Lee v. Talladega County Bd. of Educ., 88-7471

• Decision Date: 15 June 1992
• Docket Number: No. 88-7471,88-7471
• Citation: 963 F.2d 1426
• Parties: , 75 Ed. Law Rep. 205 Anthony T. LEE, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, United States of America, Plaintiff-Intervenor, Appellee, National Education Association, Inc., Plaintiff-Intervenor, v. TALLADEGA COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION, Lance Grissett, Kenneth Armbrester, M. R. Watson, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1426

963 F.2d 1426

22 Fed.R.Serv.3d 1381, 75 Ed. Law Rep. 205

Anthony T. LEE, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants United States of America, Plaintiff-Intervenor, Appellee National Education Association, Inc., Plaintiff-Intervenor, v. TALLADEGA COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION, Lance Grissett, Kenneth Armbrester, M. R. Watson, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 88-7471.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

June 15, 1992.

Cleophus Thomas, Jr., Anniston, Ala., Norman J. Chachkin, Janell M. Byrd, New York City, for plaintiffs-appellants.

Ralph D. Gaines, Jr., George C. Douglas, Jr., Gaines, Gaines & Gaines, Talladega, Ala., Dennis J. Dimsey, Thomas E. Chandler, Appellate Section, Civil Rights Div., U.S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, D.C., for defendants-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.

Before TJOFLAT, Chief Judge, CLARK ^*, and SMITH ^**, Senior Circuit Judges.

TJOFLAT, Chief Judge:

This is an appeal from an order of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama denying the appellants' motion to reopen a school desegregation case so that the injunctive orders previously entered against the school system could be reinstated and enforced. Because we hold that the district court was without authority to reopen the case and that all relevant injunctions were dissolved in 1985, we affirm the district court's order.

I.

This case is part of a statewide class action brought in 1963 on behalf of black school children in Alabama to desegregate the public schools of that state. The appellee is the Talladega County Board of Education (the TCBE or the Board) which operates the Talladega County School System. ¹ In 1967, the district court concluded that a dual school system based upon race was maintained and operated throughout the state. The court ordered statewide desegregation and directed each school system within the state to adopt a desegregation plan that met the standards set forth in the court's order. Lee v. Macon County Bd. of Educ., 267 F.Supp. 458 (M.D.Ala.), aff'd sub nom. Wallace v. United States, 389 U.S. 215, 88 S.Ct. 415, 19 L.Ed.2d 422 (1967).

In response to the court's 1967 order, the TCBE proposed a desegregation plan. This plan, however, proved ineffective, and the district court ordered the Board to submit a new plan for the 1970-71 school year. The district court approved the plan subsequently submitted, as supplemented and modified, on February 3, 1970. Court orders later in 1970 and in 1971 modified this plan still further.

On November 7, 1983, the TCBE filed a "Motion for Court to Relinquish Jurisdiction," contending that the school system had become unitary and asking the court to relinquish jurisdiction and control over it. The Board later amended its motion by filing a "Resolution," which it had adopted on November 22, 1983, stating that the Board would operate the school system "at all times so as to conform with the United States Constitution, laws passed by Congress, and all previous orders of th[e district c]ourt...." The resolution also declared that the TCBE had complied in good faith with all court orders, had eliminated all vestiges of prior discrimination, and had been operating a "totally integrated, unitary system" for many years.

On March 13, 1985, the district court approved a "Joint Stipulation of Dismissal" agreed to by all the parties. The joint stipulation incorporated the TCBE's resolution. That same day, the court also entered a "Judgment and Order" stating that, in view of the parties' joint stipulation, the case should be dismissed. The court declared that the Talladega County School System had achieved unitary status, entered final judgment in accordance with Fed.R.Civ.P. 54(b), and dismissed the case. The court, however, did not dissolve explicitly the injunctive orders that had been entered against the TCBE.

More than three years after the district court dismissed this action, on July 21, 1988, the appellants moved the district court to reopen the case, to reinstate the injunctive orders previously entered against the TCBE, and to grant them additional equitable relief. The motion contained three main allegations: (1) that the TCBE had engaged in racial discrimination by closing schools in the black community, changing the names of schools named after black persons, and planning new construction to avoid assigning white students to an historically black school; (2) that the Board had implemented a transfer policy that allowed students to attend school out of their assigned attendance zones or districts, which resulted in segregation in contravention of outstanding court orders; and (3) that the Board had not implemented promised affirmative action plans for faculty and staff. ² To remedy this situation, the appellants asked the court to reinstate the injunctions previously entered in the case and to enjoin the Board's "illegal" school closings, its construction of new schools, and its approval of inter- and intra-district transfers. Finally, the appellants asked the court to require the Board to implement affirmative action plans for faculty and staff.

