Sailors v. Board of Education of County of Kent
| Decision Date | 02 May 1966 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 4480. |
| Citation | 254 F. Supp. 17 |
| Parties | James SAILORS and Loretta Sailors, Seymour Koning and Mildred Koning, Grazzi Mullay and Rosalie Mullay, and the Board of Education of the City of Grand Rapids, a second class school district, Plaintiffs, William A. Duthler and Anna M. Duthler, Harvey A. Duthler and Edna M. Duthler, and the City of Grand Rapids, a municipal corporations, Intervening Plaintiffs, v. The BOARD OF EDUCATION OF the COUNTY OF KENT, and Victor Weller, Dewey Jaarsma, Mary I. Keeler, Russell Emmons, and C. B. Leaver, as members thereof, and the Kentwood Public Schools, a school district of the fourth class, Defendants, Attorney General of the State of Michigan, Intervening Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Michigan |
Dutchess, Mika, Miles, Meyers, Merdzinski & Snow, Grand Rapids, Mich., Wendell A. Miles, Grand Rapids, Mich., of counsel, for individual plaintiffs and individual intervening plaintiffs, and of counsel for plaintiff Board of Education.
McDonald & Anderson, Grand Rapids, Mich., Roger D. Anderson, Grand Rapids, Mich., of counsel, for plaintiff Board of Education, of counsel, for individual plaintiffs and individual intervening plaintiffs.
Steven L. Dykema, City Atty., Grand Rapids, Mich., for intervening plaintiff, The City of Grand Rapids.
VanderVeen, Freihofer & Cook, Grand Rapids, Mich., George R. Cook, Grand Rapids, Mich., of counsel, for The Board of Education of County of Kent, and individual defendants.
Paul O. Strawhecker, Grand Rapids, Mich., for defendant Kentwood Public Schools.
Eugene Krasicky, Asst. Atty. Gen., for intervening defendant, Attorney General of State of Michigan.
Before O'SULLIVAN, Circuit Judge, KENT, Chief District Judge, and FOX, District Judge.
This is an action brought by plaintiffs Sailors, Koning, and Mullay, and intervening plaintiffs Duthler, all formerly school electors of defendant Kentwood Public Schools, against the Board of Education of the County of Kent (hereinafter called "Board"), and Kentwood Public Schools, a local school district. Suit was commenced on February 15, 1963.
As additional parties plaintiff in this case, there appear the City of Grand Rapids, and the Board of Education of the City of Grand Rapids, a second-class school district.
By popular vote of February 1962, three areas of Paris Township (Breton Avenue, Kendall, and Fuller-44th Street) were annexed to the City of Grand Rapids. Concomitantly, these areas were detached from defendant Kentwood school district and annexed to the plaintiff City of Grand Rapids school district. The annexation became effective on December 31, 1962.
A fourth area (Alger Street) was detached and annexed by vote of the legislative bodies of the township and city, and that territory likewise shifted school districts.
On January 1, 1963, the Board of Education of the defendant Kentwood Public Schools requested defendant Board to detach these four areas from plaintiff school district and transfer them to defendant Kentwood Public Schools.
Defendant Board accepted the transfer petitions, gave the statutory notice of its meeting, and on February 25, 1963, granted the transfer request without written opinion.
Plaintiffs appealed the decision to the State Board of Education, which entered an amended order on June 5, 1963, exempting the property of the original plaintiffs from the transfer, as well as that of two other lot owners. Again, no written opinion was given.
By way of relief, plaintiffs seek to have this court set aside the transfers subsequent to the effective date of annexation, to declare that the defendant Board is unconstitutionally constituted, to enjoin any further elections until the misrepresentation is brought into balance, and to declare that the absence of any statutory standards governing the decisions of the county board of education is violative of the Fourteenth Amendment due process guarantees, and constitutes an improper delegation of legislative authority.
Defendants contend that the court has no jurisdiction over the subject matter of the complaint, and that it has no power to set aside the acts of an allegedly malapportioned legislature.
Members of the county boards of education are elected in accordance with the procedure set forth in Michigan Statutes Annotated 15.3291 and ff., Comp.Laws 1948, § 340.291 et seq. P.A.1955, No. 269. This is essentially a unit system of voting—each school district within the county receives one vote in the election of each of the five members of the county board.
By amendments to the law effective March 28, 1963 , provision for popular election of county board members is available upon request of a majority of the local school boards, representing more than 50% of the children on the last school census.
These elections are held biennially on the first Monday of June, to select replacements for members whose terms have expired. Under the applicable provision, not more than two members of the board may come from any one school district.
The county board of education exercises legislative, administrative, and quasijudicial functions. Among these are the levying of ad valorem property taxes; collecting data on delinquent taxes; arranging for the taking of the school census; preparation of an annual budget; authority over special education programs and programs for the retarded; and authority to transfer territory from one school district to another.
In the present case, wide variation in the populations of the constituent school districts is prevalent. Nelson School District has a population of 99, and exercises one unit vote. Hoag School District has a population of 111, and one unit vote; Dodge School District, population 117 and one unit vote; Ashley School District, population 145 and one unit vote; Grand Rapids School District, population 201,777, or 55.6% of all people in Kent County, and one unit vote. (According to the 1960 decennial census.) In 1964 there were 39 school districts within Kent County. Thus in several school districts in Kent County, the voting strength of one voter approximates the voting strength of 200 voters in the Grand Rapids School District.
Furthermore, plaintiff Grand Rapids School District has 48.04% of the total number of school-age children in Kent County (1963 school census).
Similar inequality is found in the property valuation figures for the respective school districts.
The primary question is whether or not the guarantees of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution are extended to electors of local school boards in the State of Michigan, which local boards elect intermediate (county) boards of education in accordance with a system paralleling the "county-unit" system invalidated by the Supreme Court in Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368, 83 S.Ct. 801, 9 L.Ed.2d 821 (1963).
At oral argument learned counsel for defendant Kentwood School District pressed on the court the admonition not to enter the "political thicket." This phrase was coined by Mr. Justice Frankfurter in his opinion in the case of Colegrove v. Green, 328 U.S. 549, 66 S.Ct. 1198, 90 L.Ed. 1432 (1946), which sought to invalidate a scheme of state congressional districts for the reason that they differed greatly in population.
(Emphasis supplied.) Id. at 556, 66 S.Ct. at 1201.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter's opinion in that case represented the views of three members of the court. Mr. Justice Rutledge joined in the result, giving a majority, expressing the view that the question was judicially cognizable, but that the particular case did not call for an exercise of the Court's jurisdiction.
In the decision in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 82 S.Ct. 691, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962), the majority held that lower federal courts have jurisdiction of the subject matter of a suit attacking a state apportionment act as unconstitutional on the grounds that it deprives the plaintiff of equal protection of the laws by debasing his vote, that a state apportionment statute violates the equal protection clause by effecting a gross disproportion in representation of the voting population, and that a person qualified to vote for members of a state legislature has standing to challenge a state legislative apportionment statute as violative of the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause.
In the spate of cases subsequently decided by the Supreme Court upholding the right to challenge malapportionment of state legislatures, the lone dissenter from that proposition has been Mr. Justice Harlan.
In Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506 (1964), Mr. Chief Justice Warren, in the opinion of the court, stated:
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