Spangler v. Pasadena City Bd. of Ed.
| Citation | 519 F.2d 430 |
| Decision Date | 05 May 1975 |
| Docket Number | No. 74-2116,74-2116 |
| Parties | Nancy Anne SPANGLER, by her father and next friend, James E. Spangler, Jr., et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, and United States of America, Plaintiff-Intervenor-Appellee, v. PASADENA CITY BOARD OF EDUCATION et al., Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (9th Circuit) |
Before CHAMBERS, ELY and WALLACE, Circuit Judges.
The appellants, Pasadena (California) City Board of Education (hereafter Board) and some of its officials, individually, appeal from an Order of the District Court, reported at 375 F.Supp. 1304 (C.D.Cal.1974), which denied the Board's motions for: (1) relief from the District Court's Order of January 23, 1970, requiring the desegregation of the Pasadena public schools and the District Court's Order of March 10, 1970, which approved the then Board's Pasadena Plan for desegregation; (2) dissolution of the District Court's injunction requiring that there be no school in the School District with a majority of its enrollment composed of students of a minority race; (3) termination of the District Court's continuing jurisdiction of the case; and (4) alternatively, for permission to modify the Pasadena Plan ordered by the court by substituting a so-called Alternative Plan. 1
It is important at the outset to underscore the narrow ambit of our review, a constriction resulting from the procedural posture in which this appeal is before our court. Neither the Pasadena Plan itself nor the District Court's January 23, 1970, and March 10, 1970, Orders directing the implementation of the plan are here on direct appeal. Nor are we concerned with the correctness of the District Court's original decision in Spangler v. Pasadena City Board of Education, 311 F.Supp. 501 (C.D.Cal.1970), and the conclusions drawn therein. The only question before us now is whether the District Court erred in its determination, in denying appellants' 1974 motions, that events and circumstances occurring and existing in Pasadena since the Pasadena Plan was ordered implemented do not justify relief from the January 23, 1970, Decree, relinquishment of the court's continuing jurisdiction over the Board, or the substitution of a substantial alteration of the original Pasadena Plan.
This action was originally instituted on August 28, 1968, by certain Pasadena public school children and their parents as a class action against the Pasadena City Board of Education of the Pasadena Unified School District and certain officials thereof, seeking injunctive relief from alleged unconstitutional segregation of its public schools. The United States Government, also endeavoring to eliminate the discrimination, was permitted to intervene as a party plaintiff on December 4, 1968. On January 23, 1970, after a nine-day trial, the District Court entered its Decree, enjoining the Board and the Superintendent of Schools "from discriminating on the basis of race in the operation of the Pasadena Unified School District." Spangler v. Pasadena City Board of Education, 311 F.Supp. 501, 505 (C.D.Cal.1970). The court required the Board " . . . to prepare and adopt a plan to correct racial imbalance at all levels", and further directed that "(t)he plan shall provide for student assignments in such a manner that, by or before the beginning of the school year that commences in September of 1970 there shall be no school in the District, elementary or junior high or senior high school, with a majority of any minority students." 311 F.Supp. 501 at 505. 2
In support of the 1970 Decree from which the appellants now seek relief, the District Court found that the Board had adopted a neighborhood school policy and a policy against forced cross-town busing which resulted "in racial imbalance and increasing racial imbalance." Id. at 506. Among the facts supporting the court's conclusion that the Board's policy violated the Fourteenth Amendment were findings that: (1) in numerous instances the Board changed attendance areas, changes having the net effect of increasing the percentage of blacks in schools that were already "black" and, correspondingly, increasing the percentage of whites in "white" schools, (Id. at 506-509); (2) the Board had consistently rejected proposals from its superintendent, citizens' committees, and other Board members that would result in significantly more racial integration, (Id. at 510); (3) the Board "used transportation provided at school district expense to make it possible for white children to avoid attending schools with greater percentages of black students enrolled than in the District as a whole", (Id. at 512); (4) very few black teachers were hired and most were assigned to schools with majority black enrollment (Id. at 513-516); (5) there was discrimination in the hiring and promotion of black administrators, (Id. at 516); (6) the Board placed transportable classrooms at black schools to accommodate over-enrollment at those schools while adjoining white schools had fewer transportables or none at all, (Id. at 518); and (7) the Board granted transfers "(which it) knew or should have known were wholly or at least in part motivated by racial considerations, including baseless transfers that had the effect of intensifying racial segregation in the Pasadena schools", (Id. at 520). Additionally, the court found that during the 1969-70 school year, 85 percent of the District's black elementary school students attended the eight majority black elementary schools, while 93 percent of its white elementary students attended the remaining 21 elementary schools, (Id. at 507).