The appellants argued that the district court had jurisdiction to reopen the case and enforce its earlier orders for several reasons. First, they noted that the district court had not vacated expressly the earlier injunctions; thus, they argued, the outstanding orders remained binding on the Board. Second, they argued that, as part of the stipulated dismissal of the case, the Board had agreed to abide by all outstanding court orders; therefore, the appellants were entitled to return to court to enforce this agreement. Finally, the appellants argued that the case should be reopened pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b)(5) because there "ha[d] been a fundamental change in the legal predicates upon which [the] dismissal [wa]s based." In relation to this last point, the appellants argued that when the district court issued its order declaring that the Talladega County School System had achieved unitary status, that term was not interpreted to mean that a school system had eliminated the vestiges of its prior discrimination and, thus, did not signal that the litigation involving the school district had run its course.

On July 25, 1988, the district court denied the appellants' motion to reopen the case. The court stated that when it dismissed the case in 1985 "there was no retention of jurisdiction by th[e] court and there remained no residual injunction requiring Talladega County Board of Education to do or not to do anything." The whole point of the dismissal, the court noted, "was to require that any party who found the dismissal erroneous do something about it then." The court concluded that the appellants could obtain the relief they sought only by filing a new lawsuit.

This appeal followed. We affirm the district court's order.

II.

We first reject the appellants' contention that the court orders enjoining the TCBE, because they were never expressly vacated, remain enforceable even though the district court has declared that the Talladega County School System has attained unitary status and has dismissed the case. By operation of law, the orders enjoining the TCBE were dissolved when the district court declared that the school system had attained unitary status. This is so because the limited nature of a federal court's remedial powers as well as the fundamental limitations of federalism render continuing federal judicial supervision of local school authorities incompatible with a finding of unitary status. See Board of Educ. of Oklahoma City Pub. Schs. v. Dowell, --- U.S. ----, ----, 111 S.Ct. 630, 637, 112 L.Ed.2d 715 (1991); United States v. Overton, 834 F.2d 1171, 1174 (5th Cir.1987).

Injunctive decrees in school desegregation cases were never intended to operate in perpetuity. Dowell, --- U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 637. Rather, federal supervision of a local school authority that has operated a racially dual system is a temporary measure that should last only as long as necessary to remedy past racial discrimination. Id. The purpose of a school desegregation decree is to effect a transition from a school system tainted with state-imposed segregation to a racially nondiscriminatory school system. See Brown v. Board of Educ., 349 U.S. 294, 301, 75 S.Ct. 753, 756, 99 L.Ed. 1083 (1955); Green v. New Kent County Sch. Bd., 391 U.S. 430, 436, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 1693, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968).

We stress the temporary nature of federal judicial supervision over local school systems "because '[n]o single tradition in public education is more deeply rooted than local control over the operation of schools, Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717, 741, 94 S.Ct. 3112, 3125, 41 L.Ed.2d 1069 (1974) (Milliken I), and because no one's interest is furthered by subjecting the nation's educational system to 'judicial tutelage for the indefinite future,' Dowell, [--- U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 638]." Freeman v. Pitts, --- U.S. ----, ----, 112 S.Ct. 1430, 1453, 118 L.Ed.2d 108 (1992) (Scalia, J., concurring). As the Supreme Court recently noted:

Returning schools to the control of local authorities at the earliest practicable date is essential to restore their true accountability in our governmental system. When the school district and all state entities participating with it in operating the schools make decisions in the absence of judicial supervision, they can be held accountable to the citizenry, to the political process, and to the courts in the ordinary course.

Freeman, --- U.S. at ----, 112 S.Ct. at 1445. See also Dowell, --- U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 637 ("Local control over the education of children allows citizens to participate in decisionmaking, and allows innovation so that school programs can fit local needs."). Thus, the "end purpose" of every court that supervises the disestablishment of a racially dual school system "must be to...