Alexis Pont School District v. Evans

• Decision Date: 08 September 1978
• Docket Number: No. A-188,A-188
• Citation: 58 L.Ed.2d 83,99 S.Ct. 32,439 U.S. 1375
• Parties: ALEXIS I. duPONT SCHOOL DISTRICT et al., Applicants, v. Brenda EVANS et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

439 U.S. 1375

99 S.Ct. 32

58 L.Ed.2d 83

ALEXIS I. duPONT SCHOOL DISTRICT et al., Applicants,

v Brenda EVANS et al.

No. A-188.

Sept. 8, 1978.

Mr. Justice REHNQUIST.

Applicants, seven defendant suburban school districts in the area of Wilmington, Delaware, have requested that I stay execution of the judgment and mandate of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in this case pending consideration by this Court of their petition for certiorari.^*

Mr. Justice BRENNAN denied the application for a stay one week ago, on September 1, 1978, Buchanan v. Evans, 439 U.S. 1360, 99 S.Ct. 28, 58 L.Ed.2d 69. Although earlier this summer I granted a stay in Columbus Board of Education v. Penick, 439 U.S. 1348, 99 S.Ct. 24, 58 L.Ed.2d 55, after it had been denied by Mr. Justice STEWART, I have decided to deny this application. Since my reasons are somewhat different from those expressed by Mr. Justice BRENNAN in his opinion, I shall state them here.

As Mr. Justice BRENNAN noted, the District Court earlier in this litigation found interdistrict violations on the part of several of the independent school districts located in New Castle County. It also declared unconstitutional a Delaware statute granting to the State Board of Education the authority to reorganize school districts within the State, but exempting from the operation of the statute the Wilmington School District. The judgment of the District Court was summarily affirmed without an opinion by this Court over three dissents. Buchanan v. Evans, 423 U.S. 963, 96 S.Ct. 381, 46 L.Ed.2d 293 (1975). For the reasons expressed in my dissent in that case, I cannot agree with my Brother BRENNAN that the unexplicated summary affirmance renders the District Court's finding that "this dual school system has been perpetuated through constitutional violations of an interdistrict nature" the law of the case. Buchanan v. Evans, 439 U.S., at 1363, 99 S.Ct., at 30 (BRENNAN, J., in chambers).

The case later came to this Court on a petition for certiorari from a judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that had concluded that some consolidation of school districts would be necessary in order to formulate an appropriate decree. Certiorari was denied by this Court, Delaware Board of Education v. Evans, 434 U.S. 880, 98 S.Ct. 236, 54 L.Ed.2d 160 (1977), with three Justices voting to grant certiorari, and vacate and remand the case for reconsideration in light of this Court's opinion in Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman, 433 U.S. 406, 97 S.Ct. 2766, 53 L.Ed.2d 851 (1977). Were I alone deciding these issues on the merits, I would probably grant a stay pending the timely filing of a petition for certiorari. Cf. New York Times Co. v. Jascalevich, 439 U.S. 1331, 1337, 99 S.Ct. 11, 15, 58 L.Ed.2d 38 (MARSHALL, J., in chambers). But as Mr. Justice MARSHALL went on to point out in his in-chambers opinion, the Circuit Justice must be reasonably satisfied that four Justices would vote to grant certiorari in the case, and while I do not view any of the prior actions of this Court as dispositive of the merits of the issues decided by the District Court or the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, neither do I feel that I can in good con- science say that four Justices of this Court would vote to grant certiorari to consider them at this time.

Present in the instant application, however, is an elaborate, specific plan devised by the District Court to remedy the violations which it had previously found. That remedy consists in part of a court-ordered reorganization and consolidation of 11 independent school districts in northern New Castle County. What had been 11 independent governing boards is for the present 1 interim board having supervisory authority over all 11 districts. The order requires the Delaware State Board of Education to appoint the five-person governing board. Included within the interim board's authority is the assignment of students, the levying of necessary taxes, the hiring of faculty, and the choice of curriculum.

The second aspect of the remedy is a system of pupil assignment which the District Court ordered the Board to adopt in the judgment which the Court of Appeals affirmed in the case now before me. The modus operandi of that plan is that all students from the two predominantly black school districts are to be reassigned to the nine predominantly white districts for nine years of their elementary and secondary education, and all students in the predominantly white districts are to be reassigned to the predominantly black districts for three consecutive years. In affirming this judgment of the District Court, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit relied in part on this quotation from Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 15-16, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 1276, 28 L.Ed.2d 554 (1971):

"[A] school desegregation case does not differ fundamentally from other cases involving the framing of equitable remedies to repair the denial of a constitutional right."

However, the language in Swann immediately following the language quoted by the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit states:

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