Bradley v. Milliken

• Decision Date: 19 December 1975
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 35257.
• Parties: Ronald BRADLEY et al., Plaintiffs, v. William G. MILLIKEN, Governor of the State of Michigan, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Michigan

411 F. Supp. 937

Ronald BRADLEY et al., Plaintiffs, v. William G. MILLIKEN, Governor of the State of Michigan, et al., Defendants.

Civ. No. 35257.

United States District Court, E. D. Michigan, S. D.

December 19, 1975.

Louis R. Lucas, Ratner, Sugarmon & Lucas, Memphis, Tenn., for plaintiffs.

George T. Roumell, Jr., Riley & Roumell, Detroit, Mich., Theodore Sachs, Marston, Sachs, O'Connell, Nunn & Freid, Detroit, Mich., George L. McCargar, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Lansing, Mich., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

DeMASCIO, District Judge.

The defendants in this school desegregation suit, 78 separate and identifiable school districts in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb Counties,¹ have joined in a Motion to Strike, For More Definite Statement and For Additional Relief. Defendants contend that the plaintiffs' Second Amended Complaint is vague and indefinite, that it fails to comply with this court's April 29, 1975 order, that it contains immaterial allegations that should be stricken or in the alternative made more definite because they do not comply with Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, that it contains averments dealing with issues the Supreme Court has already decided do not justify interdistrict relief, which should be stricken, and that it contains a number of averments alleging only residential racial segregation, which are not material in a school desegregation case and should be stricken. Finally, the defendants contend that plaintiffs lack standing to maintain this action for interdistrict relief.

We deal first with the issue of standing. Defendants argue that the recently decided Supreme Court case of Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (decided June 25, 1975), compels the conclusion that plaintiffs herein lack standing to sue. In Warth, the Supreme Court decided that plaintiffs, various organizations and individuals residing in the Rochester, New York metropolitan area, did not have standing to challenge alleged exclusionary zoning practices of the neighboring community of Pennfield, New York. Defendants argue that, according to Warth, plaintiffs herein, residents of Detroit, lack standing to challenge alleged discriminatory housing patterns in the surrounding suburban areas.

While we are of course bound by the Supreme Court's decision in Warth, we do not believe that it applies to the situation here. In Warth, the decision that plaintiffs lacked standing was grounded upon the plaintiffs' inability to demonstrate that the acts alleged caused injury to themselves, rather than other unidentified members of the class to which they belonged. In Warth, none of the petitioners had a present interest in any Pennfield property, none was himself subject to the strictures of the ordinance, and none had ever been denied a variance or permit by the respondent officials. Plaintiffs' alleged injury was the deprivation of housing opportunities in Pennfield, but as the Court pointed out, they were unable to show that members of their class would have lived in Pennfield but for the complained-of conduct. In contrast, plaintiffs herein have not complained merely that they have been deprived of housing opportunities in the suburban school districts; they complain that such deprivation has had the effect of causing segregation in the schools of the City of Detroit. Thus, the injury in fact that the plaintiffs have alleged is the segregation of the Detroit schools, not the denial of housing opportunities in suburban communities. This is an injury suffered by plaintiffs themselves, not by other unnamed third parties.

Thus, since Warth is inapplicable, plaintiffs' standing to aver and establish interdistrict equal protection violations must be determined by the test first announced in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204, 82 S.Ct. 691, 703, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962). The Court there announced that the "gist of the question of standing" is whether the parties seeking relief have "alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult . . . questions." The Supreme Court reaffirmed this test in Association of Data Processing Service Organizations, Inc. v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 153-154, 90 S.Ct. 827, 830, 25 L.Ed.2d 184 (1970):

"The question of standing . . . concerns, apart from the `case' or `controversy' test, the question whether the interest sought to be protected by the complainant is arguably within the zone of interests to be protected or regulated by the statute or constitutional guarantee in question."

Standing in this context thus requires that plaintiffs themselves were injured in fact (i. e., have a sufficient interest in the outcome of the litigation) and be arguably within the zone of interest sufficiently to assure the advocacy essential in an actual case or controversy. The plaintiffs here have already established injury resulting from the segregation found to exist in the Detroit city schools, and now aver that acts by the state and suburban defendants contributed to that injury. They have thus established that they are arguably within the constitutional guarantee in question and have clearly demonstrated a sufficient personal interest to assure the advocacy essential to the progress of the litigation.

