Court Opinion

ID: 9475800
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:38:33.146084+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:56.476336
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The implications of the majority’s result are not nearly as “narrow” as the majority suggests. The case before us significantly implicates the Supremacy Clause and furnishes a dangerous precedent for frustrating federal anti-discrimination statutes and the fourteenth amendment through allocations of responsibility for civil rights enforcement among state agencies and local governmental bodies under state law.
The majority opinion essentially makes two points: (1) under Illinois law, the local boards have primary responsibility to see that schools are operated in a nondiscriminatory manner; and (2) insofar as the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, 20 U.S.C. §§ 1701-1758 (1982) (the “EEOA”), requires that the state ensure compliance with the terms of this act, Illinois has fulfilled its duty by vesting supervisory and investigatory responsibility in the State Board and enforcement responsibility in the State Attorney General. I take issue with both these points.
In concluding that the Illinois legislature intended that local boards have primary responsibility for desegregation, the majority relies heavily on Aurora East Public School District No. 131 v. Cronin, 92111.2d 313, 66 Ill.Dec. 85, 442 N.E.2d 511 (1982). Aurora East, however, does not bear the weight placed on it by the majority. That case merely held that under Illinois law, the State Board was not authorized to promulgate regulations under the Armstrong Act. Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 122, para. 10-21.3 (1985). The Armstrong Act was a measure intended to deal only with de facto segregation. Neither that act nor Aurora East bears on the specific duty of the State Board under the EEOA to combat intentional racial segregation, which is the allegation here.
More important, the State of Illinois has a duty under the Constitution and the general federal civil rights statutes to combat intentional racial segregation. State educational officials, who are the members of the state’s executive branch charged with the oversight of education in the state, have a duty under federal law to enforce the Constitution and the federal statutes which implement it. The State Board, as the only state-level watchdog for civil rights in education, has an obligation to enforce the Constitution and the general civil rights statutes. See Bradley v. Mil-liken, 484 F.2d 215, 238-44 (6th Cir.1973) (en banc), rev’d on other grounds, 418 U.S. 717, 94 S.Ct. 3112, 41 L.Ed.2d 1069 (1974).
The EEOA imposes specific responsibilities on the State Board:
No State shall deny equal educational opportunity to an individual on account *714of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, by—
(a) the deliberate segregation by an educational agency of students on the basis of race, color, or national origin among or within schools;
(b) the failure of an educational agency which has formerly practiced such deliberate segregation to take affirmative steps ... to remove the vestiges of a dual school system;
(d) discrimination by an educational agency on the basis of race, color, or national origin in the employment, employment conditions, or assignment to schools of its faculty or staff____
20 U.S.C. § 1703 (1982) (emphasis added). The term “educational agency” is defined in the EEOA to mean a local educational agency or a state educational agency as defined by section 3381(k) of 20 U.S.C. (1982). 20 U.S.C. § 1720(a) (1982). This definition clearly encompasses the State Board. In addition, the State Board is without question a part of the government of the State of Illinois. Ill. Const. art. X, § 2. Hence, the State Board is subject to the duties imposed by the EEOA. See United States v. School District of Ferndale, 577 F.2d 1339, 1346-48 (6th Cir.1978); Idaho Migrant Council v. Board of Education, 647 F.2d 69, 71 (9th Cir.1981).
It is surely not an adequate answer to say that the state has delegated these duties to its local school districts and therefore that the state as such, through educational officials at the state level, has no further responsibility. To accept this proposition is to suggest that federal civil rights enforcement may be effectively nullified by entrusting it under state law to the very entities against which enforcement might be required.
Nor is reliance on the procedure provided in Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 122, para. 22-19 any sort of an answer. The gist of that position is that intentional (de jure) segregation in Peoria may be combatted only if a complaint, joined by the lesser of 50 residents of a school district or 10 percent of the residents, prompts the State Board to initiate hearings on allegations of discrimination. And the holding of such a hearing would in itself provide no remedy. While the State Attorney General may have the power to seek enforcement after the State Board holds a hearing, his office is not the agency to which state resources to underwrite substantive responsibility for education are committed.1 This mechanism is also too cumbersome to provide effective oversight of local boards. The United States Supreme Court in McNeese v. Board of Education, 373 U.S. 668, 674-75, 83 S.Ct. 1433, 1437-38, 10 L.Ed.2d 622 (1963), pointed out emphatically the manifest inadequacies of this statutory approach. As the majority points out, McNeese did not arise in the precise context of the present case, but that hardly makes its critique of the procedure in question any less telling.
The majority believes “that the Illinois legislature intended desegregation [including presumably the barring of de jure segregation] to be the primary responsibility of the local boards.” Op. at 711. I doubt that the Illinois legislature had any intent going beyond implementation of the Armstrong Act to confront de facto segregation. But, even if Illinois wanted to leave all civil rights enforcement to its local school districts, it had no power under federal law to do this when the school districts themselves were the likely civil rights violators. In general, a state may “distribute responsibility” within state government. But it may not do so when, as here, a federal duty has been placed on the state and the result of the state legislature’s *715distribution of responsibility in fulfilling this duty is to leave only foxes at the chicken coop door. The capacity-to-sue doctrine serves a number of useful purposes. But one of these is not to nullify federal law as it imposes duties on state officials. I would therefore reverse the judgment and put the Board to its proof on its counterclaim.
I therefore respectfully dissent.

. It is also no answer to say that while the State Board cannot sue local boards to enforce the EEOA, the State Board can be sued if “it contributes to a violation of the constitution or laws of the United States____” Op. at 713. While the State Board’s amenability to suit ensures that the State Board can be held accountable if it violates the EEOA, the problem addressed by this dissent is the lack of an effective mechanism to enforce the EEOA as against the local boards.