jefferson rests, was firmly expressed by the Supreme Court in Green v. New Kent County School Board, 1968, 391 U.S. 430, 437, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 1694, 20 L.Ed.2d 716:
“School boards * * * [are] clearly charged with the affirmative duty to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a unitary system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch”.
Of course new plans must be submitted. But this Court should let the litigants and the district court know in what respects the present plan was defective by fulfilling the judicial duty of a reviewing Court to decide the justicia-ble questions put to it. This Court should let the AISD know now that on the record before us it was clearly erroneous for the district judge to hold that there was no de jure discrimination against Mexican-Americans in Austin, Texas.
This Court should decide now, not a year from now, that the court-approved plan for Austin school desegregation was constitutionally defective for the following reasons. (1) The plan put almost the entire burden of bussing on the blacks by closing black schools, and bussing two-thirds of all blacks in the school system, a few Mexican-Americans, and no whites. The plan contemplates assigning Mexi-*888can-Americans to black schools or to predominantly Mexican-American schools but only a handful to Anglo schools. (2) Unlike any school plan this Court has approved, the Austin plan excluded desegregation of the elementary grades. Part-time desegregation does not comply with the constitutional command that the school system be fully converted to a unitary system. (3) The plan required, as the evidence proved, that two black schools should be closed for racial reasons — the fear of a white flight to the suburbs, if the schools should be desegregated. Each of these schools, Anderson and Kealing, was within the desirable junior high school range in capacity and acreage. (4) The plan contains no provision for requiring the school board to increase the number of Mexican-Ameri-can teachers from its present three percent to a percentage more closely representative of the student population of Mexican-Amerieans of twenty percent. Such a provision is a logical extension of the requirement in a black-white system that in each school the faculty represent the ratio of black teachers to white teachers in the entire school system. In a black-white school system the teacher ratio closely approximates the student ratio.
The most destructive feature of Judge Bell’s opinion is its ambiguous treatment, in subparagraph 3, of the Justice Department’s about-face. Ever since Brown the Department has taken the position that school segregation is system-wide in nature and must be remedied by system-wide measures. Infection at one school infects all schools. To take the most simple example, in a two school system, all blacks at one school means all or almost all whites at the other. Up. to now, neither the Department of Justice nor this Court has ever spoken of “incidents” or “pockets of discrimination” or required the district court, as Judge Bell puts it “to identify the school or schools which are segregated”; or stated that the “identification must be supported by findings of fact”; or asserted that some “one race schools . . . are the product of neutral, nondiscriminatory forces”. These are blatant euphemisms to avoid desegregating the system, preserving the whiteness of certain schools.
Nowhere in any opinion of this Court has there ever been any requirement of racial balance except as to the black-white teacher ratio. But when a school system is converted to a unitary system by pairing and clustering of schools, or other methods, it is a fact of life that such conversion cannot be accomplished without bussing. I sincerely hope that I have not misrepresented Judge Bell’s position. The point is that the Department of Justice dreamed up a new defense for school boards in desegregation cases, that is, that there need not be system-wide desegregation of Mexican-Americans. And if this argument applies to Mexican-Americans, will it not in the future also apply to blacks? In short, the argument undermines all of the desegregation cases since Brown by eroding the principle that the dual system must go, lock, stock, and barrel. I may have misread the majority opinion. The opinion may have ignored this issue, in spite of the stress placed on it in briefs and oral arguments of the Assistant Attorney General. But I read sub-paragraph 3 as an invitation, an ambiguous invitation, but an invitation to school boards to seek refuge in demographic- patterns with respect to all-white or predominantly white schools.
The majority opinion may have value to first year law students — except for the defects I have pointed out — as an exposition of the judicial process in school desegregation cases generally. It is also an example of how a reviewing court can pass the buck, give the school board a delay, and confuse the district court on remand. It is said that it marks a turning point for this Court. It is the first backward step for a Court that has labored mightily to follow faithfully the mandates of the Supreme Court and of Congress in the field of civil rights.
*889I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion relating to the so-called remedy.
GEWIN, Circuit Judge,
with whom JOHN R. BROWN, Chief Judge, and WISDOM, GOLDBERG and SIMPSON, Circuit Judges, join:
For the reasons stated in my opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part in Cisneros v. Corpus Christi Independent School District, No. 71-2397, 5 Cir. 459 F.2d 13, I dissent from the majority opinion outlining a remedy in this case.
GODBOLD, Circuit Judge,
with whom BELL, COLEMAN, MORGAN, AINSWORTH, CLARK and INGRAHAM, Circuit Judges, join, files the following special opinion:
The highest standards of judicial administration demand that pending further action by the Supreme Court of the United States this appeal be held in abeyance without reaching the merits. The wisdom of such a course is demonstrated by the divisions among the members of our court in this case. Of the fourteen judges participating, seven are of the view that at this time our decision should be to make no decision on the merits. The court proceeds to a merits decision, not because a majority approve of that action but on the parliamentary ground that since the proposed decision of not reaching the merits at this time commands the vote of only one half of those participating, consideration of the merits is required. On the merits a majority agree only on the result and a statement of remedy.
With full awareness of our responsibilities as judicial officers of the United States, we have attempted to the best of our abilities to implement Brown v. Board of Education.1 Since 1954 this Circuit has had before it more than 500 appeals in school cases. At no time have we evaded the task.
Our country is sharply divided over aspects of school desegregation, particularly the assignment of pupils to schools and the consequent necessity in some instances of transporting students who otherwise would not be transported. The problem of school segregation is national in scope. The efforts to disestablish segregated schools have had repercussions far beyond the original confines of the problem and into broader issues such as flight from urban areas, the decay of our cities, and the ability of our governmental structures to survive the overall economic consequences.
