U.S. v. Yonkers Bd. of Educ., s. 832-834
| Citation | 837 F.2d 1181 |
| Decision Date | 28 December 1987 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 832-834,D,s. 832-834 |
| Parties | , 44 Ed. Law Rep. 44 UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, Yonkers Branch--National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, et al., Plaintiffs-Intervenors-Appellees, v. YONKERS BOARD OF EDUCATION; City of Yonkers; and Yonkers Community Development Agency, Defendants-Appellants. CITY OF YONKERS; and Yonkers Community Development Agency, Third Party, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT; and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Third Party, Defendants-Appellees. ocket 86-6136, 86-6138, 86-6156. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit) |
Clint Bolick, Washington, D.C. (William Bradford Reynolds, Asst. Atty. Gen., Walter W. Barnett, Joshua P. Bogin, Marie K. McElderry, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, D.C., on the brief), for plaintiff-appellee.
Michael H. Sussman, Yonkers, N.Y. (Sussman & Sussman, on the brief), for plaintiffs-intervenors-appellees.
John H. Dudley, Jr., Detroit, Mich. (John B. Weaver, Mark T. Nelson, Butzel Long Gust Klein & Van Zile, on the brief), for defendant-appellant Yonkers Bd. of Educ.
Rex E. Lee, Washington, D.C. (Carter G. Phillips, Mark D. Hopson, Sidley & Austin, Gerald S. Hartman, Michael W. Sculnick, Thomas G. Abram, Vedder, Price, Kaufman, Kammholz & Day, New York City, Jay B. Hashmall, Corporation Counsel for the City of Yonkers, Yonkers, N.Y., on the brief), for defendants-appellants-third-party-plaintiffs-appellants City of Yonkers and Yonkers Community Development Agency.
M. William Munno, New York City (James F.X. Hiler, Ronald A. Nimkoff, Heidi B. Goldstein, Seward & Kissel, on the brief), for Joseph Galvin, Alfred T. Lamberti, Paul Weintraub, Frank Furgiuele, Joseph M.A. Furgiuele, Jerald Katzenelson and Salvatore Ferdico, and The Crestwood Civic Ass'n., Inc. as amicus curiae urging reversal in part.
Puerto Rican Legal Defense & Educ. Fund, Inc., New York City (Linda Flores, Jose Luis Morin, Kenneth Kimerling, of counsel) filed a brief for the Organization of Hispanic Parents of Yonkers as amicus curiae on Behalf of plaintiff-appellee and plaintiffs-intervenors-appellees.
Henry Mark Holzer, Brooklyn, N.Y. (Daniel J. Popeo, George C. Smith, Washington Legal Foundation, Washington, D.C., of counsel) filed a brief for the Save Yonkers Federation and the Coalition of Concerned Yonkers Citizens on Behalf of defendants-appellants-third-party-plaintiffs-appellants.
Before KEARSE, PRATT, * and MINER, Circuit Judges.
Defendants City of Yonkers (the "City"), Yonkers Community Development Agency ("CDA"), and Yonkers Board of Education To remedy the segregation in housing, the district court ordered principally that the City provide sites for 200 units of public housing in nonminority areas; the order stated that if the City did not identify sites the court would do so. The court ordered that the City reallocate at least a substantial portion of its federal housing grant funds for the next several years to a fund to be used to foster the private development of low- and moderate-income housing in a way designed to advance racial integration.
(the "Board") appeal from a judgment entered in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York following a trifurcated bench trial before Leonard B. Sand, Judge, holding the City liable for racial segregation of housing in Yonkers, holding both the City and the Board liable for racial segregation of the Yonkers public schools, and ordering each defendant to take steps to remedy the segregation for which it was found liable. The district court held that the City, by its pattern and practice of confining subsidized housing to Southwest Yonkers, had intentionally enhanced racial segregation in housing in Yonkers, in violation of Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 ("Title VIII" or the "Fair Housing Act"), 42 U.S.C. Sec. 3601 et seq. (1982), and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The court held that the actions of the Board, including its decisions relating to individual schools, faculty assignments, and special education, and its selective adherence to a neighborhood-school policy in light of the City's segregative housing practices, combined with its failure to implement measures to alleviate school segregation, constituted intentional racial segregation of the Yonkers public schools, in violation of Titles IV and VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000c et seq. ("Title IV") and Sec. 2000d et seq. ("Title VI") (1982), and the Equal Protection Clause. The court held that the City had contributed to the segregation of the Yonkers public schools by means of, inter alia, its segregative housing practices, and that its segregative intent was revealed by the foreseeable effects of its housing practices, its direct involvement with certain schools, and the mayor's appointments to the Board of persons firmly committed to maintaining the segregated state of the schools that both reflected and enhanced the segregated residential patterns. The court thus found the City liable for intentional racial segregation of the schools in violation of Title IV and the Equal Protection Clause.
