U.S. v. Yonkers Bd. of Educ.
| Citation | 893 F.2d 498 |
| Decision Date | 08 January 1990 |
| Docket Number | D,No. 534,534 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, and Yonkers Branch-National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Regina Ryer, a Minor, by her Mother and Next Friend Charlotte Ryer, on Behalf of Themselves, and all Individuals Similarly Situated, Plaintiffs-Intervenors-Appellees, v. YONKERS BOARD OF EDUCATION, Defendant-Appellee, City of Yonkers and Yonkers Community Development Agency, Defendants, and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Samuel Pierce, Secretary, Added-Defendants, and The State of New York; Mario Cuomo, as Governor of the State of New York; The Board of Regents of the State of New York; Martin C. Barell, R. Carlos Carballada, Adelaide L. Sanford, Willard A. Genrich, Emlyn I. Griffith, Jorge L. Battista, Lora Bradley Chodos, Louise P. Matteoni, Edward Meyer, Floyd S. Linton, Salvadore Sclafini, Mimi Levin Lieber, Shirley C. Brown, Norma Gluck, Thomas Frey and James McCabe, Sr., in their official capacities as members of the State Board of Regents; The Department of Education of the State of New York; Thomas Sobol, as Commissioner of Education in the State of New York and The Urban Development Corporation of the State of New York and Vincent Tese, as Director of the Urban Development Corporation, Added-Defendants-Appellants. ocket 89-6184. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit) |
Michael H. Sussman, Yonkers, N.Y., for plaintiffs-intervenors-appellees.
Elliot M. Mincberg, Washington, D.C. (Maurice Curran, Lawrence W. Thomas, Anderson, Banks, Moore, Curran & Hollis, Mount Kisco, N.Y., David S. Tatel, Steven J. Routh, Bethany E. Lorenz, Nancy J Michael W. Sculnick, New York City (Vedder, Price, Kaufman, Kammholz & Day, New York City, on the brief), for defendant City of Yonkers.
Taylor, Hogan & Hartson, Washington, D.C., on the brief), for defendant-appellee.
Marion R. Buchbinder, Asst. Atty. Gen., New York City , for added-defendants-appellants.
Before OAKES, Chief Judge, KEARSE and ALTIMARI, Circuit Judges.
Defendants State of New York ("State"), State agencies, and individual State officials (collectively the ) appeal from an interlocutory order of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Leonard B. Sand, Judge, denying their motion to dismiss the claims asserted against them by plaintiffs Yonkers Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, et al. (collectively "NAACP plaintiffs"), and defendant Yonkers Board of Education ("Board" or "Yonkers Board"), on the ground that, inter alia, the State defendants are immune from suit under the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution. The district court ruled that the motion, which was addressed to the face of the pleadings, could not be granted because it raised factual issues. The State defendants urge us to reverse. The Board, joined by the NAACP plaintiffs, has moved to dismiss the appeal for lack of appellate jurisdiction. For the reasons below, we grant the motion to dismiss the appeal.
The present action was commenced by the United States against the Board, the City of Yonkers ("City"), and the Yonkers Community Development Agency in 1980, alleging housing and school segregation in violation of the Constitution and federal statutory law. The NAACP plaintiffs were granted leave to intervene and file an amended complaint, and the suit was certified as a class action. The State defendants were not then parties to the action.
After a lengthy trial, the district court found the original defendants liable, 624 F.Supp. 1276 (S.D.N.Y.1985), fashioned remedial orders, 635 F.Supp. 1538 and 1577 (S.D.N.Y.1986), and entered judgment accordingly. This Court affirmed the judgment of the district court in all respects. 837 F.2d 1181 (2d Cir.1987), cert. denied, 486 U.S. 1055, 108 S.Ct. 2821, 100 L.Ed.2d 922 (1988).
