Court Opinion

ID: 9635794
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:05:48.582885+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:36.294179
License: Public Domain

OPINION
GRIFFIN, Circuit Judge.
This appeal presents the final chapter in the court-ordered desegregation of the Shelby County, Tennessee, public school system, a process which began forty-five years ago. In 1963, plaintiff public school students1 filed this class action against defendant Shelby County Board of Education (“Board”) alleging unconstitutional racial segregation in the Shelby County schools. In the ensuing period, the district court issued numerous orders requiring the elimination of all vestiges of state-imposed public school segregation in accordance with the mandate of Brown v. Bd. of Educ. of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954). A court-approved desegregation plan was implemented and in August 2006, after decades of court supervision, the parties moved jointly to dissolve all outstanding orders, declare the school district a unitary school system, and terminate the litigation. The United States, which has participated as an intervenor since 1966, supported the motion.2
Despite the parties’ universal agreement that the goals of the desegregation plan have been satisfactorily fulfilled and that educational parity has been attained, the district court disagreed that the constitutional requirements for unitary status have been met in all relevant respects. Consequently, although the court granted the joint motion in regard to facilities, transportation, and staffing, it denied the motion as it pertained to the areas of student assignment, faculty integration, and extracurricular activities. The district court established new “racial ratios” for the racial composition of students and faculty which it expected to be met no later than October *6472012. The court anticipated that if its new orders were followed, it would end its school supervision by October 2015.3
Defendant Shelby County Schools now appeals the portion of the district court order denying the joint motion for unitary status. The intervenor United States appeals the remedy ordered by the district court for faculty integration.4
For the reasons stated below, we hold that the district court abused its discretion by denying the parties’ joint motion for unitary status regarding student assignment, faculty integration, and extracurricular activities. Accordingly, we reverse, in part, the order of the district court and remand with instructions to grant in full the parties’ joint motion for declaration of unitary status, dissolve all outstanding orders and injunctions as to the Board and its members, and dismiss this action as to all parties and claims.
I.
In general, “ ‘[t]he acceptance of a settlement in a class action suit is discretionary with the court and will be overturned only by a showing of abuse of discretion.’ ” Clark Equip. Co. v. Int’l Union, Allied Indus. Workers of Am., AFL-CIO, 803 F.2d 878, 880 (6th Cir.1986) (quoting Laskey v. UAW, 638 F.2d 954, 957 (6th Cir.1981)). See also Fidel v. Farley, 534 F.3d 508, 513 (6th Cir.2008) (“We review a district court’s approval of a settlement as fair, adequate, and reasonable for abuse of discretion.”) (citation omitted).
In the specific setting of a school desegregation class action, “[wjhere the relief sought in the district court is the dissolution of a[] [desegregation decree], the order of the district court is subject to a mixed standard of review.” Manning ex rel. Manning v. School Bd. of Hillsborough County, 244 F.3d 927, 940 (11th Cir.2001). We review the district court’s partial denial of the parties’ joint motion to dissolve the desegregation decree for an abuse of discretion. Id. (citation omitted); see also Little Rock Sch. Dist. v. Pulaski County Special Sch. Dist. No. 1, 921 F.2d 1371, 1391 (8th Cir.1990) (reviewing district court’s rejection of settlement plan in school desegregation case for abuse of discretion); Armstrong v. Bd. of School Directors of City of Milwaukee, 616 F.2d 305, 319 (7th Cir.1980), overruled in part on other grounds by Felzen v. Andreas, 134 F.3d 873 (7th Cir.1998) (holding that the abuse of discretion standard “is not reserved only for purely economic [class action] litigation” and thus “will govern our review of the district court’s approval of the [desegregation] settlement proposal.”).
