U.S. v. CRUCIAL
| Citation | 722 F.2d 1182 |
| Decision Date | 29 December 1983 |
| Docket Number | No. 82-1444,82-1444 |
| Parties | 15 Ed. Law Rep. 92 UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. CRUCIAL, et al., Plaintiffs-Intervenors-Appellants, WEST ODESSA PARENTS FOR QUALITY NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS, et al., Movants-Appellants, v. ECTOR COUNTY INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, et al., Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (5th Circuit) |
Norma V. Cantu, MALDEF, Jose Garza, Judith A. Sanders-Castro, Jose Roberto Juarez, Jr., San Antonio, Tex., Joaquin G. Avila, Morris J. Baller, San Francisco, Cal., for CRUCIAL, et al.
J. Harvie Wilkinson, III, Asst. Atty. Gen., Wm. Bradford Reynolds, Walter W. Barnett, Marie E. Klimesz, Civil Rights Div., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D.C., for the United States.
McMahon, Cox, Todd, Tidwell, Locke, Robert B. Cox, Jack Q. Tidwell, Odessa, Tex., Kelly Frels, Houston, Tex., for Ector County Independent School Dist.
Eskew, Muir & Bednar, William C. Bednar, Jr., Austin, Tex., for West Odessa PQNS.
Appeals from the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas.
Before RANDALL, JOHNSON and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.
Ector County Independent School District is a county-wide school district encompassing all of Ector County, Texas, and including the City of Odessa. A railroad track divides the northern and southern sections of Odessa. The black and hispanic populations are concentrated in south Odessa.
During the period between 1968 and 1982, when formerly de jure dual school systems (such as Ector County ISD) were charged under Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954), and Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968), to take all action necessary to convert to unitary systems, the percentage of minority enrollment in south Odessa schools increased from 87.4% in 1967-68 to 96.4% in 1980-81. 1 Confronted with that fact and with segregative assignment of faculty and administrators, segregative bus transportation of students and other segregative post-Brown actions of the Ector County ISD, the district court, in comprehensive and detailed findings of fact and conclusions of law which can only be described as a model and which are unchallenged on appeal, held that the Ector County ISD "not only continued to fail to meet its duty to dismantle its dual school system, but actually increased the segregation in its schools of both Blacks and Mexican-Americans," and held further that Ector County ISD's actions and inaction in this respect had been intentional.
At this point, the case took an unexpected turn. Despite overwhelming evidence at an extensive liability hearing of a particularly egregious pattern of intentional segregation by Ector County ISD, the district court adopted a desegregation plan, stipulated to by Ector County ISD and by the United States but forcefully objected to by plaintiff-intervenor CRUCIAL (Committee for Redress, Unity, Concern and Integrity at All Levels), without holding an evidentiary hearing to consider that plan and without making any findings of fact or conclusions of law addressed to that plan or any alternative. The plan accepted by the district court had as its two key features the adoption of a largely undeveloped magnet school program for the elementary schools and the closing of the all-minority junior and senior high schools in south Odessa. CRUCIAL appeals the district court's adoption of the stipulated plan. For the reasons set forth below, we reverse the district court's order adopting the plan and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
This action was originally filed in August, 1970, by the United States (appellee, with Ector County ISD, herein) against Ector County ISD and several other school districts. The claim against Ector County ISD was brought pursuant to Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000c-6 (1976), and the fourteenth amendment. Shortly thereafter, Ector County ISD and the United States announced that they had reached a settlement. The district court entered an interim order requiring the desegregation of the Odessa school system, which provided that Ector County ISD was to announce and implement the following measures:
1) Assign classroom teachers so that no schools would be racially identifiable as a school intended for white or black students;
2) Conduct hiring, assignments, promotions, pay, demotions, dismissals and other treatment of staff without regard to race, color or national origin;
3) Base dismissals or demotions of staff or administration on objective and reasonable non-discriminatory standards;
4) Extend the majority-minority policy to include all elementary students;
5) Redesign bus routes and student assignments to insure transportation on a non-segregated basis;
6) Conduct site selection and new school construction in a manner to prevent the recurrence of the dual structure;
7) Grant transfers to schools outside the district only on a non-discriminatory basis, except that transfers were to be denied if the cumulative effect was to impair desegregation;
8) Refrain from conducting any classroom, non-classroom or extra-curricular activities on a segregated basis.
