Evans v. Buchanan, 77-2336
| Decision Date | 24 July 1978 |
| Docket Number | No. 78-1146,No. 78-1743,No. 78-1145,MARSHALLTON-M,Nos. 77-2336,No. 77-2336,78-1143,No. 78-1147,77-2337,No. 78-1143,CASTLE-GUNNING,No. 77-2337,No. 78-1148,No. 78-1144,77-2336,78-1144,78-1145,78-1146,78-1147,78-1148,78-1743,s. 77-2336 |
| Citation | 582 F.2d 750 |
| Parties | Brenda EVANS et al., Lillian Richardson, Mary Woods, Wilbur R. Carr, Sr., Clifton A. Lewis, Jeanne Q. Lewis, Board of Public Education of the City of Wilmington (Intervening Plaintiff), the Urban Coalition of Metropolitan Wilmington Incorporated v. Madeline BUCHANAN et al., Robert H. McBride, Elise Grossman, Joseph J. Crowley, William E. Spence, Clyde Bishop and Richard H. Farmer, constituting all the members of the State Board of Education of the State of Delaware, Delaware Association of School Boards, Intervening Defendants, Alexis I. duPont, Alfred I. duPont, Appoquinimink, Claymont, Conrad, Marshallton-McKean, Mt. Pleasant, New Castle-Gunning Bedford, Newark, and Stanton School Districts, DeLaWarr School District. Appeal of ALEXIS I. duPONT SCHOOL DISTRICT, inAppeal of DELAWARE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION and the following defendant school districts, Alexis I. duPont School District, Alfred I. duPont School District, Claymont School District, Conrad Area School District, New Castle-Gunning Bedford School District, Marshallton-McKean School District, Newark School District, Mount Pleasant School District and Stanton School District, inAppeal of CLAYMONT SCHOOL DISTRICT and Stanton School District, inAppeal of NEWBEDFORD SCHOOL DISTRICT, inAppeal of DELAWARE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION, inAppeal of ALFRED I. duPONT SCHOOL DISTRICT, Alexis I. duPont School District, Conrad School District and Mount Pleasant School District, inAppeal of NEWARK SCHOOL DISTRICT, inAppeal ofcKEAN SCHOOL DISTRICT, inSTATE OF DELAWARE, inv. The Honorable Murray M. SCHWARTZ, United States District Judge for the District of Delaware. to 78-1148 and 78-1743. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit |
Page 750
R. Carr, Sr., Clifton A. Lewis, Jeanne Q. Lewis, Board of
Public Education of the City of Wilmington (Intervening
Plaintiff), the Urban Coalition of Metropolitan Wilmington Incorporated
v.
Madeline BUCHANAN et al., Robert H. McBride, Elise Grossman,
Joseph J. Crowley, William E. Spence, Clyde Bishop and
Richard H. Farmer, constituting all the members of the State
Board of Education of the State of Delaware, Delaware
Association of School Boards, Intervening Defendants, Alexis
I. duPont, Alfred I. duPont, Appoquinimink, Claymont,
Conrad, Marshallton-McKean, Mt. Pleasant, New Castle-Gunning
Bedford, Newark, and Stanton School Districts, DeLaWarr
School District.
Appeal of ALEXIS I. duPONT SCHOOL DISTRICT, in No. 77-2336.
Appeal of DELAWARE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION and the
following defendant school districts, Alexis I. duPont
School District, Alfred I. duPont School District, Claymont
School District, Conrad Area School District, New
Castle-Gunning Bedford School District, Marshallton-McKean
School District, Newark School District, Mount Pleasant
School District and Stanton School District, in No. 77-2337.
Appeal of CLAYMONT SCHOOL DISTRICT and Stanton School
District, in No. 78-1143.
Appeal of NEW CASTLE-GUNNING BEDFORD SCHOOL DISTRICT, in No.
78-1144.
Appeal of DELAWARE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION, in No. 78-1145.
Appeal of ALFRED I. duPONT SCHOOL DISTRICT, Alexis I. duPont
School District, Conrad School District and Mount
Pleasant School District, in No. 78-1146.