The district court’s application of the law is subject to de novo review, while the court’s factual findings, including its determination that a school district has not achieved unitary status, fall under the clearly erroneous standard of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52(a). Manning, 244 F.3d at 940 (citations omitted); Holton v. City of Thomasville School Dist., 425 F.3d 1325, 1336 (11th Cir.2005) (citations omitted). “Courts of appeals view the facts in the light most favorable to the settlement.” Armstrong, 616 F.2d at 315 (citation omitted).
II.
The procedural history of this class action, which is set forth in detail in the *648district court’s order addressing the parties’ joint motion for a declaration of unitary status, reflects four decades of slow but steady progress in the removal of all vestiges of state-imposed public school segregation. The present-day posture of the case finds the parties at a new crossroads — facing the rare and atypical situation in which a district court has rejected, in part, a reasonable and good-faith joint motion by plaintiffs and defendant to declare a school system unitary. See Wendy Parker, The Decline of Judicial Decision-making: School Desegregation and District Court Judges, 81 N.C.L.Rev. 1623, 1636-37 nn. 76-80 (2003) (symposium) (collecting cases in which joint motions for unitary status were approved).
In applying the abuse-of-discretion review standard to these uncommon circumstances, we acknowledge as a preliminary matter that a district court’s “familiarity with the litigants and the litigation [in a long-standing desegregation suit] is a valuable asset which should not lightly be discarded.” Armstrong, 616 F.2d at 319. Nonetheless, it is also well-established that “[p]ublie policy strongly favors settlement of disputes without litigation.... Settlement agreements should therefore be upheld whenever equitable and policy considerations so permit.” Ford Motor Co. v. Mustangs Unlimited, Inc., 487 F.3d 465, 469 (6th Cir.2007) (quoting Aro Corp. v. Allied Witan Co., 531 F.2d 1368, 1372 (6th Cir.1976)). See also Gen. Motors Corp., 497 F.3d at 632 (noting “the federal policy favoring settlement of class actions”) (citation omitted). This policy applies equally to desegregation cases. See Little Rock Sch. Dist, 921 F.2d at 1388 (noting that “[a] strong public policy favors agreements, and courts should approach them with a presumption in their favor” in ordering the district court to approve a desegregation settlement plan.).
The voluntary settlement of school desegregation controversies is to be encouraged, even though such litigation implicates the important civil rights of the plaintiff class:
[D]espite the importance of the substantive rights of the class members, settlement is an appropriate method of arriving at a school desegregation remedy. While courts should be extremely sensitive to the possibilities for abuse where a compromise of the civil rights of a class is proposed, a blanket prohibition of compromise could result, in many cases, in abandonment of the substantial benefits which can result from voluntary resolution of litigation, without a commensurate increase in the protection accorded the civil rights of the class. Indeed, it appears that school desegregation is one of the areas in which voluntary resolution is preferable to full litigation because the spirit of cooperation inherent in good faith settlement is essential to the true long-range success of any desegregation remedy. A remedial decree reached through agreement between the parties may, because of the community cooperation it inspires, more effectively implement the constitutional guarantee of equal protection than a seemingly more stringent court-ordered remedy which the community views as imposed upon it from the outside.
Armstrong, 616 F.2d at 317-18 (internal citations omitted).
In Armstrong, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals applied the abuse-of-discretion standard in affirming the district court’s approval of a settlement agreement terminating a public school desegregation class action. We find its extensive analysis to be instructive. The Armstrong court held correctly that even “a school desegregation plan devised through volun*649tary means ... must attain a certain minimum level of constitutional compliance.” Id. at 319 (citing Liddell v. Caldwell, 546 F.2d 768 (8th Cir.1976)). Consequently, when a proposed settlement is on the table,
[a] federal court cannot permit an agreement between counsel for the defendants and counsel for the plaintiff class seriously to undercut the constitutional policy requiring desegregation of our nation’s schools; this is true even where the class members themselves do not oppose a particular settlement. At the same time, however, the court cannot disregard the desire of the litigants amicably to settle their litigation nor can it ignore the substantial benefits which can accrue to both the class members and the general public from a fair and adequate settlement of a school desegregation controversy.
