Court Opinion

ID: 9425765
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:15:47.069662+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:57.398646
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
concurring in the judgment.
The Court today affirms the Court of Appeals’ judgment insofar as it affirmed paragraphs 1 and 2 of the District Court’s order, ante, at 563-564, n. 6, as applied to enjoin respondents from permitting private segregated school groups to make “exclusive use” of Montgomery’s recreational facilities. Unlike the Court, I do not think that remand is required for a determination whether certain “nonexclusive uses” by segregated school groups should also be proscribed, for I would also sustain paragraphs 1 and 2 insofar as they enjoin any school-sponsored or school-directed uses of the city recreational facilities that enable private segregated schools to duplicate public school operations at public expense.
Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U. S. 455 (1973), struck down a state program which loaned textbooks to students without regard to whether the students attended private schools with racially discriminatory- policies. Finding that free textbooks, like tuition grants to private school students, were a “form of financial assistance inuring to the benefit of the private schools themselves,” id., at 464, *578Norwood held that the State could not, consistent with the Equal Protection Clause, grant aid that had “a significant tendency to facilitate, reinforce, and support private discrimination.” Id., at 466. The reasoning of Norwood compels the conclusion that Montgomery must be enjoined from providing any assistance which financially benefits Montgomery's private segregated schools, except, of course, “such necessities of life as electricity, water, and police and fire protection,” Moose Lodge No. 107 v. Irvis, 407 U. S. 163, 173 (1972). The unconstitutionality is thus obvious of such “nonexclusive uses” of municipal recreational facilities as the use of a portion of a park for a segregated school’s gym classes or organized athletic contests. By making its municipal facilities available to private segregated schools for such activities, Montgomery unconstitutionally subsidizes its private segregated schools by relieving them of the expense of maintaining their own facilities.
Whether it is necessary to go even further and enjoin all school-sponsored and school-directed nonexclusive uses of municipal recreational facilities — as would my Brothers White and Douglas — is a question I would have the District Judge decide on remand. Private segregated schools are not likely to maintain their own zoos, museums, or nature walks. Consequently, permitting segregated schools to take their students on field trips to city facilities of that kind would not result in a direct financial benefit to the schools themselves. An injunction against use by segregated schools of such city facilities would be appropriate, in my view, only if the District Court should find that the relief is necessary to insure full effectuation of the Montgomery desegregation decrees.
I agree with the Court’s vacation of the Court of Appeals’ judgment reversing paragraphs 3 and 4 of the District Court’s order relating to segregated nonschool groups, *579and with the direction to the Court of Appeals to enter a new judgment remanding the case to the District Court for further proceedings as to nonschool groups. A remand is required, in my view, because first the District Court must consider whether, for purposes of relief supplementary to the 1959 parks desegregation decree, a distinction between simply all-white groups and all-white groups with a segregated admissions policy is proper, ante, at 563-564, n. 6, and second, if that distinction is found meaningful, the District Court must clarify what evidence was relied upon to conclude that private organizations with racially discriminatory admissions policies are in fact using municipal facilities.*
*580But, should the District Court on remand find adequate evidence of use of the city’s recreational facilities by private nonschool groups with segregated admissions policies, or find that the distinction between such groups and simply all-white groups is improper, I believe that the District Court must enjoin "exclusive use” of recreational facilities by such groups. The complete record compiled in this case establishes beyond question that, even after the parks desegregation order of September 9, 1959, respondents continued for over a decade to engage in an unconstitutional de jure policy of deliberate segregation of the city’s recreational facilities. The Court’s reasoning in affirming the Court of Appeals’ injunction against “exclusive use” of municipal recreational facilities by private segregated school groups demonstrates this and bears repetition:
"[T]he city’s policy of allocating facilities to segregated private schools, in the context of the 1959 parks desegregation order and subsequent history, created, in effect, 'enclaves of segregation’ and deprived petitioners of equal access to parks and recreational facilities. The city was under an affirmative constitutional duty to eliminate every 'custom, practice, policy or usage’ reflecting an ‘impermissible obeisance to the now thoroughly discredited doctrine of “separate but equal.” ’... This obviously meant that discriminatory practices in Montgomery parks and recreational facilities were to be eliminated ‘root and branch,’ to use the phrase employed in Green v. *581County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U. S. 430, 438 (1968).” Ante, at 566-567.
Surely, respondents’ failure to extirpate “enclaves of segregation” created by “exclusive use” of city recreational facilities by private nonschool groups is no less a violation of the city’s affirmative duty to desegregate the parks than its proved failure to eliminate “enclaves” created by the “exclusive use” of such facilities by school groups. Thus, unlike the Court, I see no reason for deferring an immediate expression on the significance of the city’s involvement in the private discrimination of the nonschool groups, see ante, at 574, pending a more fully developed factual record. The justifications for finding that “exclusive use” by school groups violated the 1959 parks desegregation order plainly also require that, if private nonschool groups are in fact making “exclusive use” of municipal facilities, these uses, too, be found to violate the 1959 decree. In that circumstance, the unconstitutional “state action” of the respondents consists of their continuing racially discriminatory policies and practices that frustrate and impede the dismantlement of Montgomery’s de jure segregated parks.

My examination of the record reveals: On December 1, 1971, the parties had filed an “Agreement for Submission of Case,” reciting that they agreed “for the case to be submitted to the Court on the pleadings filed by the parties, the answers to interrogatories heretofore filed by the parties, the answers to interrogatories heretofore filed by the Defendants, and upon the Fact Stipulation as attached hereto.” The only interrogatories propounded in connection with the “Motion for Further Relief,” with which this action was commenced, were propounded to respondent Henry M. Andrews, Director of the Parks and Recreation Department, and neither his answers nor anything contained in the Fact Stipulation, addresses a practice of respondents with respect to the use of facilities by nonschool private clubs and groups. There is, however, testimony on that subject in the depositions of the several, respondents taken in an earlier proceeding on the amended complaint that had led to a settlement agreement. Testimony as to the use of facilities by an allegedly private segregated citywide Dixie Youth baseball league appears in the depositions of Joseph E. Marshall and Durwood Lynn Bozeman, the City’s Athletic Director. Mr. Marshall’s deposition states that, while the Dixie Youth teams at one time were officially segregated, they removed racial restrictions a number of years ago “realizing that many of [the] Leagues used municipal facilities” and that invitations to join the leagues are issued to all children in the public schools, though all of the directors of the leagues are white. Mr. Bozeman’s deposition testifies that the city supplies these leagues *580with playing facilities, pays for lighting, and gives each of them a dozen balls, chest protectors, leg guards, masks, mitts, and eight bats. Mr. Bozeman’s deposition also covers the operations of the private, allegedly predominantly white, Babe Ruth league and a public Negro Babe Ruth league, and discusses the operations of allegedly segregated church softball leagues.