Appeal of NEWARK SCHOOL DISTRICT, in No. 78-1147.
Appeal of MARSHALLTON-McKEAN SCHOOL DISTRICT, in No. 78-1148.
STATE OF DELAWARE, in No. 78-1743.
v.
The Honorable Murray M. SCHWARTZ, United States District
Judge for the District of Delaware.
Third Circuit.
Decided July 24, 1978.
Page 755
Samuel R. Russell, Biggs & Battaglia, Wilmington, Del., for appellant, Alexis I. duPont School Dist. in 77-2336 only.
Richard R. Wier, Jr., Atty. Gen. of the State of Delaware, Regina M. Small, Deputy Atty. Gen. of the State of Delaware, William Prickett, H. James Conaway, Jr., Young, Conaway, Stargatt & Taylor, Wilmington, Del., Philip B. Kurland, Chicago, Ill., Mason E. Turner, Jr., Prickett, Ward, Burt & Sanders, Wilmington, Del., for the Delaware State Bd. of Ed.
James T. McKinstry, Richards, Layton & Finger, Wilmington, Del., for Claymont School Dist. and Stanton School Dist.
David F. Anderson, Potter, Anderson & Corroon, Wilmington, Del., for New Castle-Gunning Bedford School Dist.
William Poole, Potter, Anderson & Corroon, Wilmington, Del., for Alfred I. duPont School Dist.
Edward W. Cooch, Jr., Cooch & Taylor, Wilmington, Del., Lino A. Graglia, Austin, Tex., for Marshallton-McKean School Dist.
Richard D. Allen, Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell, Wilmington, Del., for Mt. Pleasant School Dist.
John P. Sinclair, Potter, Anderson & Corroon, Wilmington, Del., for appellants, Alexis I duPont School Dist., Alfred I. duPont School Dist., Conrad School Dist., Mt. Pleasant School Dist., Claymont School Dist., Stanton School Dist., New Castle-Gunning Bedford School Dist. and Newark School Dist.
Jerome O. Herlihy, Herlihy & Herlihy, Wilmington, Del., for Conrad Area School Dist.
Page 756
Louis L. Redding, Joseph Rosenthal, Irving Morris, Morris & Rosenthal, Wilmington, Del., Louis R. Lucas, Ratner, Sugarmon, Lucas, Salky & Henderson, Memphis, Tenn., for appellees.
Paul R. Dimond, O'Brien, Moran & Dimond, Ann Arbor, Mich., William L. Taylor, Center for National Policy Review, Washington, D. C., Aida Waserstein, Education Law Center, Inc., Philadelphia, Pa., for intervening plaintiff.
ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF MANDAMUS
Floyd Abrams, New York City, Sp. Counsel for the State of Delaware, by appointment of Governor Pierre S. du Pont, IV and Atty. Gen. Richard R. Wier, Jr., Morris, James, Hitchens & Williams, Henry N. Herndon, Jr., Edward M. McNally, Edward S. Sacks, Wilmington, Del., for the New Castle County Planning Bd. of Ed.; Ira J. Dembrow, Andrew L. Deutsch, Cahill, Gordon & Reindel, New York City, of counsel.
Before ALDISERT, ADAMS, ROSENN, HUNTER, WEIS, GARTH and HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judges.
ALDISERT, Circuit Judge.
The consolidated appeals by the Delaware State Board of Education and nine school districts from the district court's ordering of a desegregation plan in the suburban New Castle County public schools require us to decide if the district court misused its discretion when it rejected a state-designed plan and adopted another plan designed to remedy constitutionally defective segregated schools in eleven public school districts. Evans v. Buchanan, 447 F.Supp. 982 (D.Del.1978). We conclude that the court did not act improperly and, accordingly, affirm.
I.
