Claybrook v. City of Owensboro

• Decision Date: 08 March 1884
• Parties: CLAYBROOK and others v. CITY OF OWENSBORO and others.
• Court: United States Circuit Court, District of Kentucky

23 F. 634

CLAYBROOK and others v. CITY OF OWENSBORO and others.

United States Circuit Court, D. Kentucky.

March 8, 1884

Bagby &amp Marshall, for complainants.

Sweeney Owen & Ellis, for defendants.

BARR J.

This case is before me on the merits, and after a careful consideration of the arguments presented by the learned counsel representing the defendants, I see no reason to change the views expressed in the opinion filed when the temporary injunction was granted. The schools organized and sustained in Owensboro, under the act of 1871 and its amendments, are in fact and in law part of the common-school system of this state. They may be called 'public schools,' but this makes no difference. These schools are common alike to all white children of school age, and are sustained by taxation. Taxation to sustain schools is permitted because the education of the children of a state is a recognized governmental purpose. If the state can constitutionally exclude colored children from all benefits arising from this tax, levied as it is for a governmental purpose, because white people pay the tax, there is no good reason why the state may not limit and distribute the benefit of government in every respect according to race or color and in proportion to the taxes paid by each race or color. This discrimination in the benefit of the taxes raised under the act of 1871 is, I think, denying colored children of Owensboro the equal protection of the law, and within the inhibition of the fourteenth amendment to the federal constitution.

The affidavits which were before me when the temporary injunction was granted, proved that there were about 500 colored children of the school age, and about 800 white children of that age, in the city of Owensboro; but the depositions now in the record show that this was a mistake. The evidence now in would indicate there was in 1882 one colored child of the school age in said city to three white children of that age hence, if the funds arising from taxes, raised under both the act of 1871 and the act of 1881, were distributed between the colored and white children of the school age, it would be about one dollar to the colored schools to every three dollars to the white schools. If this court had the power to issue a mandatory injunction requiring a distribution of the money raised from this tax, it should take into consideration the sums received by the colored schools under the act of 1881. But after a careful consideration of the question I cannot satisfy myself that the court has authority in this...