Armstrong, 616 F.2d at 319.
Thus, the district court must delicately balance these competing interests before deciding whether the proposed settlement is fair. The bottom line, as the Armstrong court explained, is that
no settlement [should] be approved which either initiates or authorizes the continuation of clearly illegal conduct. A school desegregation settlement which authorizes clearly unconstitutional behavior is, on its face, neither fair, reasonable nor adequate as required by the class action standard. In applying this principle, however, the court must not decide unsettled legal questions; any illegality or unconstitutionality must appear as a legal certainty on the face of the agreement before a settlement can be rejected on this basis.
Id. at 319-20 (internal citations omitted).
Significantly, in assessing whether the settlement is fair, equitable, and reasonable, “the district court must not forget that it is reviewing a settlement proposal rather than ordering a remedy in a litigated case.” Id. at 314-15. Accordingly, “[bjecause settlement of a class action, like settlement of any litigation, is basically a bargained for exchange between the litigants, the judiciary’s role is properly limited to the minimum necessary to protect the interests of the class and the public. Judges should not substitute their own judgment as to optimal settlement terms for the judgment of the litigants and their counsel. ” Id. at 315 (emphasis added).
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals echoed these sentiments in Little Rock Sch. Dist., a case in which it reversed a district court’s rejection of a joint motion to settle the Little Rock, Arkansas, school desegregation case:
The most important fact about the present appeals is that they arise out of settlements agreed to by all parties in the District Court. We believe the District Court erred by failing to give sufficient weight to that fact. It treated the case almost as if it were a fully contested matter.... We respectfully disagree with this approach. The law strongly favors settlements. Courts should hospitably receive them. This may be especially true in the present context — a protracted, highly divisive ... litigation, any lasting solution to which necessarily depends on the good faith and cooperation of all the parties, especially the defendants. As a practical matter, a remedy that everyone agrees to is a lot more likely to succeed than one to which the defendants must be dragged kicking and screaming.
This does not mean that a court must automatically approve anything the parties set before it.... [T]his is a class action, and courts are not obliged (indeed, they are not permitted) to approve settlements that are unfair to class *650members, or negotiated by inadequate class representatives.
We are bound to respect this factual agreement by the parties. There is no evidence in this record to contradict it, and we must believe that counsel for the [] intervenors are the best defenders and guardians of the interests of their own clients. This is, after all, no ordinary litigation. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, its lawyers and its predecessors, have vigorously prosecuted this case and its ancestors for more than 30 years. Absent an extremely good reason — and we have been given none — we are reluctant to disregard their judgment as to what is best for their own clients.
Little Rock Sch. Dist., 921 F.2d at 1383, 1386 (emphasis added).
We, too, endorse this approach, which “take[s] into account ... the special concerns implicit in [civil rights] class action settlements while still preserving the essential character of settlement of a lawsuit.” Armstrong, 616 F.2d at 315. Thus, while the district court should not give “rubber stamp approval” in lieu of independent review to the parties’ joint unitary status motion, id., it must afford considerable weight to the joint motion when it is reasonable, filed in good faith, and demonstrates that the constitutional mandate requiring desegregation has been satisfied.
III.
In evaluating the district court’s partial rejection of the parties’ joint motion for unitary status, it is important that we briefly highlight the legal precedent that forms the backdrop of this prolonged desegregation litigation.
The duty and responsibility of a school district once segregated by law is to take all steps necessary to eliminate the vestiges of the unconstitutional de jure system. This is required in order to ensure that the principal wrong of the de jure system, the injuries and stigma inflicted upon the race disfavored by the violation, is no longer present. This was the rationale and the objective of Brown I [v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954) ] and Brown II [v. Bd. of Educ., 349 U.S. 294, 75 S.Ct. 753, 99 L.Ed. 1083 (1955) ].
Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U.S. 467, 485, 112 S.Ct. 1430, 118 L.Ed.2d 108 (1992).
The Supreme Court has held that the “transition to a unitary, nonracial system of public education was and is the ultimate end” of its desegregation jurisprudence. Green v. County Sch. Bd. of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430, 436, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968) (citing Brown I, 349 U.S. at 299-301, 75 S.Ct. 753). Although “the term ‘unitary’ is not a precise concept,” Freeman, 503 U.S. at 487, 112 S.Ct. 1430, the Supreme Court identified certain features of the school system that must be freed from racial discrimination before the desegregation process will be deemed successful and local control will be allowed to resume: student assignment, faculty assignment, staff assignment, facilities and resources, transportation, and extracurricular activities. Green, 391 U.S. at 435, 88 S.Ct. 1689.
The Court has since provided guidance for determining whether a school district has met its obligation under a desegregation decree. “The ultimate inquiry is whether the [constitutional violator] ha[s] complied in good faith with the desegregation decree since it was entered, and whether the vestiges of past discrimination ha[ve] been eliminated to the extent practicable.” Missouri v. Jenkins, 515 U.S. 70, 89, 115 S.Ct. 2038, 132 L.Ed.2d 63 (1995) (citation and internal quotation *651marks omitted). The Court has described a number of factors to consider, including:
whether there has been full and satisfactory compliance with the decree in those aspects of the system where supervision is to be withdrawn; whether retention of judicial control is necessary or practicable to achieve compliance with the decree in other facets of the school system; and whether the school district has demonstrated, to the public and to the parents and students of the once disfavored race, its good-faith commitment to the whole of the court’s decree and to those provisions of the law and the Constitution that were the predicate for judicial intervention in the first instance.
Freeman, 503 U.S. at 491, 112 S.Ct. 1430.
Finally, the Supreme Court has emphasized that the extreme remedy of federal judicial supervision of local school systems was intended to be a temporary act limited to curing the effects of prior discrimination. “Returning schools to the control of local authorities at the earliest practicable date is essential to restore their true accountability in our governmental system.” Freeman, 503 U.S. at 490, 112 S.Ct. 1430. Thus,
[s]uch decrees, unlike the one in [United States v.] Swift [ & Co., 286 U.S. 106, 119, 52 S.Ct. 460, 76 L.Ed. 999 (1932) ], are not intended to operate in perpetuity. Local control over the education of children allows citizens to participate in decisionmaking, and allows innovation so that school programs can fit local needs. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717, 742, 94 S.Ct. 3112, 41 L.Ed.2d 1069 (1974) (Milliken I); San Antonio Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 50, 93 S.Ct. 1278, 36 L.Ed.2d 16 (1973). The legal justification for displacement of local authority by an injunctive decree in a school desegregation case is a violation of the Constitution by the local authorities. Dissolving a desegregation decree after the local authorities have operated in compliance with it for a reasonable period of time properly recognizes that “necessary concern for the important values of local control of public school systems dictates that a federal court’s regulatory control of such systems not extend beyond the time required to remedy the effects of past intentional discrimination.”
Bd. of Educ. of Oklahoma City v. Dowell, 498 U.S. 237, 248, 111 S.Ct. 630, 112 L.Ed.2d 715 (1991) (citations omitted).
IV.
In the present case, the district court denied unitary status in the areas of student assignment, faculty integration, and extracurricular activities. As we explain below, the district court abused its discretion by not affording sufficient weight to the parties’ joint motion and its factual basis.
A. Student Assignment
On the issue of student assignment, the district court found that the parties failed to satisfy an evidentiary burden imposed by the court:
Applying these principles to the case at hand, the Court finds that the County is not presently in compliance with its constitutional obligations with regard to student assignment. As explained supra, the racial composition of the majority of the County schools is substantially disproportionate to that of the district as a whole. The Board has made no showing that racial balance is infeasible either generally or with regard to certain schools. Furthermore, the record does not indicate that the County has at any time accomplished its objectives; in fact, after making considerable progress towards desegregation, the County has *652seemingly drifted from any serious focus on desegregation.
