Pennsylvania Human Relations Com'n v. School Dist. of Philadelphia

• Decision Date: 04 February 1994
• Citation: 638 A.2d 304,161 Pa.Cmwlth. 658
• Parties: , 89 Ed. Law Rep. 1157 PENNSYLVANIA HUMAN RELATIONS COMMISSION, Petitioner, v. SCHOOL DISTRICT OF PHILADELPHIA, Respondent, and Harry and Annemarie Gwynne, Aspira of Pennsylvania, et al., Intervenors.
• Court: Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court

Page 304

638 A.2d 304

161 Pa.Cmwlth. 658, 89 Ed. Law Rep. 1157

PENNSYLVANIA HUMAN RELATIONS COMMISSION, Petitioner, v. SCHOOL DISTRICT OF PHILADELPHIA, Respondent and Harry and Annemarie Gwynne, Aspira of Pennsylvania, et al Intervenors.

Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania.

Decided Feb. 4, 1994.

Elisabeth S. Shuster, Chief Counsel, and Michael Hardiman, Asst. Chief Counsel, for petitioner.

William H. Brown, III, and Christina Rainville, for respondent.

Michael Churchill, Richard Z. Freemann, Jr., and Daniel W. Cantu-Hertzler, for intervenors.

SMITH, Judge.

Before the Court is the latest chapter in litigation between the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (Commission) and the Philadelphia School District spanning almost twenty-three years during which the Commission has sought to compel the School District to comply with orders of the Commission and this Court to desegregate Philadelphia's public schools.

I. Background

The Commission issued its initial adjudication on June 7, 1971 pursuant to Sections 1-13 of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, Act of October 27, 1955, P.L. 744, as amended, 43 P.S. §§ 951-963, in which the Commission determined that the Philadelphia School District was unlawfully segregated by race and ordered the School District to develop and submit to the Commission a plan to eliminate the racial imbalance in its schools over a three-year period. On appeal by the School District, this Court affirmed the Commission's order requiring the District to correct the de facto segregation within its schools but remanded the matter to the Commission for necessary modifications of its order as to staff recruitment and assignment. Philadelphia School Dist. v. Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (HRC I), 6 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 281, 294 A.2d 410 (1972), aff'd, 455 Pa. 52, 313 A.2d 156 (1973). Thereafter, the Commission issued an amended final order dated September 25, 1972 requiring the School District to submit a plan by January 1973 to eliminate racial imbalance in its schools in conformity with the Commission's recommended elements of a school desegregation plan. The School District neither appealed the Court's order nor submitted the ordered plan, prompting enforcement proceedings by the Commission.

Pursuant to a November 14, 1973 order of this Court, the District submitted a plan in 1974 which the Commission rejected and subsequently filed a second enforcement petition. Another plan was submitted by the School District in 1975 although it argued that full compliance with this Court's directive was impossible because of the District's financial deficits and refusal of funding by the Commonwealth. That plan proposed to create a metropolitan school district among Philadelphia and ten adjacent school districts. The Court en banc in Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission v. School Dist. of Philadelphia (HRC II), 23 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 312, 352 A.2d 200 (1976), rejected the 1975 plan as it was beyond the District's power to implement, the Commission's power to order, and this Court's power to compel. The School District was thereupon ordered to submit a definitive plan and timetable for implementation to cure racial imbalance in the District's schools. The case was once again remanded to the Commission with jurisdiction retained by this Court.

In 1976, the School District submitted to the Commission a voluntary desegregation plan centered around a new magnet school program allowing students and their parents to select a school of their choice so long as the selection was consistent with desegregation. The Commission rejected the plan because it was entirely voluntary and returned to Commonwealth Court to enforce its amended final order and the Court's order in HRC II. This Court however denied the Commission's enforcement petition in July 1977 and directed the School District to implement its 1976 voluntary desegregation plan but authorized the Commission to return to court if dissatisfied with the School District's results. See Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission v. School Dist. of Philadelphia (HRC III), 30 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 644, 374 A.2d 1014 (1977), aff'd, 480 Pa. 398, 390 A.2d 1238 (1978).