In September 1987, the Board moved to amend its answer to file a cross-claim against the State defendants; at about the same time, the NAACP plaintiffs moved to file a second amended complaint in order to assert claims against the State defendants. The apparent goal was to obtain funds from the State to assist in carrying out the district court's remedial orders. The district court held the motions in abeyance and directed the parties and the proposed State defendants to attempt to resolve the matter consensually. When the State remained unwilling, after more than a year of negotiations, to commit funds satisfactory to the NAACP plaintiffs and the Board, the court granted both motions in January 1989.
Both the second amended complaint and the cross-claim allege that the State defendants have engaged in a continuing pattern of conduct contributing to segregation in Yonkers in violation of, inter alia, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000d et seq. (1982) ("Title VI"), and other civil rights statutes, 42 U.S.C. Secs. 1981, 1983, 1985, and 1988 (1982). The new pleadings include allegations that the State has instituted a policy and practice of filling positions on its Board of Regents with persons who have stated their antipathy to busing as a means of achieving school desegregation; that since 1970, the Board of Regents has issued policy statements and given assurances that the State would not act to insure desegregation [f]rom at least 1969 through the present, with knowledge of school segregation in Yonkers and of the Yonkers Board's actions and inactions with regard to desegregation, the cross-defendants failed to take any effective action to promote desegregation in Yonkers, and continued to encourage and perpetuate the segregated structure of education as found by Court in the Yonkers Public Schools.
and equal educational opportunities for minorities; and that between 1976 and the present the State has ignored specific pleas from the Yonkers Board for help in desegregating City schools. The second amended complaint also alleges, inter alia, that the State Urban Development Corporation ("UDC") has renounced its authority to override zoning barriers to desegregation in housing; and that since 1975 the State has adopted several programs in aid of subsidized housing, each of which favors the allocation of state resources in a manner that exacerbates the segregation of minority families. The Board's cross-claim also alleges, inter alia, that
Each of the new pleadings requests declaratory and injunctive relief, as well as State participation in implementing remedies for the violations.
The State defendants moved pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(1) and (6) to dismiss the new pleadings on various grounds, including Eleventh Amendment immunity. They contended that the district court's earlier rulings of liability against the City and the Board precluded any new determination that the State was a substantial contributor to school segregation, and that, in any event, the new pleadings allege only culpable conduct in the past, not ongoing violations. Their motion to dismiss was supported by, inter alia, several affidavits and documents designed to "explain New York State's educational finance system, and its application to the Yonkers school district" and to describe the pre-October 1987 operations of UDC.
In an opinion dated August 1, 1989, the district court denied the motion to dismiss as premature. Noting that the motion raised questions of fact, the court concluded that the matter of Eleventh Amendment immunity could not be determined solely from the allegations of the new pleadings. The court stated, in pertinent part, as follows:
Movants' sovereign immunity argument is based on the contention that the action is brought solely in an effort to obtain funding from the State for the school desegregation remedial program although the State is not currently violating any constitutional rights of the plaintiff class and a remedy order already is in place which the City is bound to implement. This claim is coupled with contentions that vestiges of past unlawful conduct are inadequate to overcome the Eleventh Amendment barrier to suit and that movants [sic ] will be unable to show a causal relationship between any action by the State and the segregation in the Yonkers schools. Moreover, movants contend this Court has already identified the causes of the Yonkers school segregation in its findings of liability in the action as against the City and School Board, which findings preclude a subsequent determination that the State was a substantial contributor to school segregation.
The issues raised by the motion to dismiss are serious and cannot lightly be rejected. We are of the opinion, however, that they are not appropriately addressed by a motion to dismiss.
Movants' objections go, not so much to the face of the complaint, but to the claim that proof will be lacking to support its allegations. The contention with respect to causality well illustrates this point.
It may well be that the complaint against the movants cannot survive a motion for summary judgment, at which time the Court will be free to consider the several arguments advanced by the movants which relate more to the merits than to the face of the complaint. But at this stage of the proceedings, prior to full discovery, the Court cannot say that as a matter of law, respondents will not be able to establish a cause of action Accordingly, the district court denied the State defendants' motion to dismiss the second amended complaint and the cross-claim, without prejudice to the bringing of a motion for summary judgment following completion of discovery.
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