While demographic factors, including those caused by annexation of portions of the County by the City of Memphis, have clearly played a part in creating the present racial composition of the County schools, the County has not met its burden of showing that it would have achieved its goal had it not been for these factors. Furthermore, as the Supreme Court has articulated, the Board’s decisions with regard to school construction and zoning have necessarily played an influential role in those demographic shifts. Consequently, the Court must assume that the remaining significant disparity in racial composition among the schools is a product of past de jure segregation.
(Footnote omitted; emphasis added.)
During the forty-five years of this litigation, the racial composition of the students attending the Shelby County Schools has fluctuated widely. Although the school district’s overall student population and minority enrollment have grown rapidly, the percentage of African-American students in the Shelby County Schools has varied significantly: 28 percent in 1969; 30 percent in 1971; 15 percent in 1984; 22 percent in 2001; 32 percent in 2005; and 34 percent in 2007. The district court attributed much of the racial ratio changes to annexations by the City of Memphis: “In 1984, the percentage of black students systemwide had dropped precipitously, apparently largely due to annexation into the City of Memphis of portions of the County----” Further, at the district court’s January 26, 2007, hearing, Assistant Board Superintendent Maura Black Sullivan testified that if the planned City of Memphis annexations are implemented, Shelby County Schools’ African-American student ratio will decrease to 7.68 percent.
It is undisputed that political and social decisions beyond defendant Board’s control have affected and continue to impact the racial ratio of the Shelby County students. These influences are not causally related to defendant’s violation of the Constitution and fall outside of the scope of the court’s equitable powers to restore the victims of discrimination to the position they would have occupied absent the violation. As the Supreme Court explained in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Educ., 402 U.S. 1, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554 (1971):
Neither school authorities nor district courts are constitutionally required to make year-by-year adjustments of the racial compositions of student bodies once the affirmative duty to desegregate has been accomplished and racial discrimination through official action is eliminated from the system.... [Therefore,] in the absence of a showing that either the school authorities or some other agency of the State has deliberately attempted to fix or alter demographic patterns to affect the racial composition of the schools, further intervention by a district court should not be necessary.
Id. at 31-32, 91 S.Ct. 1267. As we further explained in Reed v. Rhodes, 179 F.3d 453 (6th Cir.1999):
That there was racial imbalance in student attendance zones was not tantamount to a showing that the school district was in noncomplianee with the decree or with its duties under the law. Racial balance is not to be achieved for its own sake. It is to be pursued when racial imbalance has been caused by a constitutional violation. Once the racial imbalance due to the de jure violation has been remedied, the school district is under no duty to remedy imbalance that is caused by demographic factors.
*653Id. at 466 (quoting Freeman, 503 U.S. at 494, 112 S.Ct. 1430) (emphasis added).5
In granting unitary status in three of six areas, the district court “recognize[d] the great progress the Board has made in desegregating its schools.” Further, the court found “no evidence that there has been racial discrimination by the County in the areas of facilities, transportation or staffing during the last few decades of this case.” Although the district judge acknowledged at a status conference that de jure racial discrimination no longer exists in the school district, she nonetheless continued federal court supervision of student assignment because, in her opinion, the racial ratio in individual schools was “uneven.” The district judge cited the school district’s new state-of-the-art Southwind High School as an example of such unevenness; Southwind was expected to open in the fall of 2007 with an African-American student population of approximately 88 percent.
In determining whether the present racial “unevenness” is properly subject to the court’s equitable remedies, we must decide if the current conditions are vestiges of the prior unconstitutional de jure system or the products of other actions or conditions. Reed, 179 F.3d at 466. Following oral argument and our review of the record and briefs, we conclude that the lower court clearly erred in finding the former, rather than the latter.
