Bronson v. Board of Educ. of City School Dist. of City of Cincinnati
Citation | 687 F.2d 836 |
Decision Date | 31 August 1982 |
Docket Number | Nos. 82-3405,s. 82-3405 |
Parties | 6 Ed. Law Rep. 512 Mona BRONSON, et al., Plaintiffs-Respondents, v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF the CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT OF the CITY OF CINCINNATI, et al., Defendants-Petitioners. to 82-3407. |
Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (6th Circuit) |
Mark O'Neill, Weston, Hurd, Fallon, Paisley & Howley, Cleveland, Ohio, A. David Nichols, Metzger, Phillipps & Nichols, Cincinnati, Ohio, for plaintiffs-respondents in No. 82-3406.
John A. Lloyd, Jr., Cincinnati, Ohio, for plaintiffs-respondents in No. 82-3405.
Mark A. Vander Laan, James W. Farrell, Jr., Lawrence A. Kane, Jr., Dinsmore & Shohl, Cincinnati, Ohio, for plaintiffs-respondents in No. 82-3407.
Solvita McMillan, Cleveland, Ohio, William E. Caldwell, Elizabeth McKanna, Ratner & Sugarmon, Memphis, Tenn., for defendants-petitioners in all cases.
Thomas Atkins, Teresa Demchak, N.A.A.C.P., New York City, for N.A.A.C.P.
Before LIVELY, Circuit Judge, and WEICK and PHILLIPS, Senior Circuit Judges.
This appeal raises two related questions: (1) Whether collateral estoppel has any application to school desegregation cases; and (2) Whether a finding in a school desegregation case that the defendants did not, prior to July 26, 1965, act with segregative intent in the operation of a public school system may be relitigated because no specific finding was made with respect to May 17, 1954, the date of the decision in Brown v. Board of Education. We agree with the district court that principles of collateral estoppel have not been rendered totally inapplicable to school desegregation cases. However, we disagree with the district court's conclusion that the issue of intent prior to July 26, 1965 may be relitigated in this case. Accordingly, we reverse.
This is the second interlocutory appeal in an action filed May 29, 1974 which seeks a holding that the public schools of Cincinnati are unlawfully segregated by race. However, this effort did not begin with the 1974 complaint of Mona Bronson. On November 11, 1963 a class action was filed on behalf of "Negro minors within the school district of Cincinnati ...." In that action the district court found that the following paragraph from the amended complaint fairly summarized the eleven paragraphs of the prayer:
(3) That defendants be further enjoined from operating and providing racially segregated public schools, assigning plaintiffs, and the members of the class they represent, to racially segregated schools, and seeking to further extend existing patterns of racial segregation.
Deal v. Cincinnati Board of Education (Deal I), 244 F.Supp. 572, 573 (S.D.Ohio 1965). In Deal I the district court concluded that "plaintiffs have failed to establish a deprivation of rights under the law or under the Constitution of the United States by the requisite degree of proof," and denied relief. Id. at 582.
Deal I was affirmed by this court, 369 F.2d 55 (1966), and certiorari was denied by the Supreme Court, 389 U.S. 847, 88 S.Ct. 39, 19 L.Ed.2d 114 (1967). In affirming the district court this court rejected the claim of the plaintiffs that demonstration of the existence of a racial imbalance in the Cincinnati schools alone was sufficient to show a constitutional violation. Though we affirmed the judgment of the district court "on the issue of racial imbalance not intentionally caused by the Board," this court remanded Deal I for "subsidiary findings of fact." Id. at 64. The findings were to relate to claims of harm to black students from the racial imbalance found in some schools and claims of discrimination in specific schools and programs. In remanding this court stated:
We have stated above that a showing of impairment of a Negro student's capacity to learn, arising from his school's racial imbalance, does not, standing alone, make out a case of constitutional deprivation. Evidence of such harm, however, may indeed be relevant to the issues of the case before us.
Following remand, the district judge suggested that the plaintiffs tender an amended complaint or conduct further discovery to establish that new evidence was required to comply with the remand order. After six months of inaction by the plaintiffs the district court filed a memorandum opinion and subsidiary findings of fact. The plaintiffs appealed and this court again affirmed. Deal v. Cincinnati Board of Education (Deal II), 419 F.2d 1387 (1969), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 962, 91 S.Ct. 1630, 29 L.Ed.2d 128 (1971). The memorandum and subsidiary findings of the district court were published as an appendix to this court's opinion. 419 F.2d at 1395-1401. Before dealing with the claims of discrimination in specific programs, all of which were rejected, the district court found that "neither gerrymandering nor any other alleged discriminatory practice on the part of the Board brought about such racial imbalance as existed" in the Cincinnati schools. 419 F.2d at 1398.
