Court Opinion

ID: 9449596
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:16:28.577036+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:54.011996
License: Public Domain

BELL, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
The modification by the majority of their prior order in this case compounds error. Of course, I agree to the modifi*361cation to the extent that it may alleviate disruption of the educational process in Mobile during the 1963-1964 school term.
My understanding of this latest order is not altogether clear. It appears to simply require activation, under some plan yet to be worked out, of the Alabama School Placement Law which was adopted by the Legislature of that State in 1957, and which was approved as constitutional on its face in Shuttleworth v. Birmingham Board of Education, N.D.Ala., 1958, 162 F.Supp. 372, affirmed 358 U.S. 101, 79 S.Ct. 221, 3 L.Ed.2d 145. It is not likely that any appreciable amount of desegregation will take place under that law at this late date. The protective measures assured by Judge Lynne in the Armstrong case of a hearing on complaints if and where the plan or law is administered on the basis of race on five days notice is not present in Mobile. It is an inherently complicated law providing many factors which may be considered in making pupil assignments. We have only recently eliminated two of them in the Atlanta school case where we said that the use of scholastic standards and personality interviews as a basis in transfer and assignment were illegal per se when applied only to Negroes. Calhoun v. Latimer, 5 Cir., 1963, 321 F.2d 302. Others were eliminated or limited when that case was in the District Court. Calhoun v. Board of Education, N.D.Ga., 188 F.Supp. 401. Working out a meaningful plan will not be easy, and will require more than the cursory and perfunctory treatment the case has received here.
Moreover, what was done in Birmingham may or may not be relevant to Mobile. The case there had been pending in the District Court some three years. The District Court conducted a hearing and had certain representations from the school board as to how the Pupil Placement Law would be administered. Here no party has ever mentioned using this law. The District Court has never considered it.
This case is set for trial on the merits in November. A pending motion to dismiss is set at the same time. The District Court has ordered the school board to propose at that time a plan for desegregation of the school system beginning in September 1964 within the teachings of the Supreme Court decisions on that subject.
It has been the position of appellants that their ultimate right to a desegregated school system is cast in doubt by the pending motion to dismiss, and the fact that the case is set for trial on the merits even though the school system is now segregated. One of the real thrusts of the appeal is their contention that they cannot be certain that desegregation will become a reality in the school term commencing in September 1964 because of this posture of the case. An order of the type originally entered but making desegregation effective with the beginning of school in September 1964, and in at least two grades, should serve to dispel this doubt and the record warrants such an order. In warrants nothing more. The school board would have the opportunity in the interim of formulating a desegregation plan, subject to court approval, and making ready for the good faith adaptation of the plan.
The modification has been neither sought nor considered and will come as a great surprise to all. It will in all probability be ineffective. I do not understand the inordinate hurry in this case. It has only been pending three and one half months. It has been to this court twice in that short time.
Probably no party will consider the relief granted or denied to be a victory, but what has been done is at the expense of the judicial process. A Court of Appeals should not sit as a District Court in chancery to mold and enter an equitable decree affecting an entire school system in a metropolitan community without hearing from the parties on the nature of the decree, and without facts before it to serve as a basis for the decree. The All-Writs Statute, 28 U.S.C.A., § 1651, does not authorize this. It must contemplate rules of procedure, notice, record facts, and an opportunity to be heard, all after time for consideration by the *362District Court. It applies only in cases of emergency proportions. To state this belief is to at once demonstrate that I cannot join in the procedure here. Therefore, I must dissent, except as otherwise stated, with the admonition that more constitutional rights will be lost than gained in the long run by departure from procedures which have stood the test of time, and which are a part of due process of law as we have heretofore known it. In fact, more may be eventually lost in this very case.
While this appeal must have been considered as presenting something in the nature of a judicial emergency in the beginning; otherwise it would not have been twice advanced over the many other cases pending in this court, it is plain to me that it now has no emergency proportions. I would remand it to the District Court for action on the basis of reasoned and informed discretion in the light of necessary facts and argument, consistent with the law in the premises and the guidelines which I have set out regarding September 1964.