In the past decades, the vestiges of the racially segregated Shelby School system have been dismantled. A new “unitary, nonracial system of public education,” Green, 391 U.S. at 436, 88 S.Ct. 1689, has risen in its place for which the parties are justifiably proud. The record reveals that the racial “unevenness” that currently exists in individual schools is not the product of defendant’s forty-five-year-old constitutional violation. Rather, with the passage of time and court intervention, other dynamics have now shaped the district into its current form. The annexations by the City of Memphis, along with voluntary housing choices made by the public, have drastically altered the racial composition of the school district. In addition, school construction and student boundaries (including the new Southwind High School) approved by the district court over the past few decades have affected the present racial unevenness. Although the district court now faults itself for “rubber-stamp[ing]” school construction and zoning requests (JA 116), its role in managing and shaping the school district cannot be ignored.
Finally, the Supreme Court requires that we consider “whether the school district has demonstrated, to the public and to the parents and students of the once disfavored race, its good-faith commitment to the whole of the court’s decree and to those provisions of the law and the Constitution that were the predicate for judicial intervention in the first instance.” Freeman, 503 U.S. at 491, 112 S.Ct. 1430.
On this issue, we are greatly influenced by the position of plaintiffs. The plaintiffs fought this battle to desegregate the Shelby County Schools. They are the students, and now parents or grandparents, who suffered from the constitutional violation. In their view, the battle has been *654won. They now ask that we declare the school district to be a unitary, nonracial system of public education. We afford great weight to the appraisal of the most interested parties to this litigation, particularly where the record illustrates defendant’s compliance with the desegregation order through the creation of remedial programs targeting racial inequities and the construction of state-of-the-art facilities. See Reed, 179 F.3d at 466-67 (citing the school district’s initiatives “designed to develop self-esteem and enhance the academic potential of all students regardless of race” and other, corrective measures taken in African American schools “to involve parents and offset negative socioeconomic factors” as evidence of the district’s good-faith efforts to desegregate the school system). Under the circumstances, defendant has satisfactorily complied with the student assignment portion of the deT segregation decree and therefore is entitled to a declaration of unitary status with respect to this component.
B. Faculty Integration
For the reasons previously stated, and those recited below, we also hold that the district court clearly erred in rejecting unitary status as it pertains to faculty integration.
In this regard, the district court found that defendant Board was likewise “not in full compliance” with the law because the African-American teacher ratio varied in individual schools from five percent to thirty percent. In “hindsight,” the court acknowledged that its prior “focus on this aspect was ill-conceived.” Although noting that “a school desegregation plan is not an affirmative action program for teachers,” the court reversed its previous approach by directing that the racial ratio of the faculty match the racial composition of the student population as a whole:
On this ground, the Court finds that, rather than tying the racial composition of a school’s faculty to that of the population of teachers in the system as [a] whole, it should be linked instead to the racial composition of the student population. Accordingly, the Court finds it necessary to depart from its prior directives and concludes that the County’s constitutional obligations require the achievement of a racial balance reflective of the systemwide student population, within a margin of error to be enumerated below and subject to mitigating circumstances and a feasibility requirement, as developed supra.
(Footnote omitted; first emphasis in original, second emphasis added.)
The intervenor United States appeals this remedy arguing that it is unprecedented and would result in a “bizarre” and “racially discriminatory hiring and firing” of teachers to keep pace with the ever-changing racial dynamics of the student population.
At the hearing of January 26, 2007, Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources Lois Williams, who is African-American, testified about the Board’s extensive efforts to recruit minority teachers. Ms. Williams testified that under the supervision of minority recruiter Eddy Jones, who is also African-American, the Board, during 2005-2006, visited over fifty-five colleges and universities, including “13 historically black colleges and universities in an effort to recruit minority candidates for teaching positions in the Shelby County Schools.”