Although Delaware state court proceedings addressed this very serious constitutional problem as far back as 1952, this case has continuously commanded the attention of the federal courts the district court, this court, and the Supreme Court since 1957. Its history up until 1974 is discussed comprehensively in Evans v. Buchanan, 379 F.Supp. 1218, 1220-21 (D.Del.1974), in which a three-judge court determined that the Wilmington schools which had been De jure black schools prior to the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954) (Brown I ), continued to remain identifiably black, and that the dual school system in Wilmington had not been eliminated. In a subsequent opinion, the three-judge court found Inter-district, de jure segregation throughout Northern New Castle County, and ordered submission of both Wilmington-only and inter-district plans to remedy that segregation. Evans v. Buchanan, 393 F.Supp. 428 (D.Del.1975). This judgment was summarily affirmed by the Supreme Court. Buchanan v. Evans, 423 U.S. 963, 96 S.Ct. 381, 46 L.Ed.2d 293 (1975) (three Justices dissenting).
Thereafter, the district court conducted three weeks of evidentiary hearings on remedial plans submitted by the parties, specifically affording appellants the opportunity of demonstrating whether the impact of the inter-district violations was limited. At the conclusion of testimony, the court found that the inter-district violations had "a substantial, not a de minimis, effect on the enrollment patterns of the separate districts," and that racially discriminatory acts of the State and its subdivisions were "a substantial and proximate cause of the existing disparity in racial enrollments in the districts of Northern New Castle County." Evans v. Buchanan, 416 F.Supp. 328, 339 (D.Del.1976). Reiterating its finding of Inter-district violations, 1 the court considered the various submitted plans, finding Wilmington-only
Page 757
plans unacceptable, Id. at 343-44, and rejecting the specific inter-district remedies proposed by the parties. 2 Rather, on June 15, 1976, the district court ordered that Delaware schools in the area north of the northern line of the Appoquinimink School District 3 be desegregated and reorganized into a new or such other new districts as would comply with the court's opinion, which set the date for full compliance with constitutional requirements on all grade levels as September 1978. Id. at 361. In ordering reorganization or consolidation of school districts, the district court placed the laboring oar in developing an acceptable plan squarely in the possession of State authorities. See id. at 357.Certain appellants took an appeal from this order to the Supreme Court which, on November 29, 1976, dismissed the appeal on jurisdictional grounds. 429 U.S. 973, 97 S.Ct. 475, 50 L.Ed.2d 579 (1976). An appeal to our court followed. We affirmed the basic concept of the remedy ordered by the district court. Our opinion was filed on May 18, 1977, Evans v. Buchanan, 555 F.2d 373 (3d Cir. 1977) (in banc), and the Supreme Court denied Certiorari on October 3, 1977. 434 U.S. 880, 98 S.Ct. 236, 54 L.Ed.2d 160 (1977) (three Justices dissenting).
A.
In order to set the stage for our consideration of the present appeal, it is important to emphasize what we did when this case was before us last year. First, we viewed ourselves as precluded by the Supreme Court's summary affirmance of the district court's 1975 order from re-examining the existence of substantial inter-district violations. See 555 F.2d at 377-78. We adhere to the fundamental law of the case principle in the present appeal. 4
More important for present purposes, we also "affirm(ed) the basic concept of the remedy ordered by the district court." Id. at 380. It bears reemphasis that this basic concept called for "the State Legislature and the State Board of Education (to) take such steps as are not violative of constitutional rights to change the pattern set here," Id. at 380, Quoting 416 F.Supp. at 357, thus placing the primary responsibility for correcting the violations on the State and not on the district court or a court-created board. We adhere to, and reiterate the fundamental philosophy of this court: court-designed plans, or plans created by a new board were Not to be effectuated unless the State failed in its responsibility to come forward with an effective solution to the problem. A new board to operate the schools was authorized only on a stand-by basis, "for so long as the State takes no action." Id. at 380.
We summarized in our prior opinion, and reiterate now, some basic legal precepts relating to the extent of remedies a federal court may order:
A court is not at liberty to issue orders merely because it believes they will produce a result which the court finds desirable. The existence of a constitutional violation does not authorize a court to seek to bring about conditions that never would have existed even if there had been no constitutional violation. The...
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