Court Opinion

ID: 9457987
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:40:04.555669+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:36.168885
License: Public Domain

COLEMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
It is always with reluctance and regret that I file a dissenting opinion. I recognize that the opposing views of my Judicial Colleagues are most conscientiously entertained. I try never to disregard my own fallibility. This, however, is a case in which I feel that I must record my disagreement with the majority opinion, a course which generally I do not follow.
As the majority opinion indicates, this case was remanded to the District Court for further findings because of the familiarity of the District Court “with local conditions”. Now that these findings have been made the majority declines to be bound by them.
When a trial court has made its choice between two permissible views, such a choice is not clearly erroneous, United States v. Yellow Cab Company, 338 U.S. 338, 342, 70 S.Ct. 177, 94 L.Ed. 150 (1949). It is not a function of a reviewing court to decide factual issues de novo, Zenith Radio Corp. v. Hazeltine Research, Inc., 395 U.S. 100, 123, 89 S. Ct. 1562, 23 L.Ed.2d 129 (1969).
The District Court was “of the clear and certain conviction” that the pairing of the elementary schools would be a “very dangerous undertaking”. The majority orders it anyway. I would not hazard the lives and safety of children in an effort to eliminate one “all black” school which quite evidently is simply the product of the racial composition of the neighborhood. The personal safety of the child, black or white, has been, and always should be, the first, the mandatory, concern of everybody, more especially the Courts.
The District Court found that the composition of the classes in vocational *1098electives was the result of student choice. This finding too, is rejected. The Court whose findings are thus rejected is directed to make further findings in six different areas of school administration that really, in my opinion, have already been answered in the primary findings.
For these reasons, I would affirm the judgment of the District Court.