Court Opinion

ID: 8876948
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 19:24:20.786654+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:06:24.947647
License: Public Domain

BREITENSTEIN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) .
The district court made a general finding that the Board of Education had not acted in good faith to desegregate the Oklahoma City public schools. This finding is not supportel by any specific and uncorrected discriminatory practices. The court has assumed the authority to tell the Board how it shall perform some of its public duties to the end that integration may be attained.
My basic difference with the majority is that I see nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment that compels integration. To me discrimination and integration are entirely different. Discrimination is the denial of equal rights. Integration is compulsory association. Each is concerned with individual rights and each must be tested against the same constitutional standards.
The trouble with this case is that it deals with generalities rather than specifics. Discriminatory practices are bad and must not be condoned. Here the court does not find any explicit discriminatory act. It says that the Board has not acted in good faith in the preparation of a plan for integration and forces details of a plan on the Board. I believe that the courts should confine their decisions to actual controversies related to specific rights and should not take over the operation of public affairs entrusted to other governmental institutions.
Prior to Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873, the Oklahoma schools were segregated. Promptly after that decision the Board opened the schools to all. It did unwisely adopt a minority-to-majority transfer policy but promptly after Goss v. Board of Education, 373 U.S. 683, 83 S.Ct. 1405, 10 L.Ed.2d 632, it abandoned that policy and set up a transfer system which gave no regard to race. There is no evidence that since the adoption of that system any child of any race has been discriminated against. The unsupported suspicion of the plaintiffs’ experts that the operation of the transfer policy has re*170dounded to the disadvantage of negro children is insufficient basis for a finding of discrimination when weighed against the Board’s positive evidence of no discrimination.
The dissatisfaction of the court with the Board’s refusal to accept the court’s request for the employment of experts is no basis for the decision rendered. Judicial pique cannot replace the actual infringement of a constitutionally protected right.
The court ordered the Board to submit “a further desegregation plan.” In my opinion this portion of the order is not appealable. See Taylor v. Board of Education, 2 Cir., 288 F.2d 600. The court said that the plan should provide new district lines for four schools. The effect is to consolidate, in two instances, a junior high school district with a senior high school district. No finding is made as to the physical characteristics of the facilities or to the types of curriculum. In my opinion this is a gratuitous, judicial interference with the duties and responsibilities of the Board, is made without any supporting findings except the possibility of thereby in the future reducing the imbalance of the races, and is not required to protect any Fourteenth Amendment right. If the Board believes it appropriate to redraw district lines to alleviate racial imbalance, it may do so and any person who believes himself aggrieved by such action may seek judicial relief. Action by the Board is vastly different from action by the court.
In my opinion the judicial compulsion of the majority-to-minority transfer policy is indefensible. The Goss decision says (373 U.S. 687, 83 S.Ct. 1408): “Classifications based on race for purposes of transfers between public schools, as here, violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” A majority-to-minority transfer is based on race. No more need be said. If the Board determines to use transfers to alleviate racial imbalance, it may do so with the qualification that a person who believes his constitutional rights are infringed thereby may seek judicial relief.
The court ordered desegregation of faculty personnel “so that by 1970, the ratio of whites to non-whites assigned in each school of the defendants’ system will be the same” with a 10% leeway. Here again we have a classification based on race. The stated policy of the Board is: “Opportunity to apply for and be equal for any positions that may be available in the school system will be given to all without regard to race, color, creed, religion, or national origin.” The record is devoid of any evidence that the Board has deviated from this policy in any regard. In my opinion the Board policy is constitutionally correct and the court order on faculty integration is wrong.
I agree with the majority that the provision of the order for in-service faculty education cannot be sustained.