Evans v. Buchanan

• Decision Date: 27 December 1976
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 1816,1822.
• Citation: 424 F. Supp. 875
• Parties: Brenda EVANS et al., Plaintiffs, v. Madeline BUCHANAN et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Delaware

424 F. Supp. 875

Brenda EVANS et al., Plaintiffs, v. Madeline BUCHANAN et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. Nos. 1816, 1822.

United States District Court, D. Delaware.

December 27, 1976.

Louis L. Redding, Irving Morris, and Joseph A. Rosenthal, of Morris & Rosenthal, Wilmington, Del., for individual plaintiffs.

Louis R. Lucas, of Ratner, Sugarmon & Lucas, Memphis, Tenn., Richard Allen Paul, Wilmington, Del., for intervening plaintiffs, The Board of Education of the City of Wilmington.

William Prickett, and Mason E. Turner, of Prickett, Ward, Burt & Sanders, Wilmington, Del., and Philip B. Kurland, Chicago, Ill., for defendant.

John P. Sinclair, and William Poole, of Potter, Anderson & Corroon, Thomas S. Lodge, of Connolly, Bove & Lodge, Sheldon N. Sandler, of Bader, Dorsey & Kreshtool, Samuel R. Russell, of Biggs & Battaglia, Edward W. Cooch, Jr., of Cooch & Taylor, Jerome O. Herlihy, of Herlihy & Herlihy, Clifford B. Hearn, of Balick & Hearn, Wilimington, Del., Christian White, Stephen R. Spiller, Aida Waserstein, and Peter Siegel, James T. McKinstry, of Richards, Layton & Finger, James M. Tunnell, Jr., and Richard D. Allen, of Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell, Howard M. Handelman, of Bayard, Brill & Handelman, and William H. Bennethum, Wilmington, Del., for intervenors and amici.

OPINION

MURRAY M. SCHWARTZ, District Judge.

The defendant Delaware State Board of Education has petitioned this Court for a stay of an Order entered on June 15, 1976 by a three-judge court. The Order directs the development and implementation of a plan to desegregate most school districts in Northern New Castle County. Defendant's motion is the latest in the lengthy litigation concerning racial discrimination in the public schools of the State of Delaware.¹

The most recent phase of the litigation involves the scope of the court-ordered remedy for past unconstitutional discrimination. In 1974, the three-judge court² unanimously held that the State Board of Education had failed to eliminate the existence of the previously de jure segregated school system in Northern New Castle County.³ The court asked the State Board to submit alternative desegregation remedies, one limited to the boundaries of the existing Wilmington school district and the other incorporating other school districts in Northern New Castle County. The court declined to reach two questions raised by plaintiffs: (1) whether the Delaware Educational Advancement Act, which expressly precluded the State Board from considering the district of Wilmington in any plan for consolidation of school districts, was unconstitutional; (2) whether the State of Delaware through law, customs, usages and policies had enforced, approved of or acquiesced in public and private discrimination resulting in segregated schools.⁴

Before the requested plans could be submitted to the court, the Supreme Court decided Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717, 94 S.Ct. 3112, 41 L.Ed.2d 1069 (1974).⁵ In light of Milliken, the court gave the suburban New Castle County school districts an opportunity to intervene and present evidence. All of the districts that intervened adopted the State Board's pleadings and the evidence of record. Additional argument was heard by the court on the issue of whether it should consider metropolitan as well as Wilmington-only school desegregation remedies. The court concluded that an inter-district remedy would be appropriate, based on its findings that:

1) there had been a failure to alter the historic pattern of inter-district segregation in Northern New Castle County;

2) governmental authorities at the state and local levels were responsible to a significant degree for increasing the disparity in residential and school populations between Wilmington and the suburbs;

3) the City of Wilmington had been unconstitutionally excluded from other school districts by the State Board of Education, pursuant to a withholding of reorganization powers under the Delaware Educational Advancement Act of 1968.⁶

In the court's order of April 16, 1975, defendant again was directed to submit alternative plans for desegregation within the Wilmington district and throughout the metropolitan area, for the reasons stated in the 1974 and 1975 opinions. The order, appealed to the Supreme Court under 28 U.S.C. § 1253, was summarily affirmed.⁷

After careful consideration of the alternative plans submitted, including three weeks of evidentiary hearings, the court filed a third opinion on May 19, 1976, defining the scope of the necessary remedy.⁸ The State Board's instant motion is for a stay of implementation of the order issued pursuant to that opinion.

