Bradley v. School Board of City of Richmond, Virginia, Civ. A. No. 3353.

• Decision Date: 05 April 1971
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 3353.
• Citation: 325 F. Supp. 828
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Virginia
• Parties: Carolyn BRADLEY et al., v. The SCHOOL BOARD OF the CITY OF RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, et al.

325 F. Supp. 828

Carolyn BRADLEY et al., v. The SCHOOL BOARD OF the CITY OF RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, et al.

Civ. A. No. 3353.

United States District Court, E. D. Virginia, Richmond Division.

April 5, 1971.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Norman J. Chachkin, New York City, Louis R. Lucas, Memphis, Tenn., M. Ralph Page, James R. Olphin, Richmond, Va., for plaintiffs.

George B. Little, John H. O'Brion, Jr., James K. Cluverius, Richmond, Va., for defendants Superintendent of Schools and School Board of the City of Richmond.

Andrew P. Miller, Atty. Gen. of Virginia, William G. Broaddus and D. Patrick Lacy, Jr., Asst. Attys. Gen., for defendants State Board of Education and Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Robert D. McIllwaine, III, Petersburg, Va; J. Mercer White, Jr., County Atty., for Henrico County, L. Paul Byrne, Richmond, Va., for defendants School Board and Board of Supervisors of Henrico County.

J. Segar Gravatt, Blackstone, Va., for defendant School Board of Chesterfield County.

Oliver D. Rudy, Commonwealth's Atty., for Chesterfield County, Frederick T. Gray, Walter E. Rogers, Richmond, Va., for Board of Supervisors of Chesterfield County.

Everette G. Allen, Jr., Richmond, Va., for intervenors Bellevue-Ginter Area Civil Ass'n, Robert Douglas Bain, and Sherwood Park Civic Ass'n.

Frederick T. Gray, Walter E. Rogers, Richmond, Va., for intervenors Noel Austin and others.

John S. Battle, Jr., William H. King, Jr., Richmond, Va., for intervenors Westover Hills Parent-Teachers Ass'n.

MEMORANDUM

MERHIGE, District Judge.

The issue now before the Court is that of the plan to be adopted for the operation of the public schools of the City of Richmond for the 1971-72 school year, based upon the assumption that the city will then operate as it has heretofore, as a single administrative unit for school purposes.¹

The Court has previously determined that one plan before it, that presented in June 1970 hearings by the plaintiffs' expert witness, Dr. Gordon Foster, will achieve a unitary school system within this context. Bradley v. School Board of City of Richmond, 317 F.Supp. 555, 576 (E.D.Va.1970). The Foster proposal was formulated with an eye to the 1970-71 school year, but at the Court's request the School Board has supplied upto-date attendance projections based on that plan's zone lines so that its suitability for the 1971-72 year may be judged.

In addition, the School Board has presented three possible plans assertedly calculated to create a unitary system. This Court had ordered the defendants on August 17, 1970, to:

File with this Court, within 90 days of this date, a report specifically setting out such steps as they may have taken in order to create a unitary system of the Richmond public schools and specifying in said report the earliest practical and reasonable date that any such system could be put into effect.

The School Board, on November 16, 1970, advised the Court that three definitive plans would be submitted on January 15, 1971. Reportedly these were designed to meet three possible measures of the extent of the School Board's legal duty which, it was foreseen, might emerge from pending cases in the Supreme Court.

In the resolution of the instant issue the Court is guided by one major and one subsidiary legal doctrine. First, the adequacy of any proposed plan must be ascertained by reference to the current state of the law. For this Court, the law, in this regard, is that which has been enunciated by the most recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court and rulings of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals consistent therewith. For the Court to act on speculation concerning possible modifications to the extent of this Court's equitable power and duty to implement the fourteenth amendment would be inconsistent with its position in our system of tribunals. Stanley v. Darlington County School District, 424 F.2d 195, 198 (4th Cir. 1970).