The validity of the de facto-de jure dichotomy, and its interplay with the necessity of state action, remain unanswered. Until the Supreme Court provides a definitive answer we do not know what we should do about segregation springing from causes other than affirmative state action. Among both judges and commentators there are numerous opinions, and shadings of opinion, as to the meaning of Swann.2
This court has committed itself to giving deference to desegregation plans and proposals emanating from agencies of the executive branch of the government that possess expertise in the field, and we have required district judges and school officials to give similar deference. But we have seen those agencies become divided within themselves, their policies and recommendations changeable and changing from case to case and even in the same case.
In short, in the present state of the law, it is virtually impossible for this court to render decisions in complex student assignment cases with confidence in the correctness of what we do. In like manner, in many situations school *890boards, their attorneys, and district judges are without rudder or compass. Yet the remedies which we judges are asked to provide in difficult pupil assignment cases will have massive impact upon the lives, the families, and the future of millions of people, and tremendous economic and sociological impact upon their communities. Some of those consequences will be wholly irreversible.
Therefore, until the Supreme Court can go to the heart of this grave national issue and give us the guidance essential to the performance of our duties, we should hold in abeyance all those pupil assignment cases which cannot be solved by well recognized tools whose validity is beyond question, such as pairing contiguous schools, majority to minority transfers, and minimal additional transportation of students. Some of the issues presented in this appeal and in numerous other eases pending before us are common to Keyes v. Denver School District No. 1, 445 F.2d 990 (10th Cir., 1971), cert. granted, 404 U.S. 1036, 92 S.Ct. 707, 30 L.Ed.2d 728 (1972), which is on the 1972-73 docket of the Supreme Court, having been carried over from the 1971-72 term, and presumably will be argued in the fall of this year. It is routine procedure for us to await Supreme Court action in such circumstances — each year we do so in numerous eases. The judicious staying of our hand while awaiting further instructions is the same approach taken by this court over a period of months while awaiting the decision of the Supreme Court in Swann. Pending Supreme Court decision on the death penalty, the same approach was taken country-wide by combined executive and judicial action in order that condemned prisoners not be executed. The question in school cases of our powers and duties with respect to student assignments is no less deserving of similar handling.
Our view is not the consequence of action either taken or proposed by the executive and legislative branches of our government. Stated simply, as judicial officers we need additional judicial guidance before we undertake measures which will so deeply and so irreversibly affect the fabric of our country and its people and its communities. If the Supreme Court considers it inappropriate to articulate further guiding principles, we can again take up the task and do the best we can with it. It is not flight from duty but rather performance of it to recognize that we need guidance and to say that we will withhold action to see if more certain legal standards become available to us.
We, therefore, dissent from consideration of the merits at this time. Directed as we are to consider the merits, we concur in the special concurring opinion of Judge Bell. As we understand it, that opinion concurs in only the result of reversing and remanding the case to the District Court.
JOHN R. BROWN, Chief Judge,
with whom WISDOM, GEWIN, GOLDBERG, DYER and SIMPSON, Circuit Judges, join:
This is intended solely as a response to the opinion of Judge Godbold that we should postpone action until (i) the Supreme Court acts in Keyes with the hope that (ii) when it speaks we will be informed on what the law as then declared tells us what we might or must do. Were we to do so we would, in my view, abdicate our function. Although these are inescapably hard words, they are hard by the nature of the action which we must take. They are not hard — they must not be so understood — in the sense that I think my dissenting Brothers are less sensitive to their duties or that they are shirking a hard decision. To the contrary, this Court and each of its members faces up to hard decisions. We have made them. By our judgments today we still do. Indeed, the dissenters perform their sense of obligation by the genuine conviction that we should wait.
*891But waiting is not the privilege of a Federal Judge. He must act in the face of the day's challenge to constitutional denial. Indeed, the very Court to whom the dissenters look for guidance has in no uncertain words made it plain to this Court — one whose record in school eases exceeds all in volume and, hopefully, history will recognize with comparative quality — that we should get on with our job — job being the street’s description of duty.
In response to a modest request delivered safehand by air courier by the Secretary of HEW to the Chief Judge at his home for a 60-day extension of the effective date of a plan for some 20 Mississippi school districts, the Supreme. Court summarily reversed this Court. Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, 1969, 396 U.S. 19, 90 S.Ct. 29, 24 L.Ed.2d 19.
When we met in November 1969 to hear a dozen school cases en banc, this decision was fresh on our minds. On en banc consideration of those cases and in recognition of the late time in the school year, we again thought that there was a reasonable basis for a postponement of pupil assignment until the next September at the commencement of the next school year. With the ink scarcely dry on our order, we were told again in positive terms to get on with the business — the business we had tried so hard to prosecute since 1957! Carter v. West Feliciana Parish School Board, 1970, 396 U.S. 290, 90 S.Ct. 608, 24 L.Ed.2d 477. Not a Judge on this Court disparaged either summary reversal. Indeed, the reversals were consistent with everything we had done in the long march from Mansfield.1
These decisions were sharp, peremptory reminders of our duty to decide— not just rubber stamp after getting the word from Mount Olympus.
Now we must heed this call again. A realist knows that we will not get the answers if we wait. With all deference, Swann is proof of that. More important, to delay means that identifiable children —now Mexican-Americans, not primarily Blacks — will leave the last year of their public education without ever experiencing a single year of education free of racial/ethnic discrimination.
We cannot do much for these twelfth graders (or dropouts in the lower echelons), but what we can do we must do. And we must do it now. Talk about waiting for Keyes is to forget the victims of September 1972 — June 1973, if not those of September 1973 — June 1974 whose plight will then be another rehash of the Supreme Court’s Keyes decision begun in the Texas Federal District Court and wending its way to this Court.
Surely, after the 19 years (1954-1973) since Brown there must be a better answer than this.
CLARK, Circuit Judge, with whom COLEMAN, Circuit Judge, joins:
Judge Godbold’s reasoning not only persuades me that this court is in error in refusing to stay its hand now, but also compels me to take the view that the novel issues which this case presents should be immediately certified to the Supreme Court of the United States under the authority of 28 U.S.C.A. § 1254 (3).