Pursuant to the court's Decree a comprehensive desegregation plan (commonly called the "Pasadena Plan") was formulated by a task force consisting of various employees of the Pasadena Unified School District, under the direction of the Superintendent of Schools. The Pasadena Unified School District, although relatively small geographically, includes the city of Pasadena, the city of Sierra Madre, the town of Altadena, and various portions of Los Angeles County. Under the Pasadena Plan, as approved by the District Court on March 10, 1970 the District was divided into four ethnically balanced areas. Students are assigned to the schools in the area of their residence "in such a way as to develop an ethnic balance in each school", while retaining at the elementary level the concept of the neighborhood school by permitting students to "walk to a nearby school for part of their elementary schooling and be transported as a neighborhood to another school" for the remainder. The plan created primary schools covering grades kindergarten through third (K-3) and elementary schools covering the fourth through sixth (4-6) grades to replace the old concept of the neighborhood school encompassing kindergarten through the sixth grade (K-6). The plan altered the secondary school structure by shifting the ninth grade from the junior high schools to the senior high schools. Ethnically balanced secondary school attendance zones were drawn in a fashion that prevented any secondary school from having a "majority of any minority students." The plan provided for transportation for all students who attend school outside their normal areas, and students were permitted to transfer from their assigned schools to other schools in cases of "urgent hardship" involving considerations of curriculum, family circumstances, or medical-psychological factors.
At the commencement of the 1970-71 school year the Pasadena Plan was implemented, and it has ostensibly remained in effect since that time. On January 15, 1974, the motion which is the subject of this appeal was filed by the Board, now having a majority of newly elected members. A hearing on the motion was conducted on February 25, 26, 27 and March 1, 1974. On May 15, 1974, the District Court entered its opinion and order denying appellants' motion in its entirety. The District Court refused the requested relief from its Order of January 23, 1970, in view of the opposition which the Pasadena Plan had encountered and the fact that beginning in 1971, only a few months after the supposed implementation of the original plan, the District had violated the "no majority of any minority" portion of the injunction. By the time of the hearing in March, 1974, five Pasadena schools were operating in violation of the no majority of any minority portion of the court's injunction. 3 Spangler v. Pasadena City Board of Education, 375 F.Supp. 1304, 1306 (C.D.Cal.1974). The court further found that the Pasadena Plan had not been accorded such cooperation from the Board as would permit an assessment of its educational success or failure. (Id. at 1308); that the decline in white enrollment relative to total enrollment in Pasadena Schools since 1970 was not caused by the desegregation Order, since the decline closely approximated state-wide trends in California, (Id. at 1306); that the Alternative Plan was essentially a freedom of choice plan like those which had failed to desegregate Pasadena schools in the past, (Id. at 1311); and that it was unrealistic to believe that parents who fled the district because their children were forced to attend school with black children would now voluntarily choose that alternative under the Alternative Plan, (Id. at 1308).
It has long been established that in fashioning and effectuating school desegregation decrees, the courts are to be guided by traditional equitable principles. Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294, 299-300, 75 S.Ct. 753, 99 L.Ed. 1083 (1955) (Brown II). " . . . (A) school...
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