Lee v. Macon County Bd. of Ed., 78-1772

• Citation: 584 F.2d 78
• Decision Date: 15 November 1978
• Docket Number: No. 78-1772,78-1772
• Parties: Anthony T. LEE et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. MACON COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION et al., Defendants, Baldwin County Board of Education, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (5th Circuit)

Page 78

584 F.2d 78

Anthony T. LEE et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. MACON COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION et al., Defendants, Baldwin County Board of Education, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 78-1772.

United States Court of Appeals,

Fifth Circuit.

Nov. 15, 1978.

J. U. Blacksher, Mobile, Ala., Bill Lann Lee, New York City, for plaintiffs-appellants.

Norborne C. Stone, Bay Minette, Ala., for Baldwin County Bd. of Ed.

William A. Kimbrough, Jr., U. S. Atty., Mobile, Ala., Marie E. Klimesz, Atty., Appellate Section, Civ. Rights Div., Drew S. Days, Asst. Atty. Gen., Walter W. Barnett, Deputy Chief, Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., for the U. S.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama.

Before COLEMAN, TJOFLAT and FAY, Circuit Judges.

COLEMAN, Circuit Judge.

Baldwin County, Alabama, a large, predominantly rural county, is bordered, in the main, by Mobile Bay to the west and the State of Florida to the east. The northern part of the county is sparsely populated and is composed of farms and timberlands. Some resort and seafoods industries are located in the southern portion of the county, along Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. The resort area around Gulf Shores has recently experienced significant population increases, but the largest town in the county is the county seat, Bay Minette, which had a 1970 population of 6727.

Since March 20, 1970, the Baldwin County Board of Education (the Board) has operated under the terminal school desegregation plan approved by the District Court. Pursuant to that plan, the Board closed the historically black and historically white elementary schools ¹ in Stockton, which is located some 13 miles northwest of Bay Minette. The plan divided the county into attendance zones, and Stockton was included in the Bay Minette Attendance Center of Attendance Zone Two. ² All students of elementary age in that attendance center now attend school at Bay Minette Elementary School, which is located on the same large campus as Bay Minette High School. During the 1976-77 school year, 1273 elementary students attended classes in buildings with a nominal capacity of 850. The elementary school thus operated with a student population nearly 50 percent in excess of the designed capacity.

On February 10, 1977, the District Court entered an order finding that the Baldwin County school system was desegregated and unitary in nature.

In order to help alleviate the undesirable overcrowding at Bay Minette the Board petitioned the District Court to reopen the unused Vaughn School in Stockton. ³ In support of its petition, the Board cited the following benefits which would flow from reopening the Vaughn School: (1) relief from the crowded conditions at Bay Minette, (2) improved home environment education for handicapped children, (3) substantial reductions in travel time for many children, and (4) material reductions in transportation costs. Of the estimated 271 students in the attendance zone proposed by the Board, 181 would be black (67%) and 90 would be white (33%). In the Bay Minette school in the 1976-77 school year, 1111 students were black (30.3%) and 2558 were white (69.7%). In that same year, there were 14,721 students in the entire Baldwin County school system, of which 3385 were black (23.0%) and 11,336 were white (77.0%). It can readily be seen that housing patterns in the Stockton area do not closely reflect county-wide demographics.

The Department of Justice then intervened pursuant to Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000c Et seq., and objected to the reopening of the Vaughn School with the proposed attendance zone lines. The named plaintiffs urged the court to reopen that school, provided that the attendance zone be expanded so as to insure an integrated facility. At the subsequent hearing on the petition, the judge requested the school board to report how many black and white students would be assigned to the school if the zone were enlarged to the limits suggested by the plaintiffs and the Justice Department. Soon thereafter, the Board duly reported to the court that the change would add 98 students to Vaughn, all of whom would be white. With these 98 white students added to the original 271, the racial composition would then be 181 black (49.1%) and 188 white (50.9%).

Armed with this information, the court held an off-the-record conference with counsel for the parties. Apparently, the Board resisted the proposed expansion of the Vaughn attendance zone, and the court then suggested that one way to resolve the disagreement would be to expand the Bay Minette facilities. Ten days later, the District Judge issued written findings of fact and a judgment which gave the Board the option either to reopen Vaughn with the extended attendance zone or to keep Vaughn closed and add to the facilities at Bay Minette Elementary. When the Board chose to expand Bay Minette Elementary, plaintiffs appealed. ⁴ Significantly, the United States, as plaintiff-intervenor, did not join in the appeal.

In view of the District Judge's order of February 10, 1977, that the Baldwin County school system was "desegregated and . . . unitary in nature", we must initially consider whether the court below had subject matter jurisdiction over the Board's petition. Federal district courts possess jurisdiction over school desegregation cases only because of unconstitutional action by the state or by a local school board. The magnitude of the constitutional violation, the scope of the remedy required to redress the violation, and the possibility of recurring violations have all made it necessary for the district courts to retain jurisdiction over many such cases in order to insure the proper implementation of the desegregation plan and the achievement of the ultimate goal a unitary school system in which the State does not discriminate between public school children on the basis of their race. But once that goal has been attained, the district courts may then follow the orderly procedures previously outlined by this Court and enter an order that the school system is indeed unitary. See e. g., United States v. State of Texas (San Felipe Del Rio Consolidated Independent School District), 5 Cir. 1975, 509 F.2d 192; Youngblood v. Board of Public Instruction of Bay County, 5 Cir. 1971, 448 F.2d 770, 771; Steele v. Board of Public Instruction of Leon County, Florida, 5 Cir. 1971, 448 F.2d 767. Normally a court could then close the docket on the case, and "in the absence of a showing that either the school authorities or some other agency of the State has deliberately attempted to fix or alter demographic patterns to affect the racial composition of the schools, further intervention by a district court should not be necessary." Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education,402 U.S. 1, 32, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 1284, 28 L.Ed.2d 554 (1971). See also Pasadena City Board of Education v. Spangler, 427 U.S. 424, 436-37, 96 S.Ct. 2697, 2705, 49 L.Ed.2d 599 (1976); United States v. South Park Independent School District, 5 Cir. 1978, 566 F.2d 1221, Petition for cert. filed, 46 U.S.L.W. 3666 (U.S. Apr. 25, 1978) (Nos. 77-1464 and 77-1467). Once the case is closed, the officials of the public school system have the responsibility for educational decisions. They are bound to take no actions which would reinstitute a dual school system or which would discriminate against any child on the basis of race. See Swann, supra, 402 U.S. at 21, 91 S.Ct. at 1279. See generally L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law 13-14, 27-28 (1978).

In this case, the District Court entered its order on February 10, 1977, finding the Baldwin County school system to be unitary in nature. Since no timely objections were filed, all objections to that order were waived, in the absence of a showing that an error resulted in a fundamental miscarriage of justice. Lee v. Dallas County Board of Education, 5 Cir. 1978,578 F.2d 1177. That order also required the Board to file statistical reports on an established schedule, a requirement with which the Board has apparently complied. The court did not, however, enter final judgment or dismiss the case, so we assume that it retained jurisdiction for purposes other than receiving the reports. Under this assumption, the District Court appears to have had subject matter jurisdiction over the case.

The parties apparently do not agree on the issue presented in this case. At least, they characterize it in different terms. Plaintiffs seem to argue solely that "(t)he district court abused its discretion when it approved the School Board's off-the-record about-face." Appellants' Brief at 11. The Board agrees that the...