Lee v. Macon County Bd. of Educ., Civ. A. No. 70-AR-0251-S.

• Decision Date: 18 March 1988
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 70-AR-0251-S.
• Citation: 681 F. Supp. 730
• Parties: Anthony T. LEE, et al., Plaintiffs United States of America, Plaintiff-Intervenor and Amicus Curiae, National Educational Association, Inc., Plaintiff-Intervenor, v. MACON COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Alabama

681 F. Supp. 730

Anthony T. LEE, et al., Plaintiffs United States of America, Plaintiff-Intervenor and Amicus Curiae National Educational Association, Inc., Plaintiff-Intervenor, v. MACON COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION, et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 70-AR-0251-S.

United States District Court, N.D. Alabama, M.D.

March 18, 1988.

Janell M. Byrd, New York City, Oscar W. Adams, III, Birmingham, Ala., Solomon S. Seay, Jr., Montgomery, Ala., for plaintiffs and plaintiff-intervenor, National Educational Ass'n.

John R. Moore, Asst. Atty. Gen., U.S. Dept. of Justice, Civil Rights Div., Equal Opportunities Litigation Section, Washington, D.C., Frank W. Donaldson, U.S. Atty., Caryl Privett, Asst. U.S. Atty., Birmingham, Ala., for plaintiff-intervenor, U.S. of America.

Jeff Foshee, Edward George, Dept. of Postsecondary Educ., Montgomery, Ala., for defendant, Nunnelley State Technical College.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

ACKER, District Judge.

On March 1, 1988, this court conducted an oral hearing during which this court heard arguments and asked questions, inter alia, respecting the issue of whether or not Nunnelley State Technical College (Nunnelley) should be declared to have achieved and satisfactorily maintained unitary status as a racially desegregated educational entity for a sufficient period of time so as to call for a dismissal of the above-entitled action as to Nunnelley and to remove Nunnelley from the continuing supervisory jurisdiction of this court.

The "granddaddy" decision in this case is Lee v. Macon County Board of Education, 267 F.Supp. 458 (M.D.Ala.1967) (Rives, J., Grooms, J., and Johnson, J., per curiam) aff'd sub nom. Wallace v. United States, 389 U.S. 215, 88 S.Ct. 415, 19 L.Ed. 2d 422 (1967). This first panel decision with statewide impact followed initial rulings in 1963 ordering the desegregation of the Macon County School System. Lee v. Macon County, 221 F.Supp. 297 (M.D.Ala. 1963). From this beginning there has been such a proliferation of opinions and orders by so many and varied district judges, district panels, and appellate courts that it is virtually impossible to follow the story as it runs through the voluminous court files and as the story may apply to each separate instructional entity involved. When the undersigned judge came on the bench in 1982, he was assigned a number of the entities then under the supervisory jurisdiction of the court under the Lee v. Macon umbrella. These entities had been equitably divided among the federal district court judges of the State of Alabama. The undersigned, his secretary, his docket clerk, his law clerks, and various archivists, separately and severally, have spent a great number of hours trying to reconstruct the plot and story line for those institutions assigned to this judge, a task made more difficult by the fact that this judge came in during the third act of an important but lengthy and complex drama. Except to the extent that any pieces of the puzzle as applied to Nunnelley may have "slipped through the crack" (a distinct possibility not only in view of the voluminosity of the court files, but also considering the recent relocation of all of the archived files for the Northern District when the court moved into its new quarters in July of 1987), the following pertinent procedural facts appear:

1. On March 22, 1967, a three-judge panel comprised of Judges Rives, Grooms and Johnson, in a per curiam opinion, held inter alia:

The state's trade schools, vocational schools and state colleges continue to be operated on a segregated basis. The operation of these systems is the immediate responsibility of the State Board of Education.

267 F.Supp. at 474 (footnotes and citations omitted).

The State of Alabama and particularly the defendant state officials are under an affirmative constitutional duty to take whatever corrective action is necessary to disestablish such a system. Faculty members and staff members, facilities and activities, as well as student bodies, must be desegregated to such an extent that there no longer exists in the Alabama public school system discrimination of any sort or to any degree that is based upon race or color.

267 F.Supp. at 478.

The Alabama State Board of Education, and Alabama State Superintendent of Education, together with their agents, servants, employees, successors in office, and all those in active concert or participation with them who receive actual notice of this decree ..., shall be and hereby are permanently enjoined from discriminating on the basis of race in the operation or the conduct of the public schools of Alabama or in any manner pertaining to the public schools of Alabama.

