Griffin v. Board of Supervisors of Prince Edward County

• Decision Date: 12 August 1963
• Docket Number: No. 8837.,8837.
• Citation: 322 F.2d 332
• Parties: Cocheyse J. GRIFFIN et al., Appellants and Cross-Appellees, v. BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY and J. W. Wilson, Jr., Treasurer of Prince Edward County, State Board of Education of the Commonwealth of Virginia and Woodrow W. Wilkerson, Superintendent of Public Instruction of the Commonwealth of Virginia and County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, and T. J. McIlwaine, Division Superintendent of Schools of said County, Appellees and Cross-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

322 F.2d 332 (1963)

Cocheyse J. GRIFFIN et al., Appellants and Cross-Appellees, v. BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY and J. W. Wilson, Jr., Treasurer of Prince Edward County, State Board of Education of the Commonwealth of Virginia and Woodrow W. Wilkerson, Superintendent of Public Instruction of the Commonwealth of Virginia and County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia, and T. J. McIlwaine, Division Superintendent of Schools of said County, Appellees and Cross-Appellants.

No. 8837.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued January 9, 1963.

Decided August 12, 1963.

Robert L. Carter, New York City (S. W. Tucker, Henry L. Marsh, III, Richmond, Va., Barbara A. Morris, New York City, Frank D. Reeves, Washington, D. C., Otto L. Tucker, Alexandria, Va., on brief), for appellants and cross-appellees.

Burke Marshall, Asst. Atty. Gen. (St. John Barrett, Harold H. Greene and Alan G. Marer, Attys., Dept. of Justice, on brief), for the United States, as amicus curiae.

Collins Denny, Jr., Richmond, Va. (John F. Kay, Jr., Richmond, Va., C. F. Hicks, Gloucester, Va., Denny, Valentine & Davenport, Richmond, Va., and DeHardit, Martin & Hicks, Gloucester, Va., on brief), for appellees and cross-appellants County School Board of Prince Edward County and T. J. McIlwaine, Division Superintendent of Schools of said County.

J. Segar Gravatt, Blackstone, Va., Sp. Counsel for Board of Supervisors of Prince Edward County (Frank Nat Watkins, Commonwealth's Atty. of Prince Edward County, on brief), for appellee and cross-appellant Board of Supervisors of Prince Edward County.

R. D. McIlwaine, III, Asst. Atty. Gen. of Virginia, and Frederick T. Gray, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen. of Virginia (Robert Y. Button, Atty. Gen. of Virginia, on brief), for appellees and cross-appellants State Board of Education and Superintendent of Public Instruction of Commonwealth of Virginia.

Before HAYNSWORTH, BOREMAN and J. SPENCER BELL, Circuit Judges.

HAYNSWORTH, Circuit Judge.

Transmuted, this old case, in its new flesh and pregnant with questions, comes again before us.

As Davis et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward et al., D.C., 103 F. Supp. 337, it began in 1951 as a suit to effect the desegregation of the public schools maintained by Prince Edward County, Virginia. It was one of the four school cases decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873. As Allen et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia et al., the case was again before this Court in 1957¹ and, still again, in 1959.²

In our opinion filed in May 1959, when this case was last here, we directed the entry of an injunction requiring the then defendants to receive and consider, on a nondiscriminatory basis, applications by Negro pupils for enrollment in high school for the school term beginning in September 1959. We also directed the entry of an order requiring the School Board to make plans for the elimination of discrimination in the admission of pupils to the elementary schools at the earliest practicable date. On remand to the District Court, no order was entered until April 22, 1960, when the District Court entered a formal order requiring the immediate elimination of discrimination in the admission of Negro applicants to high schools and the formulation of plans for the elimination of discrimination in the admission of applicants to elementary schools. Meanwhile, however, all public schools in Prince Edward County had been closed.

During the summer of 1959, the Board of Supervisors of Prince Edward County, though it had received from the School Board budgets and estimates of the cost of operating the schools for the 1959-1960 school year, did not levy taxes or appropriate funds for the operation of the schools during that year. Though certain funds have come into the hands of the School Board, out of which it has been able to meet certain maintenance and insurance expenses and debt curtailment, it has received no funds with which it could operate the schools, for, annually, the Board of Supervisors has failed, or declined, to levy taxes or appropriate funds for the operation of the schools.

