Knowles v. BOARD OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION OF LEON CTY., FLA., 26144.

• Decision Date: 03 January 1969
• Docket Number: No. 26144.,26144.
• Citation: 405 F.2d 1206
• Parties: Christene KNOWLES, Appellant, v. BOARD OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION OF LEON COUNTY, FLORIDA et al., Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

405 F.2d 1206 (1969)

Christene KNOWLES, Appellant, v. BOARD OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION OF LEON COUNTY, FLORIDA et al., Appellees.

No. 26144.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

January 3, 1969.

Earl M. Johnson, Reese Marshall, Jacksonville, Fla., William L. Robinson, Jack Greenberg, James M. Nabrit, III, Conrad K. Harper, New York City, Alfred Feinberg, Tobias Simon, Miami, Fla., for appellant.

C. Graham Carothers, Ausley, Ausley, McMullen, Michaels, McGehee & Carothers, Tallahassee, Fla., for appellees.

Before TUTTLE and AINSWORTH, Circuit Judges, and MITCHELL, District Judge.

PER CURIAM:

This is an appeal by the plaintiff-intervenor in a suit seeking to cause the Board of Public Instruction of Leon County, Florida, to transfer her, a Negro teacher in business education, to a position in business education in a white school for the school year beginning September, 1966. The appellant filed her complaint as an intervenor in the then pending case of Clifford N. Steele et al v. Board of Public Instruction of Leon County, Florida, et al, a school desegregation case which was then on appeal to this court.

The trial court granted appellant's request to intervene in the class action then pending in Steele. However, the court postponed a hearing on the appellant's request for injunctive and other relief until after the Jefferson case was decided. The Steele case was subsequently remanded by this court, 371 F. 2d 395 to permit the district court to alter its judgment to follow the requirements laid down by this court in the case of United States v. Jefferson County Board of Education, (5 Cir., 1966) 372 F.2d 836, aff'd en banc, 380 F.2d 385, cert. denied sub nom Caddo Parish School Board v. United States, 389 U.S. 840, 88 S.Ct. 67, 19 L.Ed.2d 103. The Jefferson type decree was entered by this trial court on May 1, 1967.

On December 1, 1967, Mrs. Knowles filed a motion for consideration of her complaint. It was set down and heard on February 26, 1968. The trial court took the position that there had been no requirement that the Board of Education desegregate its faculties until the mandate of the Jefferson case was issued, since this court had held in the Pensacola case, Augustus v. Board of Public Instruction, (5 Cir., 1962) 306 F.2d 862, that "in the exercise of its discretion * * * the district court may well decide to postpone the consideration and determination of the question of faculty desegregation until the desegregation of the pupils has either been accomplished or has made substantial progress."

Without regard to the fact that this court had not, until the publication of Jefferson, required specifically that any school district desegregate its faculties, this did not affect the right of a Negro teacher to require that a school board consider her application as a teacher in any school for which she was qualified without regard to race. Cf. Davis v. Cook, (N.D.Ga.1948) 80 F. Supp. 443, and Cook v. Davis, (5 Cir., 1949) 178 F.2d 595. This right exists under the equal protection provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibiting state action denying equal protection of the laws to any person. However, the appellant here did not seek this individual relief in an action brought by her for that purpose. She sought to become a party in a class action and alleged that her own intervention was on behalf of a class consisting of "all other Negro teachers, administrative personnel and professional staff in the Leon County School system who are...