Court Opinion

ID: 9460768
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:59:53.334245+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:46.482241
License: Public Domain

COLEMAN, Circuit Judge,
with whom
DYER and SIMPSON, Circuit Judges, join, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I was a member of the panel which rendered the original opinion in. this case, United States v. State of Mississippi, 5 Cir., 1973, 476 F.2d 941. I therefore avail myself of the privilege of commenting on the en banc opinion now about to be handed down.
Since it is in accord with the original panel opinion, I heartily concur in that part of the en banc opinion which reverses the cancellation of the original lease from the Smith County Board of Supervisors to the Sylvarena Civic Center.
Only the cancellation of the lease from the Sylvarena Civic Center to the Sylvarena Academy remains for discussion.
Our Brother Gewin is to be highly complimented for an unusually lucid analysis of the underlying facts and of prior court decisions. It is to be regretted, however, that such a splendid exposition fails to recognize the one decisive feature of the case: the Court is now directing the cancellation of a lease between private parties — a lease in which no officer or agency of the State or County had any power, authority, or participation. No state action was involved. I cannot square this with the Fourteenth Amendment.
It is no answer to say that the Sylvarena Civic Center (and Academy) lands are held in trust for the benefit of the school children of that township.
As to the paramount title, this undoubtedly is true, Jones v. Madison County, 72 Miss. 777, 18 So. 87 (1895). Nevertheless, the same constitutional prohibition of the sale of such lands further provides that they may be leased for a specified term of years and for a *439gross sura, the proceeds to be covered into the public school funds, Mississippi Constitution of 1890, § 211.
On March 4, 1968, three years and eight days prior to our decision in Wright v. City of Brighton, 441 F.2d 447, the Board of Supervisors, in good faith, leased the former Sylvarena school property to the Sylvarena Civic Center Association for the statutory term of twenty-five years. Thereafter, for that period of time, no county or state official had, or could exercise, any power, authority, dominion, or control over the use of the land, any more than if it had been similarily leased to a private individual for any imaginable purpose whatever. There could be nothing sinister about the nominal rental charge on this small acreage, occupied by an abandoned school building of severely limited utility. Moreover, when it came to granting a lease, the Board was entitled to take into consideration the fact that, like all other Mississippi rural schools in existence prior to 1953, the residents of the community had been taxed for the construction of the building in the first place. No state or county funds could have gone into the construction of the building. To be more specific, the Board of Supervisors simply legalized, in a formal manner, use by community citizens of a building which they had already paid for at the tax collector’s window. Additionally, it is not. disputed that the Academy spent $25,000 in labor and materials for' the rehabilitation and improvement of the old school house.
What the en banc Court is doing, in the exercise of a purportedly Fourteenth Amendment power, is to cancel (forfeit) a lease from one group of private individuals to another.
This reminds us of some other language appearing in Gilmore v. City of Montgomery, supra:
The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not prohibit the “[individual invasion of individual rights.” Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 11, 3 S.Ct. 18, 21, 27 L.Ed. 835 (1883). It does proscribe, however, state action “of every kind” that operates to deny any citizen the equal protection of the laws. Ibid. This proscription on state action applies de facto as well as de jure because “[c]onduct that is formally ‘private’ may become so entwined with governmental policies or so impregnated with a governmental character as to become subject to the constitutional limitations placed upon state action.” Evans v. Newton, 382 U.S. 296, 299, 86 S.Ct. 486, 488, 15 L.Ed.2d 373 (1966). In the present case we must determine whether the city of Montgomery engaged in discriminatory activity violative of the parks desegregation order. We must also decide whether the city’s involvement in the alleged discriminatory activity of segregated private schools and other private groups, through its providing recreational facilities, constitutes “state action” subject to constitutional limitation.
It also brings to the fore another statement appearing in that opinion:
“The District Court does not have carte blanche authority to administer city facilities simply because there is past or present discrimination. The usual prudential tenets limiting the exercise of judicial power must be observed in this case as in any other.” [Footnote 10].