. This approach of identification is implicit in the decision of this court in Dandridge v. Jefferson Parish School Board, 5 Cir., 1972, 456 F.2d 552. See language on p. 554 with respect to resegregated schools and shifting population trends, and the failure of the school board to show that the one race schools in question were nondiscriminatory. It is present in the result approved in Pate v. Dade County School Board, 5 Cir., 1971, 447 F.2d 150, cert. den. sub nom. Love v. Dade County School Board, 1972, 405 U.S. 1064, 92 S.Ct. 1493, 31 L.Ed.2d 794 (245,242 students in 218 schools; 69 all white schools, 15 predominantly black schools). *885The identification approach is an obvious necessity, given the Swann limitation on federal judicial power. Id. 402 U.S. at 15-16, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554.

. In making certain that the school system is unitary and that the discrimination has been eliminated, we have required that specified reports be filed for three years and that the ease not be dismissed thereafter without giving notice to plaintiff. Youngblood v. Board of Public Instruction of Bay County, Florida, 5 Cir., 1971, 448 F.2d 770; Wright v. Board of Public Instruction of Alachua County, Florida, 5 Cir., 1971, 445 F.2d 1397. See Swann, 402 U.S. at 31-32, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554 on the termination of federal court intervention in school cases.

. The record in Ellis v. Board of Public Instruction of Orange County, Florida, No. 71-2696, now pending in this court, discloses that in the 1970-71 school term there were 2,095 transfers of black students under the majority to minority transfer provision out of a total of 15,747 black students in the system.

. Brown v. Bd. of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954) [Brown I]; Brown v. Bd. of Education, 349 U.S. 294, 75 S.Ct. 753, 99 L.Ed. 1083 (1955) [Brown II].

. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554 (1971).

. Jackson v. Rawden, 5 Cir., 1956, 235 F.2d 93, cert. denied, 352 U.S. 925, 77 S.Ct. 221, 1 L.Ed.2d 160; United States v. Flagler County School District, 5 Cir., 1972, 457 F.2d 1402.