In September 1960, the present plaintiffs obtained leave to file a supplemental complaint, which was supplanted by an amended supplemental complaint filed in April 1961. By these supplemental pleadings, the County Board of Supervisors, the State Board of Education and the State Superintendent of Education were brought in as additional defendants. By the amended supplemental complaint, the plaintiffs sought an order requiring the defendants to operate an efficient system of free public schools in Prince Edward County, forbidding tuition grants to pupils attending private schools practicing segregation, forbidding tax credits to taxpayers for contributions to private schools practicing segregation, and forbidding a conveyance or lease of any property of the School Board of Prince Edward County to any private organization.

The District Court entered an injunction against payment of tuition grants to pupils attending the schools operated by the Prince Edward School Foundation and against the allowance of tax credits by Prince Edward County on account of contributions to that Foundation. Initially, it abstained from deciding the questions of state law upon which the reopening of the free public schools depended, but, after the plaintiffs had aborted the effort to have the relevant questions decided by the state courts,³ the District Court undertook to decide them itself. It ordered the schools reopened, but postponed the effectiveness of that order pending this appeal. There was no evidence that anyone had any idea the school buildings and property owned by the School Board would be sold or leased, and no order was entered affecting their disposition.

For the District Court to get to the merits, it had to bypass a number of preliminary questions, including the very troublesome question arising under the Eleventh Amendment, all of which are brought up before us. On the merits of each of the three main issues, the parties advanced innumerable alternate offenses and defenses, but it is obvious that the answer on the merits, in one instance exclusively and in other instances largely, rests upon interpretations of state law. It is also apparent that a proceeding in the state courts will avoid most of the technical procedural difficulties which must be disposed of before the merits can be determined in this action. Under these circumstances, we think the District Court properly decided, in the first instance, that it should abstain from deciding the merits of the principal issue until the relevant questions of state law had been decided by the state courts. We think it should have adhered to its abstention when resolution of the state questions by state courts was delayed because the plaintiffs, themselves, chose to withdraw them from state court consideration. We think too that abstention on the other two issues, where the answers are so closely related to the principal issue, was the proper course. Insofar as there are federal questions present which are independent of state law, as will presently appear, we conclude that the plaintiffs have shown no ground for relief, so that abstention is not inappropriate.

In 1959, after the Board of Supervisors of Prince Edward County failed to levy taxes for the operation of the schools during the school year 1959-1960, a corporation known as Prince Edward School Foundation was organized for the purpose of operating private schools in the county. It was launched by private contributions of $334,712.22. With the receipt of tuition charges⁴ and continuing private contributions, it has successfully operated primary and secondary schools in Prince Edward County which are attended solely by white pupils. It has used none of the facilities of the School Board. Until the District Judge enjoined their payment, pupils attending schools of the Prince Edward School Foundation, generally, received tuition grants paid jointly by Virginia and Prince Edward County, which approached but did not equal the tuition charges they had to pay.

Negro citizens of Prince Edward County at first made no effort to provide schools for their children. They declined proffered assistance in such an undertaking. Some of their children obtained admission to public schools in other counties of Virginia and, since 1960, obtained, or were eligible for, tuition grants when they did so. The great majority of Negro children, however, for a time, went with no schooling whatever. Later, certain "training schools" were established and a substantial number of Negro pupils, but far from all, have attended those training schools.

On the principal issue, the question whether the plaintiffs have a judicially enforceable right to have free public schools operated in Prince Edward County, the plaintiffs contend that the closure of the schools, taken either alone or in conjunction with the subsequent formation of the Prince Edward School Foundation and its operation of private schools for white pupils only, was the kind of "evasive scheme" for the perpetuation of segregation in publicly operated schools which was condemned in Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 78 S.Ct. 1401, 3 L.Ed. 2d 5. The United States, as amicus curiae advances a different principle, contending that there is a denial of the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection of the laws when the Commonwealth of Virginia suffers the schools of Prince Edward County to remain closed, while schools elsewhere in the state are operated.

As to the plaintiffs' contention, it may be summarily dismissed insofar as it is viewed as a contention that the Fourteenth Amendment requires every state and every school district in every state to operate free public schools in which pupils of all races shall receive...