Court Opinion

ID: 8876947
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 19:24:20.7847+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:06:24.946999
License: Public Domain

LEWIS, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
The result dictated by this disturbing case is largely determined by the premise from which reasoning springs and the terminology used in advancing argu*169ment. I start with the premise of the trial court’s finding that the Board of Education, despite statements of completely acceptable policy, had not acted in good faith in effectuating such policies after having been afforded opportunity to do so. The authority of the trial court under such circumstances to prescribe positive action for purposes of curing a continuing situation that has traditionally denied to many a constitutional right, as with legislative re-apportionment problems, seems firmly established. But, of course, the cure cannot survive if it in turn reflects an unconstitutional imposition, and in this regard terminology can become a persuasive tool in analysis.
I have no quarrel with the statement that forced integration when viewed as an end in itself is not a compulsion of the Fourteenth Amendment. But any claimed right to disassociation in the public schools must fail and fall. If desegregation of the races is to be accomplished in the public schools, forced association must result, not as the end sought but as the path to elimination of discrimination. And, to me, the argument that racial discrimination cannot be eliminated through factors of judicial consideration that are based v.pon race itself is completely self-denying. The problem arose through consideration of race; it may now be approached through similar but enlightened consideration.
Again noting that the case reaches us for review of the affirmative action of the trial court it seems proper to emphasize that we do not set out consolidation of schools and the majority-to-minority transfer policy as compulsive instruments to accomplish desegregation. But we do hold that such means are not violative of the constitutional rights of any and might properly have been utilized by the School Board, and, in its stead, were available to the trial court. The contrasting policy of minority-to-majority transfer, denied in Goss, perpetuated discrimination; here, a start is made toward full compliance with Brown.