Defendants' other objections to plaintiffs' standing to sue may be disposed of easily. Defendants argue that, to the extent that the class is composed of white persons, such persons lack standing to vindicate the rights of black persons. However, this argument lacks merit because segregation is an act that injures black and white alike. Defendants argue that under Moose Lodge v. Irvis, 407 U.S. 163, 92 S.Ct. 1965, 32 L.Ed.2d 627 (1972), plaintiffs have made no showing of injury in fact. This argument is grounded upon the defendants' failure to comprehend that the injury complained of is not the denial of housing opportunities in the suburbs, but segregation of the Detroit schools, an injury that has in fact occurred. See Bradley v. Milliken, 338 F.Supp. 582 (E.D.Mich. 1971), aff'd 484 F.2d 215 (6th Cir. 1973), rev'd on other grounds, 418 U.S. 717, 94 S.Ct. 3112, 41 L.Ed.2d 1069 (1974). Defendants further argue that by making allegations concerning alleged discriminatory hiring practices in suburban school districts and other internal affairs of school districts other than Detroit, plaintiffs are attempting to assert the rights of third parties. But insofar as these allegations are raised not in and of themselves, but for their effect on segregation in the City of Detroit, they do relate to an injury suffered by plaintiffs themselves. Finally, defendants argue that plaintiffs are seeking to hold defendants responsible for the activities of state and governmental units over which they have no control. This argument is unsound: it addresses the sufficiency of the allegations, not the standing to maintain the action in the first instance.

Having concluded that plaintiffs have standing to sue, we now address ourselves to the merits of defendants' motion. Defendants make two separate objections to the allegations of plaintiffs' second amended complaint: (1) certain paragraphs should be stricken because they raise issues not material to a school desegregation suit, and (2) certain paragraphs should be stricken or, in the alternative, made more definite because they do not comply with the requirements of specificity in Rule 8, Fed.R. Civ.P.

Defendants have vigorously contended that all allegations of discrimination in the public and private housing markets, as set forth in paragraphs 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 28 and 29 of the Second Amended Complaint, should be stricken as immaterial to school desegregation issues. Defendants argue that a racial imbalance alone does not violate constitutional rights and that, in any event school districts cannot be used as vehicles for vindicating alleged housing discrimination unrelated to school district policies. Defendants contend that Deal v. Cincinnati Board of Education, 369 F.2d 55 (6th Cir. 1966); Higgins v. Board of Education of City of Grand Rapids, 508 F.2d 779 (6th Cir. 1974); Spencer v. Kugler, 326 F.Supp. 1235 (D.N.J.1971), aff'd 404 U.S. 1027, 92 S.Ct. 707, 30 L.Ed.2d 723 (1972); and Swann v. Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554 (1971), compel this result.

While the cases are confusing and at times contain conflicting conclusions, we do not agree that residential discrimination in the public and private housing markets is necessarily immaterial to the issue of segregation in public schools. For example, Higgins v. Board of Education, supra, does not support that proposition; the court there did not find that as a matter of law such allegations were immaterial, but found only that the proofs offered were insufficient to support the allegations. In Deal v. Cincinnati Board of Education, supra, the U. S. Court of Appeals held that the district court correctly excluded evidence of alleged housing discrimination because the proofs there established only de facto segregation, which the court found did not justify relief.²

We do not agree that the authority relied upon by the defendants compels us to strike these allegations. We believe that a proper reading of these cases is that, while allegations of housing discrimination standing alone are insufficient to support a finding of school segregation necessary to justify interdistrict relief, findings of housing discrimination will not excuse a finding of school segregation where the school districts involved have engaged in other segregative acts at some time in the past. In other words, allegations of housing discrimination are material if other separate acts of de jure segregation by the defendants are alleged and proved. Thus, in Evans v. Buchanan, 393 F.Supp. 428 (D.Del.1975) an interdistrict remedy...