To remedy the school segregation, the court ordered the Board to take steps toward the desegregation of each school within specified numerical parameters by the 1987-88 school year. To this end, the Board was ordered to create magnet schools and implement a program in which it would assign each student to a school from among those nominated by his or her parents. The court ordered the City to fund the school desegregation plan.
On appeal, the City and the Board raise a variety of objections to the district court's rulings on liability and remedies. The City contends principally that the court (1) improperly imposed an affirmative duty on the City to build public housing outside of the City's predominantly minority neighborhoods; (2) erroneously found (a) that Yonkers's segregated housing patterns were the result of the City's intentional discrimination, and (b) that the City's housing decisions were a cause of school segregation; and (3) improperly considered the mayor's Board appointments in holding the City liable for school segregation. The Board contends principally that (1) the court erred in considering the City's deliberately segregative housing practices as a factor relevant to the Board's liability for school segregation, and (2) the court's finding of segregative intent on the part of the Board was clearly erroneous.
We conclude that the district court properly applied the appropriate legal principles, that its findings of fact are not clearly erroneous, and that its remedial orders are within the proper bounds of discretion. We therefore affirm the judgment in all respects.
The present litigation, unique in its conjoined attack on the actions of state and municipal officials with respect to segregation in both schools and housing, brings into question acts, omissions, policies, and practices of the City and the Board of Education over five decades. The case was commenced by the United States in December 1980, with the filing of a complaint alleging, inter alia, that the City and CDA had intentionally engaged in a pattern of selecting sites for subsidized housing that perpetuated and aggravated residential racial segregation, and that the City and the Board had, by their intentionally discriminatory acts and omissions, caused and perpetuated racial segregation in the schools. In June 1981, the Yonkers Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ("NAACP") and an individual minority student, by her next friend, were allowed to intervene as plaintiffs on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, see 518 F.Supp. 191, 201-03 (S.D.N.Y.1981), and the action was subsequently certified as a class action.
Trial on the liability issues was held over a period of some 14 months in 1983 and 1984. During the 90 trial days, evidence was heard from 84 witnesses; depositions of 38 additional witnesses were introduced; and thousands of documents were received in evidence. In November 1985, in an exhaustive and well documented opinion reported at 624 F.Supp. 1276-1553, Judge Sand found the City and CDA liable for housing segregation and found the City and the Board liable for school segregation. Following hearings as to the appropriate remedies for these violations, the court ordered system-wide, comprehensive remedies. See Parts A.I.C. and A.II.G. below.
In view of the challenges made in these appeals to the sufficiency of the evidence to support the district court's findings of intentional discrimination and the contentions that the remedies ordered are overly broad, we summarize at some length the evidence supporting both the findings and the imposition of system-wide remedies.
The City of Yonkers, New York, is a section of Westchester County roughly 4 to 6 miles long by 3 to 3- 1/2 miles wide, just north of New York City's Bronx County. For purposes of this suit Yonkers is regarded as consisting of three basic geographic areas, referred to as East Yonkers, Northwest Yonkers, and Southwest Yonkers. Southwest Yonkers, which comprises less than one-quarter of the City's land mass, is the City's most densely populated and urban area. Characterized as containing the "downtown" or "inner city" area, it is the only section having any significant amount of industrialization.
At trial, there was little dispute that, at least as of 1980, when this suit was commenced, the residents of Yonkers were largely segregated by race, with the minorities concentrated in Southwest Yonkers. United States Census figures for 1980 showed that minorities, defined as blacks or hispanics, made up 18.8% of Yonkers's...
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