Mapp v. Board of Education of City of Chattanooga, Tenn., Civ. A. No. 3564.

• Decision Date: 16 November 1973
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 3564.
• Citation: 366 F. Supp. 1257
• Parties: James Jonathan MAPP et al., Plaintiffs, v. The BOARD OF EDUCATION OF the CITY OF CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Tennessee

366 F. Supp. 1257

James Jonathan MAPP et al., Plaintiffs, v. The BOARD OF EDUCATION OF the CITY OF CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE, et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 3564.

United States District Court, E. D. Tennessee, S. D.

November 16, 1973.

Raymond B. Witt, Jr., John T. Henniss, W. Frank Brown III, Chattanooga, Tenn., for Board of Ed. of City of Chattanooga, Tenn.

OPINION

FRANK W. WILSON, Chief Judge.

In 1971 this Court approved a plan submitted by the Chattanooga School Board designed to accomplish the final desegregation of that City's school system and to remove all vestiges of the dual school system formerly operated within the City. See Mapp v. Board of Education of the City of Chattanooga, et al., 329 F.Supp. 1374 (D.C.1971) and 341 F.Supp. 193 (D.C.1972). Compulsory implementation of the plan was delayed pending appellate review, with the result that the School Board has only partially implemented the plan to date.

The United States Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, has now affirmed the decision of this Court. See Mapp v. Board of Education of the City of Chattanooga, et al., 477 F.2d 851 (6th Cir. 1973). The defendants filed a petition for certiorari seeking review of the Court of Appeals decision, but that petition was recently denied by the United States Supreme Court, ___ U.S. ___, 94 S.Ct. 445, 38 L.Ed.2d 313.

In the meanwhile, and following the decision of the Court of Appeals affirming the final plan of school desegregation approved by this Court, the School Board filed a petition with this Court contending that since 1971 there have been changed circumstances in the Chattanooga School System necessitating a new hearing and warranting extensive revisions in the 1971 plan. Hearings extending over a period of seven trial days have now been held in which evidence was received regarding the changed conditions that are alleged to have occurred since 1971 and regarding a new and extensively revised plan for school desegregation.

The substance of the evidence submitted by the defendants with regard to changed conditions is that there has been a decline in school enrollment over the years which has accelerated in recent years, with much the greater portion of that decline in recent years having occurred in the white students enrolled in the system and with a ratio of black students in the system having increased from 48.8% in the 1970-71 school year to 58.2% in the current year (See Ex. 1, § 1, p. 1). Although acknowledging that there has been an increase in the ratio of black students to white students in the system each year since at least 1945, long before school desegregation was a factor, the defendants attribute the recent enrollment losses and changes in racial ratios to partial implementation and threatened full implementation of the school desegregation plan heretofore approved. Contending that their experience indicates that schools having more than 35% black student enrollment tend to lose their white student enrollment rather rapidly, the substance of the defendants' proposed plan is to so revise the Court-approved plan as to maintain a majority of from 60-80% white students in formerly white schools. This result is to be accomplished by increasing the number of all-black schools or substantially all-black schools.

As a constitutional justification for the recent plan, the Board would have the Court interpret the constitutional mandate of the Equal Protection Clause as requiring a "mixing" of the races and the maintenance of a "viable racial mix" or a "stable racial mix".

The difficulty with the Board's entire position, simply stated, is that it is based upon a mistaken legal premise. The "mixing" of races is not the constitutional mandate. The constitutional mandate is the equal protection of the law. The constitutional mandate, as stated in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 91 S.Ct. 1267, 28 L.Ed.2d 554 (1971) and as applied by this Court in 1971 and as affirmed by the Court of Appeals in 1973, is that the City of Chattanooga and its Board of Education must eliminate "all vestiges of state imposed segregation," that is, it must remove all vestiges of the dual school system it formerly operated as a matter of law. This Court has no discretion, prerogative, authority or intention of deviating from that standard unless the standard itself is altered by higher authority. No plan of school desegregation can pass constitutional muster unless it is demonstrated that it does remove all residual consequences attributable to the fact that the system was once designed, built, located, structured and operated as a dual school system, that is, a system having as its specific purpose not the furtherance of education, but the furtherance of segregated education.

The plan submitted by the Board and approved by the Court in 1971 was addressed to this problem and remedied the constitutional defects remaining in the system. The School Board's new proposal would largely disregard the constitutional mandate and address itself to another issue and that is how to maintain a "stable racial mix" in the system. This is the same issue to which Dr. Stolee, the plaintiffs' witness, addressed himself in his testimony in 1971. He proposed that it be accomplished by having a racial balance in each school, with the incidental effect of providing a white majority in most schools. The School Board now proposes that a "stable racial mix" be accomplished by retaining a sufficient number of all-black or substantially all-black schools so as to assure a white majority in a number of formerly or presently white schools. While it may be debatable whether Dr. Stolee's plan or any other plan would maintain for long a "stable racial mix" within a school or within a system, his plan, if...