267 F.Supp. at 480.

2. Nunnelley was not specifically named in the decree of March 22, 1967, but it certainly came within the generic description of the institutions enjoined by the decree, because it was then a trade school under the supervision of the Alabama State Board of Education.

3. On August 14, 1970, in another per curiam decision, Lee v. Macon, 317 F.Supp. 103 (M.D.Ala.1970), the same three-judge panel dealt directly with desegregation of the State's junior colleges and trade schools. Again, Nunnelley, which is located in Talladega County, was not mentioned by name. Nevertheless, the injunction issued on August 14, 1970 required specific desegregation responses from all institutions under the Alabama State Board of Education. It quite clearly applied to institutions in Nunnelley's category.

4. On May 29, 1972, the same three-judge court transferred jurisdiction over Alabama's various junior colleges and trade schools in Lee v. Macon to those district courts in the geographic areas where the various affected state instructional institutions are located. This meant, of course, that the implementation of prior decrees, and further court activity respecting Nunnelley, was transferred to the Northern District of Alabama, and ultimately to this judge. Prior to May 29, 1972, the public school systems had similarly been transferred.

5. On August 4, 1975, Judge Johnson, then of the Middle District, signed a "consent decree" in Lee v. Macon, triggered by a motion for further relief filed by plaintiff-intervenor, National Educational Association, Inc. (NEA), claiming that "the defendants have failed to substantially desegregate each of the 13 predominantly white junior colleges and technical institutes within the Middle District." By its terms, Judge Johnson's decree ordered the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination in "all junior colleges and technical schools operated by the defendants," clearly purporting to cover all of Alabama's post-secondary institutions. The decree was not limited to those entities located in the Middle District. Its injunction, then, obviously included Nunnelley.

6. On May 26, 1977, Judge Johnson entered an order acknowledging that his "consent decree" of August 4, 1975 "was not intended to and did not have the effect of revesting jurisdiction in the Middle District," but was only entered "as a convenience to the attorneys for the litigants."

7. On August 17, 1977, NEA filed in the Northern District a motion for supplemental relief. This motion sought, inter alia, to establish hiring goals and quotas for the predominantly white junior colleges and technical schools within the Northern District so as to accomplish the faculty desegregation provisions of the August 4, 1975 consent decree approved by Judge Johnson. No relief was sought with regard to any so-called predominantly black junior colleges, except for certain individual claims of faculty members dismissed from Lawson State Community College, a predominantly black institution. It is interesting and provocative to note that plaintiffs have never complained of a shortage of white students and faculty at the predominantly black post-secondary schools.

8. On August 22, 1977, Judge Hancock of this court entered an order responding to NEA's said motion. Judge Hancock said, inter alia:

No ... activity with regard to the matter has been filed in this court or been brought to the attention of this court since May 30, 1972, until August 17, 1977, when a motion for supplemental relief was filed herein.

Judge Hancock required the Alabama State Board of Education and the State Superintendent of Education to file a written answer or response on or before September 23, 1977.

9. On October 27, 1977, Judge Hancock denied NEA's motion for relief as to the individual Lawson State faculty members, without prejudice to their right to pursue individual actions. This order set for hearing, and established briefing schedules for, NEA's remaining requests in regard to hiring goals and quotas for faculty and staff in the predominantly white junior colleges and technical schools, as sought in the August 17, 1977 motion.

10. Judge Hancock granted a series of extensions of the deadlines set out in his October 27, 1977 scheduling order in an ongoing attempt to settle the issues raised in NEA's August 17, 1977 motion. On April 21, 1978, NEA filed yet another motion for a continuance of the hearing date and time tables. NEA supported its said motion by first reciting the results of its review of employment records relating to recruitment, vacancies, applications for employment and hiring practices in all of the trade schools and junior colleges within the Northern District. This review had ostensibly been carried out in order to monitor compliance with the terms of the August 4, 1975 consent decree. With respect to Nunnelley, the NEA alleged:

That the records reflect what can be interpreted as a good-faith effort on the part of Nunnelley to comply with the Consent Order entered herein on August 4, 1975, by the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.

* * * * * *

That each of the above-said schools has 10% or more black faculty, and an analysis of the available records on vacancies occuring sic, qualifications of available

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