Alexander v. Youngstown Bd. of Ed., 78-3619

• Decision Date: 09 April 1982
• Docket Number: No. 78-3619,78-3619
• Citation: 675 F.2d 787
• Parties: 3 Ed. Law Rep. 861 Roland ALEXANDER, Jr., et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. YOUNGSTOWN BOARD OF EDUCATION; Its Individual Members; Superintendent of Youngstown City School District; Ohio State Board of Education; Superintendent of Public Instruction, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Page 787

675 F.2d 787

3 Ed. Law Rep. 861

Roland ALEXANDER, Jr., et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. YOUNGSTOWN BOARD OF EDUCATION; Its Individual Members Superintendent of Youngstown City School District; Ohio State Board of Education; Superintendent of Public Instruction, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 78-3619.

United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.

Argued Dec. 19, 1980.

Decided April 9, 1982.

James L. Hardiman, Teresa Demchak (argued), Cleveland, Ohio, John L. Breckenridge, Floyd Haines, E. Winther McCroom, Youngstown, Ohio, Thomas I. Atkins, Gen. Counsel, NAACP Sp. Contribution Fund (argued), New York City, for plaintiffs-appellants.

Harold Stein, Director of Law, Edwin Romero, Richard J. LaCivita (argued), Youngstown, Ohio, for Youngstown Bd. et al.

Eugene Green, Green, Schiavoni, Murphy & Haines, Barry R. Laine (argued), Youngstown, Ohio, for State Bd. of Ed. and State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Before BROWN, KENNEDY and MARTIN, Circuit Judges.

BOYCE F. MARTIN, Jr., Circuit Judge.

This is a school desegregation case involving the public schools of the city of Youngstown, Ohio. It was certified as a class action on behalf of all children attending those schools and their parents or guardians. The complaint alleges that the Youngstown Board of Education, its individual members and Superintendent (the "Youngstown defendants"), along with the Ohio State Board of Education, its individual members, and the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of Ohio (the "State defendants"), ¹ created, maintained, and were presently operating an illegally segregated system of public schools, thereby depriving the plaintiffs of their right to equal protection of the laws as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The segregation was allegedly accomplished by the use of various techniques, including the assignment of students to schools, the manipulation of attendance zones and feeder patterns, schoolsite selection, and the utilization of existing racially discriminatory patterns in public and private housing. The complaint sought equitable relief in the form of an injunction requiring the defendants to develop and implement a systemwide plan of desegregation. Trial of the case commenced on January 3, 1977 and continued for 25 days, during which 31 witnesses testified and more than 5,000 pages of testimony were transcribed. After the trial was completed but before the District Court handed down its decision, the United States Supreme Court rendered its opinion in Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman (Dayton I), 433 U.S. 406, 97 S.Ct. 2766, 53 L.Ed.2d 851 (1977). The District Court directed the parties to file additional briefs in light of this decision. On April 12, 1978, the District Court issued an exhaustive Memorandum Opinion and Order, published at 454 F.Supp. 985 (N.D.Ohio 1977). In that opinion, it concluded that the defendants had not at any time referred to in the complaint or at the time of trial operated a dual or intentionally segregated school system. The court did find, however, that the Youngstown defendants had violated plaintiffs' rights under the Equal Protection Clause by the disproportionate assignment of black teachers and administrators to predominantly black schools. ² The court expressly found that those impermissible assignment practices had not, alone or in combination with other practices, created a segregated or dual school system. The court further held that the plaintiffs failed to establish any liability on the part of the State defendants.

The District Court certified its decision for immediate interlocutory appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b) and plaintiff's Petition for Leave to Appeal was granted by this court. ³

The Youngstown City School District is substantially coterminous with the city of Youngstown. At the time of trial, it operated 41 schools to service a student population of approximately 20,400. The percentage of black students in the district rose steadily in the years preceding the trial. In 1952-53, the first year for which racial composition data is available, blacks comprised less than 20% of the student population; at the time of trial in 1977, the student population was 48.9% black. The district's schools are characterized by a substantial degree of racial identifiability. The question in this case, as in most school desegregation cases, is whether that segregation is the result of a violation by the defendants of the plaintiffs' constitutional rights. The District Court held that it was not, and we affirm.

