Diaz v. San Jose Unified School Dist.

• Decision Date: 15 July 1981
• Docket Number: No. C-71-2130 RFP (SJ).,C-71-2130 RFP (SJ).
• Parties: Arnulfo M. DIAZ, et al., Plaintiffs, v. SAN JOSE UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of California

518 F. Supp. 622

Arnulfo M. DIAZ, et al., Plaintiffs, v. SAN JOSE UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT, et al., Defendants.

No. C-71-2130 RFP (SJ).

United States District Court, N. D. California.

July 15, 1981.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Cynthia L. Rice, Community Legal Services, San Jose, Cal., for plaintiffs Arnulfo M. Diaz, et al.

Michael di Leonardo, Sunnyvale, Cal., for defendants San Jose Unified School District, et al.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

PECKHAM, Chief Judge.

I PROCEEDINGS

This suit was originally instituted in 1971. Plaintiffs, on behalf of a class of all Spanish-surnamed students enrolled in the San Jose Unified School District ("SJUSD") and their parents, charged that the School District was operating a segregated public school system in violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Jurisdiction is founded in 28 U.S.C. §§ 1343(3) and 1343(4).

This case is now before the Court on remand from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, 612 F.2d 411 (1979), after this court initially ruled in favor of the defendants after trial on the merits. 412 F.Supp. 310 (1976). The procedural history of this matter up until the point of that initial judgment in this court, as well as the general factual background of the case, may be found in our initial opinion, 412 F.Supp. at 311-15, and need not be repeated here. The Ninth Circuit, upon appeal, vacated the judgment of this court and remanded the matter to us for further proceedings, in light of the decisions of the United States Supreme Court in Columbus Board of Education v. Penick, 443 U.S. 449, 99 S.Ct. 2941, 61 L.Ed.2d 666 ("Columbus"), and Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman, 443 U.S. 526, 99 S.Ct. 2971, 61 L.Ed.2d 720 ("Dayton") (1979), and in light of the Circuit Court's opinion issued in conjunction with the remand.

After the Ninth Circuit's mandate issued in February of 1980, this court ordered both sides to brief and argue their proposals for further proceedings in light of the remand decision. After a hearing held on June 4, 1980, this court ordered the case decided on the existing evidentiary record, and instructed both sides to file briefs addressing the question of whether the Ninth Circuit opinion remanding this case and the decisions in Columbus and Dayton compel a result different from this court's previous judgment. Oral argument was held on this issue on October 31, 1980.

This court has conducted an extensive review and consideration of this matter. We have studied the Ninth Circuit's remand opinion and the two Supreme Court rulings, as well as other Supreme Court and lower court cases which have addressed issues relevant to this matter. We have conducted a complete review of the transcript of the original trial on the merits, as well as the transcripts of the hearing on the request for a preliminary injunction, which was conducted in 1971. We have also carefully re-examined the exhibits introduced into evidence by both sides in connection with this case. The court concludes that it must once again find in favor of the defendants. For the reasons discussed below, the evidence in the record does not, on balance, support a finding of segregative intent, a finding necessary under federal law in order to impose liability on the defendants.

II DAYTON AND COLUMBUS

On remand, the Ninth Circuit ordered that this court reconsider the evidence in this case in light of the Supreme Court decisions in Dayton and Columbus, which were decided on the same day at the end of the October 1978 Term.

Dayton involved a school system which the Court of Appeals had found was de jure segregated at the time of the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954) ("Brown"). As such, it was under a continuous affirmative duty since that time to dismantle that dual system, "to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a unitary system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch." Green v. County School Board, 391 U.S. 430, 437-38, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 1693-94, 20 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968); see also Columbus, 443 U.S. at 458-59, 99 S.Ct. at 2947. The Court of Appeals had found that in a number of different instances, the Dayton school authorities had failed to take steps to fulfill this affirmative obligation to dismantle the segregated system. The Supreme Court's decision upheld the conclusions of the Court of Appeals 1) that there was a de jure system of segregated schools in place at the time of the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, supra, 2) that this meant that the school district was under an affirmative obligation since that time to dismantle that segregated system, and 3) that the school district had failed to fulfill that obligation.

