Court Opinion

ID: 9482132
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:41:34.619955+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:47.504922
License: Public Domain

WISDOM, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring.
In 1983 an especially able, experienced, and respected judge, Judge Alvin B. Rubin, for the Court, stated:
In testing whether the past has been eradicated so far as it remains in the power of school officials and courts to do so, we must keep in mind that each school district is unique. The constitutional mandate against racial discrimination is categoric, but the determination of remedies for its past violation turns on the conditions in a particular district.
Ross v. Houston Independent School Dist., 699 F.2d 218, 227.
Because this Fifth Circuit “practicability” test necessarily allows considerable discretion to district judges in determining unitariness I feel constrained to concur in the judgment of this Court. Nevertheless, I should like to make two observations which point to the necessity for further desegregative efforts by the Austin Independent School District. First, after the 1987 changes, 20 of the 64 elementary schools have an enrollment of 80% or higher of Afro-American and Hispanic students. Before 1987 only six of those schools had such an enrollment. This retrogression does not appear to have resulted from demographic changes. Second, a number of schools identifiable as predominantly Afro-American — Hispanic schools are in need of serious repair. Money is short in all school districts, but allocating school funds to the detriment of minority schools is unconstitutional under Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 16 S.Ct. 1138, 41 L.Ed. 256 (1896).