The fact that Ohio law does not mandate segregated schooling does not preclude a finding of unlawful segregation. ⁴ "(T)he Equal Protection Clause was aimed at all official actions, not just those of state legislatures." Columbus Board of Education v. Penick, 443 U.S. 449, 457 n.5, 99 S.Ct. 2941, 2946 n.5, 61 L.Ed.2d 666 (1979). If a school system was intentionally segregated at the time of Brown I, (Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas ), 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954), the school officials are under a continuous constitutional obligation to disestablish the dual system as of the date of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown II (Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas ), 349 U.S. 294, 75 S.Ct. 753, 99 L.Ed. 1083 (1955). Columbus Board of Education v. Penick, supra, at 458, 99 S.Ct. at 2946. This obligation imposes an "affirmative duty on school boards to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a unitary system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch." Green v. County School Board, 391 U.S. 430, 437, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 1693, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968). "Each instance of a failure or refusal to fulfill this affirmative duty continues the violation of the Fourteenth Amendment." Penick, supra at 459, 99 S.Ct. at 2947.

On the other hand, the mere existence of unintegrated schools does not establish a constitutional violation; "(A) school district has no affirmative obligation to achieve a balance of the races in the schools when the existing imbalance is not attributable to school policies or practices and is the result of housing patterns and other forces over which the school administration had no control." Davis v. School District of City of Pontiac, Inc., 443 F.2d 573, 575 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 913, 92 S.Ct. 233, 30 L.Ed.2d 186 (1971). As the Supreme Court wrote in Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, 239, 96 S.Ct. 2040, 2047, 48 L.Ed.2d 597 (1976):

(O)ur cases have not embraced the proposition that a law or other official act, without regard to whether it reflects a racially discriminatory purpose, is unconstitutional solely because it has a racially disproportionate impact.

....

The school desegregation cases have also adhered to the basic equal protection principle that the invidious quality of a law claimed to be racially discriminatory must ultimately be traced to a racially discriminatory purpose. That there are both predominantly black and predominantly white schools in a community is not alone violative of the Equal Protection Clause. The essential element of de jure segregation is "a current condition of segregation resulting from intentional state action." Keyes v. School Dist. No. 1, 413 U.S. 189, 205 (93 S.Ct. 2686, 2696, 37 L.Ed.2d 548) (1973). "The differentiating factor between de jure segregation and so-called de facto segregation ... is purpose or intent to segregate." Id., at 208 (93 S.Ct. at 2697). See also id., at 199, 211, 213 (93 S.Ct. at 2699.)

It is now well established that there are three prerequisites to a finding of de jure segregation: (1) school board action; (2) a segregative intent or purpose; and (3) a causal relationship between the official conduct and the segregation in the schools. See Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver, Colorado, 413 U.S. 189, 93 S.Ct. 2686, 37 L.Ed.2d 548 (1973). Plaintiffs are required to bear the burden of establishing discriminatory intent in a meaningful portion of the district. ⁵ As a practical matter, intent can only be proven circumstantially. This places upon the trial court the critical responsibility of deciding whether or not such intent has been established. Trial courts are not without guidance in this effort. Although Washington v. Davis, supra, makes it clear that official action will not be held unconstitutional solely because it results in a racially discriminatory impact, "Davis does not require a plaintiff to prove that the challenged action rested solely on racially discriminatory purposes." Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 265, 97 S.Ct. 555, 563, 50 L.Ed.2d 450 (1977). Thus plaintiffs need only prove that racial discrimination has been a motivating factor in the decision. Id. at 265-66, 97 S.Ct. at 563. In addition, while actions resulting in foreseeable and anticipated disparate impact do not necessarily establish a constitutional violation, such actions are relevant evidence to prove the forbidden purpose: "Adherence to a particular policy or practice, with full knowledge of the predictable effects of such adherence upon racial imbalance in a school system is one factor among many others which may be considered by a court in determining whether an inference of segregative intent should be drawn." Columbus Board of Education v. Penick, 433 U.S. 449, 465, 99 S.Ct. 2941, 2950, 61 L.Ed.2d 666 (1979), quoting from Penick v. Columbus Board of Education, 429 F.Supp. 229, 255 (S.D.Ohio 1977).

It is thus the duty of the District Court to determine whether, on the facts of a particular case, an inference of segregative intent should be drawn. The impact of the challenged official conduct is an important starting point. Other evidentiary sources available to the fact-finder include the historical background of that conduct, the specific sequence of events leading up to it, and the...