On appeal from the findings on remand this court held that the district court's findings of fact were not clearly erroneous. In addition to contesting the factual findings of the district court, the plaintiffs argued that the law had been changed since the time of the adjudication in Deal I and that recent Supreme Court decisions required reversal of this district court judgment. This court pointed out in its opinion, 419 F.2d at 1390, that the Supreme Court decisions relied upon by the plaintiffs (Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968); Raney v. Board of Education of Gould School District, 391 U.S. 443, 88 S.Ct. 1697, 20 L.Ed.2d 727 (1968); Monroe v. Board of Commissioners of City of Jackson, 391 U.S. 450, 88 S.Ct. 1700, 20 L.Ed.2d 733 (1968)) dealt with the duty to desegregate dual systems in which segregation existed because of laws requiring separation of the races in public schools, whereas Deal involved the operation of "a long-established unitary" school system. 419 F.2d at 1390. The 1968 Supreme Court decisions dealt with remedies in cases where unconstitutional acts had been established while the Deal plaintiffs had never proved the existence of unlawful, i.e., intentional, segregation. Thus, we concluded that intervening Supreme Court decisions in cases where constitutional violations had been established did not affect the validity of the Deal I judgment.
In his remand memorandum following affirmance of Deal I the district judge "offer(ed) the view that if there have indeed been intervening occurrences and developments constituting invasions of constitutional rights, they could appropriately form the basis of separate litigation, even though they may not properly be appended to the present action." Id. at 1396. After the affirmance of Deal II the present class action was filed in 1974 charging the defendants with numerous acts of discrimination and seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. The defendants sought dismissal on the ground that the final judgments in Deal I and Deal II barred relitigation of the issues raised in this case. The district court refused to apply strict res judicata principles, but determined that the doctrine of collateral estoppel should apply to foreclose "relitigation of essential facts or issues which were previously litigated by the parties (or their privies) and judicially determined." This court granted an interlocutory appeal and affirmed the district court. Bronson v. Board of Education, 525 F.2d 344 (6th Cir. 1975), cert. denied, 425 U.S. 934, 96 S.Ct. 1665, 48 L.Ed.2d 175 (1976).
In deciding the first interlocutory appeal this court reviewed the holdings of Deal I and Deal II. The claim of the Bronson plaintiffs that intervening decisions of the Supreme Court had changed the law so as to render collateral estoppel inapplicable to this case was again specifically rejected. 525 F.2d at 347-48. This court pointed out that the Supreme Court had continued to observe the difference between de jure and de facto segregation in Keyes v. School District No. 1, 413 U.S. 189, 93 S.Ct. 2686, 37 L.Ed.2d 548 (1973). In de facto cases there must be a finding that intentional acts or omissions of the school authorities produced a segregated condition in public schools. A total lack of intent to segregate the Cincinnati schools had been found by the district court in Deal, and this finding had been upheld by this court. No intervening decisions of the Supreme Court had mitigated the effect of this finding. Thus this court applied the collateral estoppel rule of "issue preclusion" in affirming the district court order which foreclosed "the plaintiffs from showing that the defendants did, prior to July 26, 1965 (the date of judgment in Deal I ), act with a segregative intent or that the actions, inactions or policies of the Board prior to that date violated the constitutional rights of minority pupils or their parents." 525 F.2d at 349.
Nevertheless, this court held that plaintiffs' allegations of continuing wrongful actions by the defendants after July 26, 1965 declared a different cause of action than the one decided in Deal and that collateral estoppel does not apply to this cause. We recognized that in order to establish their claim of post-1965 constitutional violations the plaintiffs might need to rely on pre-1965 actions and policies of the Board. However, the extent to which the district court at the Bronson trial could properly take judicial notice of facts stipulated or proven in Deal, or receive new evidence of pre-Deal occurrences or conditions, is limited by the relevancy of such evidence to the inquiry in Bronson. That inquiry was identified as one designed to determine the existence or non-existence of unlawful segregation during the post-July 26, 1965 period. Id. at 350.
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