Court Opinion

ID: 9450212
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:38:25.845059+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:11.679607
License: Public Domain

CARSWELL, District Judge
(dissenting).
Guide lines for the pace of compliance with Constitutional mandates with respect to the operation of public schools have been the subject of very recent and rather exhaustive treatment in the opinions of the Supreme Court and of this Court. See United States Supreme Court opinion in Calhoun v. Latimer, 84 S.Ct. 1235, dealing with the Atlanta school system and appealing the opinion of the Fifth Circuit in 321 F.2d 302; and three opinions of the Fifth Circuit dated June 18, 1964: Stell et al. v. Savannah-Chatham County Board of Education et al., 333 F.2d 55; Davis et al. v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County et al., 333 F.2d 53; Armstrong et al. v. Board of Education of City of Birmingham, Alabama et al., 333 F.2d 47. These same opinions are correctly noted by the Court in this ease.
My disagreement with the action taken by the majority in this case stems from a basically different concept of sound judicial administration. Here the Court, having properly noted the guiding principles applicable in this field, proceeds, without further ado, to order the district court to enter an injunction and, moreover, an injunction which is actually a full-blown plan for the operation of the Dougherty County school system.
*986First, in my view, this simply violates the long standing, and wise, view that no court should rain down injunctions unless there be some demonstrated factual necessity to insure compliance with the law. There is not on this record any such factual showing at all.
This concept of restraint is no less wise in school cases than in others. Indeed, duly constituted school boards are entitled to a fair presumption of good faith when they represent, as here, an intention to effectuate the law. If there be shown at any time good reason to doubt professions of good faith, the great in-junctive powers of the Court may be brought to bear promptly. I would not assume, without recorded facts to the contrary, that a school board must be enjoined to comply with the law. Nor do I assume that the issuance of an injunction is a harmless nudge which only the recalcitrant should fear. Actually, the immediate issuance of injunction in such ease may well have the practical effect of cutting from the district court a potential for insuring orderly compliance which would otherwise be available to it.
This leads to the second and perhaps more serious fault I find in the Court’s action. With a most meager factual record before it the majority here spells out with some considerable minutiae a plan of its original authorship for the operation of the Dougherty County school system. Not only is the school board given no chance to be heard on the various requirements so meticulously set down but the district court itself is stripped of authority to hear or consider any matters which might well be in the interest of all parties. Both the district court and the school board are thus confronted with administering a plan untested in the light of facts on the record.
As I read the opinion the majority’s plan is not promulgated, I trust, as a model for all school jurisdictions of this Circuit, nor is it, I suppose, a mold of inflexible cast which may be turned to by the various district courts as an easy and standard nostrum in all such cases arising from El Paso to Key West. It confines itself to “minimum requirement(s) for the board of education of Dougherty County” in elaborate specifics.
The specifics must remain, the majority seems to say, “somewhat flexible.” With this I agree, for only in this manner can there be the development of a meaningful body of common law giving life and reality to the Constitutional mandates in this field. The inversion of the judicial process in this continuing task is less likely to speed the day when Brown v. Topeka and its subsequent amplifications become thoroughly and universally meaningful.
With sincere deference to the views of the majority I would remand this case on grounds of sound judicial administration to the district court, which, under our judicial system, must have initial and continuing responsibility for full compliance with Constitutional requirements, for the taking of additional testimony, if appropriate, and for consideration in the light of the following cases: Calhoun v. Latimer, 84 S.Ct. 1235; Stell et al. v. Savannah-Chatham County Board of Education et al., 333 F.2d 55; Davis et al. v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County et al., 333 F.2d 53; Armstrong et al. v. Board of Education of City of Birmingham, Alabama et al., 333 F.2d 47.