Thereafter, the case remained dormant until February 1981, when CRUCIAL filed a motion to intervene pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 24, which was granted. CRUCIAL's Complaint in Intervention alleged that Ector County ISD had failed to comply with the district court's interim order of August, 1970, in that Ector County ISD continued to operate a segregated, dual school system. CRUCIAL also alleged that Ector County ISD had failed to fashion an educational program that would meet the demands of its minority students.
On October 19, 1981, the district court granted the motion of West Odessa Parents for Quality Neighborhood Schools ("West Odessa PQNS") for leave to participate as amicus curiae, and trial on the merits commenced. The trial lasted from October 19 to October 28, 1981. At that time, the court announced its tentative opinion that Ector County ISD continued to operate an unconstitutionally segregated school system, and ordered the immediate reassignment of faculty as well as immediate implementation of a program to expand the curriculum at Ector High School.
On April 1, 1982, the district court announced in open court its Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, which were filed in written form on May 28, 1982. Judgment was entered on April 12, 1982, in favor of CRUCIAL and the United States, and Ector County ISD was ordered to submit a proposed desegregation plan to the court by April 15, 1982, to which CRUCIAL, the United States, and West Odessa PQNS would have fourteen days to respond. At the April 1, 1982 proceeding, CRUCIAL filed a proposed plan of its own, and immediately subsequent to the court's announcement of its findings, presented the plan through the testimony of Dr. Elmer Tossie, an expert in the area of school desegregation who had helped in the preparation of the plan.
Ector County ISD filed a desegregation plan on April 13, 1982, to which the United States, CRUCIAL, and West Odessa PQNS responded. Although this plan does not form part of the record, the responses to it indicate that it consisted of the closing of the only senior high school in south Odessa, which was virtually all-minority, to which both CRUCIAL and the United States objected; the closing of south Odessa's only junior high school (also virtually all-minority), to which CRUCIAL objected and the United States did not; and the conversion of the former junior high school into an elementary magnet school, to which both CRUCIAL and the United States objected on the basis that, while innovative programs were commendable, this aspect of the plan failed to desegregate the remaining four minority elementary schools in south Odessa. See Record Vol. III at 87 & 88. At the court's request, the parties continued negotiations concerning a remedial plan.
On July 19, 1982, West Odessa PQNS filed a motion for leave to intervene. Both Ector County ISD and the United States opposed the motion, and it was denied on August 18, 1982, with the proviso that West Odessa PQNS could continue to participate in the case as amicus curiae. West Odessa PQNS appeals the district court's denial of this motion.
On July 29, 1982, the United States and Ector County ISD entered into a stipulation agreeing on a desegregation plan that, with the exception of an expanded elementary magnet school program, was apparently similar to the one proposed by Ector County ISD in April and objected to by the United States at that time. The details of the stipulated plan are discussed infra at II(A). Both CRUCIAL and West Odessa PQNS objected to the stipulated plan. On August 6, 1982, the district court entered an order approving and adopting the stipulated plan verbatim and ordered its immediate implementation. CRUCIAL unsuccessfully sought a stay of the district court's order, and now appeals.
Following the liability hearing, the district court found that Ector County ISD's actions during the 1960's and 1970's with regard to student assignments, transportation of students, school closures and reassignment of pupils, faculty and staff assignments, the creation of disparate feeder patterns, and the opening of numerous all-anglo or all-minority schools contributed to and increased the segregation in its school system. In these circumstances, the Supreme Court's mandate is clear: school boards operating a dual system, as Ector County ISD was found to do here, are
clearly charged with the affirmative duty to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a unitary system in which racial discrimination [is] eliminated root and branch.... The burden on a school board today is...
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