Court Opinion

ID: 9454776
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:58:48.735716+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:18.158981
License: Public Domain

HUNTER, District Judge
(concurring):
In my judgment “non racial zoning” coupled with a majority to minority transfer provision would best serve the interests of all the school children in metropolitan Mobile. However, this court in its opinion of March 12, 1968, added a caveat to its instructions that attendance zones be based on objective criteria (393 F.2d at 694):
“* * * conscious effort should be made to move boundary lines and change feeder patterns which tend to preserve segregation.”
This is the law of the case and is consistent with recent decisions of the Fifth Circuit. United States v. Greenwood Municipal Separate District, 406 F.2d 1086 (5 Cir. Feb. 1969).
*612Students in the rural portion of the system have been assigned to schools on the basis of freedom of choice. In 29 consolidated cases involving factual settings very similar, I have held that Jefferson-type freedom of choice in Louisiana School Districts “had real prospects of dismantling the dual system at the earliest practicable date” and that this was the best method available to do the job. Conley v. Lake Charles Sch. Bd., W.D.La.1968, 293 F.Supp. 84. These cases have been reversed. Hall et al. v. St. Helena Parish School Board, Nos. 26450 and 27303, May 28, 1969. There can be no doubt that Hall, supra, requires a holding here that as now constituted, administered and operating in the Mobile Public School System, freedom of choice is not effectual.