The case before this court is in a much different posture. There was no evidence, nor any contention by the plaintiffs, that a de jure system of segregated schools existed at the time of Brown. Rather, virtually all the evidence in this case focused on the actions of the school authorities commencing in 1963, when the school board first acknowledged the need to eliminate segregation. Having not established any pre-Brown de jure system of segregation, the plaintiffs cannot rely on any continuing obligation on the part of the school district to dismantle such a segregated system by affirmative acts of integration. Rather, the plaintiffs are obliged to show that the segregation which exists in the schools was brought about by purposeful discrimination by state officials. As this court noted in its prior decision, 412 F.Supp. at 328-29, Keyes v. School District No. 1, 413 U.S. 189, 93 S.Ct. 2686, 37 L.Ed.2d 548 (1973) established that evidence of the de facto segregation of schools is not sufficient to prove a violation of the fourteenth amendment; rather, the plaintiff must prove not only that the defendants' actions created or maintained racial or ethnic imbalance in the schools, but also that those actions were motivated by segregative intent.

This, of course, brings us to the heart of the problem facing the courts and the crux of the difficulties which led the Court of Appeals to remand this case to this court. From what actions, circumstances, and explanations is the court to infer segregative intent? What evidence supports such an inference, and what countervailing evidence is sufficient to counter such an inference?

The Supreme Court offered some guidance on this issue in Dayton. It stated that proof of foreseeability is not to be taken, as a general proposition, to make out a prima facie case of segregative intent, nor does it routinely shift the burden of persuasion to the defendants. The court then stated, "of course, as we hold in Columbus today, ... proof of foreseeable consequences is one type of quite relevant evidence of racially discriminatory purpose...." 443 U.S. at 536 n.9, 99 S.Ct. at 2978 n.9. The Court rejected any hard and fast rule on the inferences to be drawn from, and importance to be placed on, evidence that state officials took actions which would have the natural, probable and foreseeable consequences of perpetuating segregation. The Court considered it simply one of many types of evidence which must be weighed in the balance of the overall case.

The decision in the Columbus case contains more guidance applicable to the case presently before this court. In that case, the lower courts had found that, while there was a de jure system of segregation in place in Columbus at the time of the Brown decision, there had also been several acts of intentional segregation after 1954. In upholding the latter finding of the district court, the Supreme Court pointed to several types of evidence of direct relevance to the San Jose situation. The Court noted in particular the evidence in the record concerning the selection of sites for new schools in Columbus. Since 1950, 103 schools had been built in Columbus; 87 opened with racially identifiable student bodies. The Court noted that this segregative result was "reasonably foreseeable under the circumstances in light of the sites selected." It went on to note, however, that there was no need to rely on an inference of discriminatory purpose based on the reasonable foreseeability of the segregative consequences of the district's choice of sites, for the record reflected that the school board had been specifically warned about the segregative consequences of its actions and that alternatives had been proposed which would have increased integration. 443 U.S. at 462-63 n.11, 99 S.Ct. at 2980 n.11.

The Court also put great emphasis on the fact that the board of education was presented with many recommendations over the years which would have countered some of the segregation in the Columbus system; the school board consistently refused to follow up on any of those recommendations. These failures to act were particularly important because "the Columbus system grew rapidly in terms of geography and number of students, creating many cross-roads where the Board could either turn toward segregation or away from it." 443 U.S. at 463 n.12, 99 S.Ct. at 2980 n.12. Under all these circumstances, the Supreme Court upheld the district court's inference of segregative intent "`from the Columbus defendants' failures, after notice, to consider predictable racial consequences of their acts and omissions when alternatives were available which would have eliminated or lessened racial imbalance.'" Id., quoting 429 F.Supp. 229, 240 (S.D.Ohio 1977).

The Court, in Columbus, also reiterated the use of evidence of foreseeable segregative effect to infer segregative intent. It emphasized, as it did in Dayton, that evidence of foreseeable consequences of actions, without more, is not sufficient to establish a constitutional violation. The Court stressed that the issue to be addressed by the trial court is whether or not the state officials acted with a ...