Coffey v. State Educational Finance Commission
| Decision Date | 29 January 1969 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 3906. |
| Citation | 296 F. Supp. 1389 |
| Parties | Mildred COFFEY et al., Plaintiffs, United States of America, Plaintiff-Intervenor, v. STATE EDUCATIONAL FINANCE COMMISSION et al., Defendants, State of Mississippi, Added Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of Mississippi |
Reuben Anderson, Jackson, Miss., for plaintiffs.
Robert E. Hauberg, U. S. Atty., Jackson, Miss., Robert T. Moore, U. S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., for plaintiff-intervenor.
Joe T. Patterson, Atty. Gen. of Miss., John E. Stone, Earl T. Thomas, Jackson, Miss., Semmes Luckett, Clarksdale, Miss., Hardy Lott, Greenwood, Miss., for defendants.
Before GODBOLD, Circuit Judge, and COX and RUSSELL, District Judges.
This class action was brought by Negro school children and their parents, residents of Mississippi, against the Educational Finance Commission of that state. The suit challenges the constitutionality of state tuition grants to Mississippi children between the ages of six and twenty-one attending private, nonsectarian schools.1
The United States intervened as a party plaintiff under 42 U.S.C. § 2000h-2 (§ 902 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) and Fed.R.Civ.P. 24, and joined the State of Mississippi as an added defendant. Several minor children who are receiving tuition grants have intervened as parties defendant. Fed.R.Civ.P. 24.
Since the plaintiffs seek an injunction restraining the enforcement and execution of state statutes on the grounds of their unconstitutionality, a three-judge court was convened pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2281.2 Jurisdiction is conferred on the court by 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1343(2), 2201 and 2281. We conclude that the case is properly brought as a class action. This opinion constitutes the court's Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law.
The grants are provided for by Senate Bill 1501, adopted in 1964,3 as amended by House Bill 1114, adopted while this case was pending in 1968.4 The legislation, as amended, is Miss.Code of 1942 (Ann., Recompiled) § 6248-101 et seq.
Senate Bill 1501 directed the State Educational Finance Commission to promulgate regulations for the payment of the grants and to administer the tuition grant program. The maximum amount of state funds an applicant could receive was set at $180 per school year, and the maximum of the combined state and local expenditure was limited to no more than the actual cost of tuition or the cost per pupil of the operation of the public schools in the locality, whichever was lower. The preamble to the bill stated that its purpose was "to encourage the education of all of the children of Mississippi" and "to afford each individual freedom in choosing public or private schooling." By the 1968 amendment the maximum payment was increased to $240 per school year.
Senate Bill 1501 was passed during an extraordinary session of the legislature in the summer of 1964. There were in operation at that time three nonsectarian private schools offering regular academic courses whose students subsequently have received state grants. In the first school year in which the grant law was in effect (1964-65), two new, regular, nonsectarian private schools went into operation. Both were located in one of the four Mississippi public school districts which had undertaken that year to desegregate pursuant to court orders.5 During the 1965-66 school year, twenty new private schools in which the students received state tuition grants were added to the five that had been in operation in 1964-65. In each instance, the new schools opened in public school districts which either were under court order to desegregate or had submitted voluntary desegregation plans to the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare.6
Since the filing of this suit in February, 1966 the growth in private schools has continued. Stipulations filed by the parties show that during the 1966-67 school year, there were thirty-five regular private schools in operation in which students received tuition grants. For the 1967-68 school year, the number rose to forty-nine.7
Much of the extensive data presented to the court concerning the financial operation of the private schools throughout the state whose students received tuition grants is digested in Appendices A and B. Appendix A shows the percentage of cash expenditures and the percentage of cash and non-cash contributions to the schools that were satisfied by state tuition payments in the 1965-66 school year. Appendix B shows the percentage of tuition charges satisfied by the tuition grants in 1968-1969. Combined with financial summaries of the operation of the individual schools, this data reveals that the state tuition grants have been critical to most of the schools. The formation and operation of the new schools have been on the thinnest financial basis. Tuition charges often have been scheduled to coincide with the quarterly payments of the state grants. Many individual parents have been either unable or unwilling to pay the balance due above the amount of the grants.
Depositions of officials of twenty-four of the twenty-five regular private schools benefiting from the tuition grant statute in 1965-66 show that these are segregated schools. Of the forty-nine regular private schools in which students received tuition grants during the 1967-68 school year, forty-eight had no Negro students in attendance. The remaining school, the Saints Academy in Lexington, Mississippi, had an all-Negro student body.8
We have thoroughly examined the record before us in a process of "sifting facts and weighing circumstances" in order to ascertain the impact of the tuition grant statute. Cf. Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U.S. 715, 81 S.Ct. 856, 6 L.Ed.2d 45 (1961). The evidence compels our conclusion that the tuition grants have fostered the creation of private segregated schools. The statute, as amended, encourages, facilitates, and supports the establishment of a system of private schools operated on a racially segregated basis as an alternative available to white students seeking to avoid desegregated public schools. We find, in the language of Griffin v. State Board of Education, 239 F.Supp. 560, 565 (E.D.Va.1965) that the grants "tend in a determinative degree to perpetuate segregation."9 thereby violating the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
There is no claim in this case that the constitution requires all children to attend public schools, or that a private citizen may not select a private segregated school for his child because of the desire to keep the child from being educated with children of a different race. What is involved here are legislative enactments which "will significantly encourage and involve the State in private discriminations." Reitman v. Mulkey, 387 U.S. 369, 381, 87 S.Ct. 1627, 1634, 18 L.Ed.2d 830, 838 (1967).
The court will issue an order enjoining the payment of tuition grants under the authority of Senate Bill 1501 and House Bill 1114. However the order will not apply to grants that were committed on or before October 1, 1968 for the school year 1968-69. We are mindful of the obligation of this court and of the State of Mississippi to secure immediate compliance with the mandate of Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954). See Green v. School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968). However we have concluded that it is not appropriate, past the middle of this school year, that we enjoin the tuition grants for the current year.
APPENDIX A
SUMMARY OF FACTS REGARDING
THE CREATION AND OPERATION OF PRIVATE SCHOOLS
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SCHOOL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
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Bayou Academy X 40 X X X X 62% 35% 34%
Canton Academy X 13 X X X X X 49 49 49
Central Holmes Ac'y X 189 X X X X 79 78 67
Council No. 1 X 145 X X X X 49 39 39
County Day School X 0 X X X X X 49 46 30
Cruger-Tchula Ac'y X 189 X X X X X 62 55 53
Deer Creek Ac'y X 116 X X X 62 21 18
E. Holmes Academy X 189 X X X X X 62 95 90
Forrest Co. Found. X 26 X X X X X 46 51 50
Harrison Co. School Xa 306 X X X X 50 57 37
Heritage Academy X 6 X X X X 48 43 39
Indianola Academy X 7 X X X X X 62 56 53
Jackson Academy 145 X X X 41 33 33
Jeff Davis Academy X 25 X X X X 49 45 43
Lamar School X 25 X X X 49 38 35
Lula-Rich Academy Xa 3 X X X 49 28 26
N. Delta School X 50 X X X X 43 34 24
Pas-Point School X 210 X X X 76 103 87
Sharkey-Issaquena X 64 X X X X 62 51 50
Southside Academy X 145 X X X X 43 29 19
Southwest Academy Xa 145 X X X 43 36 35
S.W. Miss. Christian X 19 X X X X X 49 39 39
Tunica Institute X 0 X X 67 21 15
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