If this be true as to publicly owned facilities, it is equally true, if not more so, as to facilities legally belonging to a private group for a specified term of years.
Neither do I understand Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U.S. 455, 93 S.Ct. 2804, 37 L.Ed.2d 723, to require the forfeiture of this private property right. Norwood held that private schools have the right to exist and operate. The State of Mississippi was not ordered to discontinue supplying books to private schools. Private schools were simply required to submit for approval a certification procedure, affirmatively declaring constitu*440tionally acceptable admission policies and practices, and supplying other relevant data.
The Sylvarena Academy is being required to forfeit its vested rights in real property, together with the fruits of labor and money expended on that property, amounting to $25,000. This Court met and decided that issue on another field in McNeal v. Tate, 5 Cir., 1971, 460 F.2d 568. There a divided panel, Judge Gewin dissenting, invalidated a sale of former public school property in Tate County, Mississippi, and directed that the property be reconveyed to the Tate County Board of Education. This was nothing less than a forfeiture because there was no lawful authority by which Tate County could have voluntarily or involuntarily refunded the purchase price or pay for the improvements made by the private owners. The ultimate outcome was that on petition for rehearing the sale was upheld but the operation of a private school on a discriminatory basis was enjoined. The specific language, 460 F.2d at 574, was that the injunction should:
" . . . provide that if the Thyatira School property is used for a private school, such school shall be operated without any discrimination of any kind or character based upon race, creed, color or national origin, and the doors of any such school shall be open at all times to all qualified applicants on an equal basis.”
When the panel decided the instant appeal, it applied the remedy directed by McNeal, supra. It makes no difference that McNeal involved a good faith sale to a private individual, who later sold it to the private school group. That is what happened here. There was a good faith lease to a private association, which leased it to the private school.
Other than imprisonment itself, forfeiture of real property rights is the most highly penal of all possible remedies, Bennett v. Hunter, 76 U.S. 326, 9 Wall. 326, 19 L.Ed. 672 (1869); forfeitures are not favored and a court of equity is always reluctant in the last degree to order one, Union National Bank v. Matthews, 98 U.S. 621, 25 L.Ed. 188 (1878); indeed, a forfeiture may be enforced only when within both letter and spirit of the law, United States v. Automobile Financing, 307 U.S. 219, 59 S.Ct. 861, 83 L.Ed. 1249. A forfeiture proceeding is quasi-criminal in character and can only be directed toward penalizing someone for the commission of an offense against the law, One 1958 Plymouth Sedan v. Com. of Pa., 380 U.S. 693, 85 S.Ct. 1246, 14 L.Ed.2d 170.
It is not against the law to operate a private school; it is a right protected by law, Norwood v. Harrison, supra. This Co.urt cannot enjoin the operation of the Sylvarena Academy as'a lawfully operated private school, so it simply orders it to forfeit its school building, which produces at that location the same result, plus the loss of property rights.
Even if this school were publicly owned or operated and thus within the Fourteenth Amendment, the remedy, applied literally hundreds of times, is not to forfeit the property but to require that it be operated in a constitutional manner. Even if we are to brush aside the private status of this school and shove it across the Fourteenth Amendment gap, that is the remedy which should be applied in this case, as was done in McNeal v. Tate, supra, and as was done by the Supreme Court in Norwood v. Harrison, supra.
Although the Sylvarena Academy has not surrendered its lease, and the case is not legally moot, we were informed at oral argument, not disputed, that after the panel decision directing the constitutional use of the Sylvarena property, the site was abandoned and the private school moved to another location. Thus, the Court is now using a dead school as the vehicle for holding that it has Fourteenth Amendment authority to obliterate, by judicial decree, transactions between private parties. Further, that obliteration may be accomplished by commanding the forfeiture of property capable of being used in a perfectly constitutional manner. To this, my concep*441tion of constitutional rights will not allow me to assent.
I concur in that portion of the majority opinion which leaves undisturbed, as it had to do, the lease from the Board of Supervisors to the Sylvarena Civic Association.
I dissent to that part of the opinion which directs the forfeiture of the lease from the Association to the Academy.