In July 1980, the Commission again petitioned this Court to compel the School District to submit a desegregation plan which included mandatory measures because the District's efforts under the 1976 plan were insufficient. In April 1982, this Court issued yet another opinion at Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission v. School Dist. of Philadelphia (HRC IV), 66 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 154, 443 A.2d 1343 (1982), in which the School District was ordered to modify its 1976 voluntary desegregation plan to achieve more comprehensive desegregation as measured by the Commission's 1979 definition of a segregated school. In October 1983, the School District submitted proposed modifications to its 1976 plan (1983 modified plan) which the Commission rejected because of its continued non-compliance with this Court's order.

Notwithstanding its rejection, the Commission agreed to execute a memorandum of understanding with the School District in which the Commission agreed to allow the School District a three-year period to implement its 1983 modified plan. Subsequent to its evaluation of the three-year implementation period, the Commission notified the School District in June 1988 that maximum feasible desegregation had not been achieved thereby invoking terms of the agreement and authorizing the appointment of a settlement team to independently evaluate the School District's progress toward desegregation. This settlement team, appointed by former President Judge Crumlish in July 1990, submitted a report in November 1992 in which the team found that a great majority of Philadelphia's public schools are segregated and concurred that the School District had not achieved maximum feasible desegregation.

Intervention in the current enforcement proceedings was granted on April 2, 1993 to representative parent groups and other interested parties. ¹ After the initial phase of hearings in this matter, the Court entered an order on April 14, 1993 granting in part the School District's motion for directed verdict, treated as a motion for compulsory nonsuit, and ordered that mandatory busing would not be imposed by the Court as a means to further desegregate the District's schools because the Commission failed to prove the feasibility of mandatory busing or that the School District's failure to achieve maximum feasible desegregation could be cured by such means. Nevertheless, trial would proceed as to whether the School District offered equal educational opportunities to its minority students and implemented all feasible measures to further desegregate the School District by voluntary means. The Commission and School District filed separate petitions for permission to appeal with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court which denied both petitions by order dated June 29, 1993. Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission v. School Dist. of Philadelphia (No. 1056 C.D.1973, filed June 4, 1993), aff'd, (Nos. 62, 63 Misc.Dkt. 1993, filed June 29, 1993).

II.

Preliminary Questions

(a)

The School District presented its motion for directed verdict to the Court at the close of the record on November 30, 1993 requesting that judgment be entered for the School District because neither the Commission nor Intervenors demonstrated that maximum feasible desegregation had not been achieved by the School District. A motion for directed verdict may be granted only where the record makes it clear that the moving party is entitled to relief. In deciding a motion for directed verdict, courts must consider the evidence in the light most favorable to the parties against whom the motion is made and must accept as true all evidence supporting those parties' contentions and must reject all adverse testimony. Thompson v. Maryland & Pennsylvania R.R. Preservation Soc'y, 417 Pa.Superior Ct. 216, 612 A.2d 450 (1992), appeal denied, 533 Pa. 635, 621 A.2d 581 (1993).

In support of its motion, the School District argues that no evidence was offered to prove that any additional schools could have been desegregated since 1983 as no evidence was presented of specific pairings which could have been accomplished without mandatory busing; no evidence was presented concerning a specific magnet school which could have been created; nor was any other evidence presented which demonstrates that other measures could have been undertaken by the School District to further desegregate its schools. The District again raised its lack of financial resources as a defense to this action and asserted that it is financially incapable of initiating any additional desegregation measures and for that reason this lengthy litigation should be ended by the Court once and for all.

Another claim maintained by the School District is that no evidence was presented to show a correlation between alleged disparities in educational achievement of the District's students and desegregation. Contending that the educational achievement of minority students is irrelevant to this case, the School District erroneously states that this Court did not require the School District to implement educational goals nor to eliminate any disparities in educational achievement. Hence, because the Commission and Intervenors failed to "tie in" achievement with desegregation, they have failed to sustain their burden of proving a relationship between educational achievement and desegregation or stated another way, that desegregated schools tend to have higher test scores than racially isolated minority schools or that poor achievement of minority students is in any way connected to the issue of desegregation.

The Court heard extensive testimony in this case, and it is quite evident from the voluminous record that the School District is not entitled to a directed verdict. The Commission has steadfastly...