Little Rock School Dist. v. Pulaski County Special School Dist. No. 1, 86-2047
| Decision Date | 19 November 1986 |
| Docket Number | No. 86-2047,86-2047 |
| Citation | 805 F.2d 815 |
| Parties | 35 Ed. Law Rep. 1028 LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT, et al., Appellees, v. PULASKI COUNTY SPECIAL SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1, et al., Appellants, |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Phil C. Neal of Chicago, Ill., for appellants.
Phil Kaplan, Little Rock, Ark. and Theodore M. Shaw, New York City, for appellees.
Before HEANEY, ROSS and ARNOLD, Circuit Judges.
When this case was last before us, we held that the Pulaski County Special School District No. 1 of Pulaski County, Arkansas (PCSSD), had violated the fourteenth amendment in certain respects, and that these violations had an interdistrict effect. Little Rock School District v. Pulaski County Special School District No. 1, 778 F.2d 404 (8th Cir.1985) (en banc), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 106 S.Ct. 2926, 91 L.Ed.2d 554 (1986). A major portion of the relief ordered related to the boundaries between PCSSD and the Little Rock School District (LRSD). We said:
3. The district court, after a hearing, shall adjust the boundaries between PCSSD and LRSD as follows:
(a) All land within the City of Little Rock shall be assigned to LRSD, and the students living in that area shall be assigned to schools in LRSD.
(b) All land in the Granite Mountain area will be included in PCSSD, and the students living in that area shall be assigned to schools in PCSSD. The record is not clear as to the precise boundaries of this area, thus evidentiary hearings will be held by the district court to determine them. It is the intent of this Court that the boundaries of this area shall reasonably reflect the area that was impacted by the 1953 deannexation of land from PCSSD to LRSD.
(c) In lieu of the adjustments indicated in (a) and (b), the district court, upon application by a party to this appeal, may conduct evidentiary hearings to determine whether adjustments other than those indicated in (a) and (b) would have substantially the same impact on the student populations of each district and would better meet the educational needs of the students of the districts involved. After such hearings, the district court may make adjustments to the boundaries other than those indicated above if it finds that they would better meet the educational needs of the students, and would remedy the constitutional violations to the same extent as the adjustments in (a) and (b).
778 F.2d at 435 (footnote omitted).
On remand, the district court held an evidentiary hearing and entered an order placing in effect its boundary-line remedy. The district court rejected a plan submitted by PCSSD and accepted a plan submitted by LRSD and supported by the Joshua intervenors, who represent the black schoolchildren who are the true aggrieved parties in this whole litigation. The district court's order states, in pertinent part:
* * * with the exception of the Granite Mountain area described above, henceforward the boundaries of the Little Rock School District, both now and in the future, shall be coterminous with the boundaries of the City of Little Rock as they exist now and as they will exist in the future as the city expands.
Little Rock School District v. Pulaski County Special School District, No. LR-C-82-866 (E.D.Ark. August 1, 1986), slip op. 3.
The portion of this order directing that the boundaries of LRSD shall automatically expand, at the expense of PCSSD, whenever the City of Little Rock annexes new territory, cannot stand. The boundary-line change we ordered was based upon "all of the defendants' interdistrict violations outlined in [our] * * * opinion * * *." 778 F.2d at 435 n. 20. This change was designed to produce, among other things, a student ratio within LRSD of approximately sixty percent black and forty percent white. Id. at 419. The remedy prescribed was intended to be a full and sufficient correction of wrongs done in the past. If PCSSD or some other governmental entity commits another constitutional violation in the future which has an interdistrict segregative effect, the courts will of course be open and able to order an appropriate remedy on proper proof. But at least for the time being, the boundary change between the two districts must be a one-time change.
LRSD and the Joshua intervenors point to a finding made by the district court during the trial of the question of liability to the effect that PCSSD chose to "freeze" its boundaries in order to hold down the number of black students within its borders. On the previous appeal we affirmed this finding as not clearly erroneous. 778 F.2d at 418-19. That boundaries were frozen in the past, however, does not prove...
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