When asked if her decision-making would change if the case were dismissed, Ms. Williams responded:
Q. [Mr. Winchester] Okay. And you understand that we’re asking the court to dismiss the Robinson case *655and — and be free from judicial court scrutiny of our recruiting and hiring practices:
A. [Ms. Williams] I do understand that, sir.
Q. And if that occurs do — do you have thoughts or opinions as to whether any of the efforts that are currently undertaken by the school — by the school board to recruit, hire, and retain minority faculty and administrators would change in any way whatsoever?
A. I don’t see that it would change.
The superintendent, when Dr. Webb mentioned that he came to the Shelby County schools, he held a meeting with human resources and he asked if that department was equipped to recruit, retain and maintain high quality employees.
He asked about the minority recruitment effort which he was well aware of the court order.
The superintendent has empowered me to make decisions based upon what’s best for the students in Shelby County schools, and we recognize that our schools need to be reflective of the communities that they live in.
The superintendent has also empowered me to make decisions based on the staffing within our schools.
And so, as we look to recruit, retain, train and maintain highly qualified teaching staff, we certainly have an emphasis on being inclusive and making certain that our school district is reflective of our student population, the community and the world that we live in to prepare students.
Without citation to the record, the district court found that the defendant Board was “not in full compliance with its obligations under the law.” We respectfully disagree:
In striking down a similar student-based racial hiring plan in Oliver v. Kalamazoo Bd. of Educ., 706 F.2d 757 (6th Cir.1983), we explained that “students ... do not have a constitutional right to attend a school with a teaching staff of any particular racial composition. Rather, with respect to the teaching staff, all that the students are entitled to is the ‘sustained good faith effort to recruit minority faculty members so as to remedy the effects of any past discriminatory practices.’ ” Id. at 762 (quoting Fort Bend Indep. Sch. Dist. v. City of Stafford, 651 F.2d 1133, 1140 (5th Cir.1981)).6 Instead, the court’s orders should require that “the faculty of each school reflect the systemwide racial ratio of faculty members.... ” United States v. DeSoto Parish Sch. Bd., 574 F.2d 804, 816 (5th Cir.1978); United States v. Montgomery County Bd. of Educ., 395 U.S. 225, 232, 89 S.Ct. 1670, 23 L.Ed.2d 263 (1969).
Here, as the United States rightly argues, imposition of the district court’s proposed faculty hiring goals would “effectively turn the purpose of the desegregation remedy on its head” through the discriminatory hiring and recruitment of faculty:
Compliance with the district court’s new faculty assignment plan in this case could require racially discriminatory hirings and firings. If, in any given year, the Board has too few black faculty to staff each school within 15% of the systemwide student body, it must fire non-*656black faculty and hire an equivalent number of black faculty in order to meet the court’s requirements. - This bizarre and unconstitutional reshuffling would be repeated as the student population in Shelby County shifts as a result of annexation or changing residential patterns, leaving more teachers jobless with every racial recount of the student body.
As the Supreme Court stated in Swann, “where it is possible to' identify a ‘white school’ or a ‘Negro school’ simply by reference to the racial composition of teachers and staff,” there is a prima facie constitutional violation. Swann, 402 U.S. at 18, 91 S.Ct. 1267; see also Green, 391 U.S. at 434-35, 88 S.Ct. 1689. We find ourselves in agreement with Chief Justice Roberts that “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Parents Involved in Cmty. Schools v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701, 127 S.Ct. 2738, 168 L.Ed.2d 508 (2007) (plurality). Race-based hiring of the sort ordered by the district court violates the Constitution.