Moreover, the Court has determined that further delays in affording the plaintiffs what these defendants owe them under the Constitution, such as that occasioned by this Court's denial of further relief during the second semester of the current school year, cannot be justified either by precedent or by practicality. In practical terms, if upcoming rulings place obligations of lesser magnitude than does current law on school officials, and if thereafter these defendants seek relief from orders requiring more of them than is legally required, the expense and disruption of conversion to a less costly program of integration will in all probability be far less than the cost of a hasty reorganization to conform to current law, if such law remains viable. The School Board of the City of Richmond, through its counsel in open court, has represented that the rapid conversion to a "neighborhood" school organization is feasible. The expense of preparing for the final desegregation of Richmond's schools as current law requires is indeed a minimal price to pay for the assurance that, whatever binding constitutional interpretations intervene, the rights of all citizens affected thereby will be protected.

Furthermore, the clear mandate of appellate courts precludes delay. Carter v. West Feliciana Parish School Board, 396 U.S. 290, 90 S.Ct. 608, 24 L.Ed.2d 477 (1970). See also, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 399 U.S. 926, 90 S.Ct. 2247, 26 L.Ed.2d 791.² Bases for a conclusion that appellate courts endorsed postponement of desegregation pending decisions on certain school cases now in the Supreme Court are disappearing as decisions issue from our Court of Appeals. On balance, and in view of the insubstantiality of evidence of the expenses to be incurred irretrievably in reliance on the viability of an appropriate desegregation order, the Court has concluded that further delay in the grant of relief, while the parties await additional authoritative rulings, cannot be justified by either precedent or any rule of reason.

The unequivocal pronouncements of the United States Supreme Court in Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, 396 U.S. 19, 90 S.Ct. 29, 24 L.Ed.2d 19 (1969), to the effect that under the Court's "explicit holdings, * * the obligation of every school district is to terminate dual school systems at once and to operate now and hereafter only unitary schools," is the law of the land.

The viability of defendants' suggestion that this Court should await further appellate rulings by reason of the extensions of time granted by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in the filing of briefs and this Court's granting further time for filing and docketing the appeal record in this case, pertaining to defendant School Board's appeal of the Court's order of August 1970, loses much potency in the examination of the record.

On August 17, 1970, the Court ordered the implementation of the interim plan; stays of that order were denied by this Court, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court within a matter of days. The record was delivered to the Clerk of the Fourth Circuit on September 25, 1970. The lack of any action by the Court of Appeals can hardly justify a request that this Court await an appellate pronouncement as to the propriety of its order of August 17, 1970. A more realistic consideration, at least to this Court, is that any delay so far occasioned in the Fourth Circuit's considering this Court's refusal to approve the first plan submitted (HEW plan) and its conclusions in reference to the interim plan, arises by reason of the defendants' request to the Fourth Circuit that the matter lie in abeyance. Their standing to now utilize such delay as grounds for inaction is at the least suspect. This is particularly significant when one considers the fact that a delay now may preclude the opening of schools in the Fall as scheduled. Their original requests to the Fourth Circuit that the matter lie in abeyance were undoubtedly based on valid and compelling reasons, and ones which the Court has no doubt were at the time both appropriate and wise, since defendants understandably anticipated a further ruling by the United States Supreme Court in pending cases; and this Court is still hopeful of such prior to the opening of school in the Fall. Nevertheless, to now accord that passivity the dignity of a compelling reason for this Court to ignore the clear mandate to see to it that the explicit holdings as to the timing of desegregation matters, as stated by the United States Supreme Court, are implemented, is to compound the difficulties which understandably follow any desegregation plan.

Appellate procedures provide for stays of this Court's orders in appropriate circumstances. The delays heretofore granted were based primarily on the impossibility of implementing a unitary plan in a manner so as not to conflict with the defendants' proposed scheduling of the opening of school, and indeed there were in addition other equitable principles considered by the Court in its refusal to accede to plaintiffs' request for implementation of a unitary plan at mid-term. Those same principles, however, now dictate that a plan be approved promptly, not only because there is time in which to implement it, but there is time for all the parties to utilize the appellate process in such a manner as to hopefully preclude a delay in the opening of schools in the Fall. Such procedure is consistent with our system of law and one in which it is hard to envision any lack of acquiescence by parties presumably dedicated to constitutional principles.

A second principle guiding the Court—almost as obvious as the doctrine of precedent—is that it is primarily the School Board's duty to run the schools, and not this Court's nor the plaintiffs'. It is the school administrators' duty, as well as the duty of the City Council, moreover, to afford the equal protection of the laws. This principle requires no further countenance by the Court of the city...