The court, in its May, 1976 opinion, set forth definitions to be employed in review, if necessary, of student assignments, guidelines for remedying the existence of dual schools and a plan for desegregation of most of the public school districts in Northern New Castle County. The district court plan directed that most of the existing districts in Northern New Castle County be consolidated with grades 7 through 11⁹ to attend school in a "genuinely nondiscriminatory system" in September, 1977.¹⁰

In an effort to minimize federal judicial intrusion, the court explicitly stated that the legislature or State Board of Education could alter or amend the plan proposed by the court in any manner consistent with the findings of the court on the extent of unconstitutional segregation.¹¹ Thus, the court plan becomes operative only if the State fails to remedy the constitutional violation. Recognizing that there must be governance during the transition period of planning and implementation, the court provided that an Interim School Board be appointed immediately to begin planning for implementation of the court's decision.¹² Full responsibility for the operation of the included public schools is to be transferred either to the Interim Board or to any successor or successors as might be designated by State law, at a date certain prior to September 1, 1977.¹³ Until such time, the present individual school boards retain all powers and responsibilities specified under State law.¹⁴

The defendant school boards filed appeals of the court's decision on remedy with the Supreme Court¹⁵ and with the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeal to the Third Circuit was temporarily stayed pending disposition of the appeal to the Supreme Court. On November 29, 1976, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal for want of jurisdiction.¹⁶ Defendant has promptly moved to lift the stay of the appeal in the Third Circuit, and to designate the record on appeal. Pending disposition of that appeal, and of any other appellate proceedings, defendant now requests this stay under Rule 8, Fed.R.App.P.

I. JURISDICTION

Defendant's motion presents a unique jurisdictional question. Although not specifically designated as such, the motion is most reasonably construed as an application for stay of an injunction pending appeal under Rule 62(c), Fed.R.Civ.P. Rule 62(c) provides that:

(c) Injunction Pending Appeal. When an appeal is taken from an interlocutory or final judgment granting, dissolving, or denying an injunction, the court in its discretion may suspend, modify, restore, or grant an injunction during the pendency of the appeal upon such terms as to bond or otherwise as it considers proper for the security of the rights of the adverse party. If the judgment appealed from is rendered by a district court of three judges specially constituted pursuant to a statute of the United States, no such order shall be made except (1) by such court sitting in open court or (2) by the assent of all the judges of such court evidenced by their signatures to the order.

This case was heard and decided by a three-judge court convened according to 28 U.S.C. § 2281.¹⁷ The language of the last sentence of Rule 62(c) indicates that this motion for stay must, therefore, be heard by the same court. To require that this motion be heard by the three-judge court, however, would be inconsistent with the terms of that court's own decision and order, as well as with the disposition by the Supreme Court of the most recent appeal. In its June 15, 1976 Order, the three-judge court dissolved itself, indicating that jurisdiction over implementation of its order would remain in this court.¹⁸ Although the Court gave no reasons for its finding of want of jurisdiction, one can reasonably speculate that the Supreme Court felt the matter of remedy did not require a three-judge court and, therefore, no right of direct appeal lay from the District Court's decision. Accordingly, since the three-judge court has dissolved itself, it is concluded that under Rule 62(c) this Court may appropriately entertain the present motion.

II. MERITS

At oral argument, the defendant State Board stated that it does not request a stay of those provisions of the June 15th Order which dealt only with planning and collection of data by the Interim Board or other authorities. Rather, defendant, citing "costly and irreversible" steps it would have to take to implement the plan in the absence of a stay, verbally limited its request to stay of implementation of that portion of the Order which is to be operative in September, 1977.¹⁹

The request for a stay is addressed to the sound discretion of the court. Coppedge v. Franklin County Board of Education, 293 F.Supp. 356, 362 (E.D.N.C.1968); Hobson v. Hansen, 44 F.R.D. 18, 21 (D.D.C. 1968). As with any exercise of discretion, the court must balance the equities presented by the particular set of facts. Taylor v. Board of Education, 195 F.Supp. 231, 238 (S.D.N.Y.), aff'd 294 F.2d 36 (2d Cir.); cert. denied 368 U.S. 940, 82 S.Ct. 383, 7 L.Ed.2d 339 (1961). If a stay is granted, and the decision on the merits affirmed on appeal, enforcement of plaintiff's legal rights will have been substantially delayed.²⁰ If, on the other hand, no stay is granted, but the Order is overturned on appeal, defendant already may...