Moreover, we agree with the United States that the district court’s assertion that each child is constitutionally entitled to “educational guidance which includes teachers of the student’s own race” is invalid. The Constitution requires only that schools be staffed so that no school is racially identifiable based on governmental action. Montgomery County Bd. of Educ., 395 U.S. at 236, 89 S.Ct. 1670. As the United States correctly contends,
Taken to heart, the court’s “role model” principle could lead to an increase in racially identifiable schools as majority black schools are increasingly staffed with black faculty. Conversely, the “role model” theory “could be used to escape the obligation to remedy [hiring discrimination] by justifying the small percentage of black teachers by reference to the small percentage of black students.” Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Educ., 476 U.S. 267, 276, 106 S.Ct. 1842, 90 L.Ed.2d 260 (1986).
In Wygant, the Supreme Court expressly rejected the “role model theory” as a basis for racially based layoff protections because it “allows the Board to engage in discriminatory hiring and layoff practices long past the point required by any legitimate remedial purpose.” Id. at 275, 106 S.Ct. 1842. The district court’s ruling in the instant case directly contradicts this principle.
Finally, as previously discussed supra, the record clearly shows that the racial disparity ratio from school to school for teachers is not the product of a constitutional violation, but of other demographic trends. Therefore, the vestiges of the post-constitutional violation regarding faculty integration have not been demonstrated. In light of the abundant evidence of the Board’s good faith efforts to recruit and hire minority faculty despite a statewide minority teacher shortage, the district court abused its discretion in failing to afford greater weight to the factual basis submitted by the parties on this issue and in denying their joint motion.
C. Extracurricular Activities
The district court also denied the parties’ joint motion for unitary status regarding extracurricular activities. The only explanation for this ruling is the following footnote: “The Court determined that the issue of extra-curricular activities requires further inquiry before declaring unitary status as to that area.” '
We conclude that the district court clearly erred by rejecting, without explanation, the joint motion of the parties. “[T]he district court must clearly set forth in the record its reasons for approving [or *657rejecting] the settlement in order to make meaningful appellate review possible. This is particularly important in civil rights class actions.” Armstrong, 616 F.2d at 315 (citations omitted). Absent reasons and evidence to the contrary, the joint motion was entitled to substantial weight in the exercise of the court’s discretion. The victims of defendant’s past violation of the Constitution are satisfied with the commitment and success achieved by the Shelby County Schools in the area of extracurricular activities. Absent a reasonable explanation, the district court abused its discretion in ruling otherwise.
V.
For these reasons, we reverse in part the order of the district court and remand with instructions to grant in full the parties’ joint motion for declaration of unitary status, dissolve all outstanding orders and injunctions as to the Board and its members, and dismiss this action.

. At oral argument, counsel asserted that throughout this litigation plaintiffs have been represented by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.

. In its response to the joint motion, the United States advised the district court that "[t]he United States has not received any complaints concerning the district’s compliance with its desegregation obligations.” Further, after the conclusion of two "fairness hearings,” see generally UAW v. Gen. Motors Corp., 497 F.3d 615, 635 (6th Cir.2007), the United States represented: “It would appear on whole that the defendant has complied in good faith with the desegregation] orders and ... under applicable legal principles they are entitled to a dismissal.”

. On April 24, 2008, a different panel of this court granted defendant's motion to stay the order of the district court pending our resolution of the merits of this appeal.

. Plaintiffs moved unsuccessfully to file a late brief in support of the Board's appeal.

. In Reed, we affirmed the district court’s order holding that the Cleveland City School District was entitled to a declaration of unitary status with respect to pupil assignments, where the district’s record of compliance stood as an unequivocal manifestation of good faith and "[t]he demographics of recent years have reflected rapid population shifts within the city that were not caused by or attributable to the Cleveland School District.” Reed, 179 F.3d at 467 (citation omitted).

. In Fort Bend Indep. Sch. Dist., the court held that "a formerly segregated school system need not employ a faculty having a racial composition substantially equivalent to that of its student body in order effectively to desegregate its schools and attain unitary status” and concluded that ”[t]he district court erred in imposing such a requirement.” 651 F.2d at 1138.