U.S. v. Yonkers Branch—Naacp

• Citation: 123 F.Supp.2d 694
• Decision Date: 30 November 2000
• Docket Number: No. 80 Civ. 6761(LBS).,80 Civ. 6761(LBS).
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, and YONKERS BRANCH—NAACP, et al., Plaintiffs-Intervenors, v. Yonkers Board of Education, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

123 F.Supp.2d 694

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff and YONKERS BRANCH—NAACP, et al., Plaintiffs-Intervenors, v. Yonkers Board of Education, et al., Defendants.

No. 80 Civ. 6761(LBS).

United States District Court, S.D. New York.

November 30, 2000.

Michael H. Sussman, Law Offices of Michael H. Sussman, Goshen, NY, for plaintiff-intervenor, Yonkers Branch—NAACP.

Raymond P. Fitzpatrick, Jr., Fitzpatrick, Cooper & Clark, Birmingham, AL, for defendant City of Yonkers.

Stephen M. Jacoby, Eliot Spitzer, New York City, Attorney General for the State of New York, for State defendants.

OPINION

SAND, District Judge.

PREFACE

This Opinion was prepared and ready for filing this past August. However, apprised of ongoing settlement discussions, the Court, on August 21, 2000, issued the following Order:

The Court notes that Governor George E. Pataki has issued a statement asserting the State's commitment to a consensual resolution of the pending school litigation and the payment of a $10,000,000 advance toward such settlement.

In light of the foregoing, this Court will withhold its response to the Court of Appeals remand pending submission to it of a proposed settlement agreement.

If at any time any party shall be of the opinion that progress toward achieving a settlement is not being made at a satisfactory pace or that settlement efforts are at an impasse, this Court shall be promptly advised of such circumstances.

SO ORDERED.

On November 29, 2000, the Court received a letter from the NAACP urging that the Court "issue its vestiges remand decision at the earliest possible occasion and move the process of final resolution forward."

OPINION

Plaintiffs brought this action alleging that public housing and education in the City of Yonkers had been unlawfully segregated according to race. The Court finds that, as of 1997, vestiges of segregation existed in the Yonkers public schools. We therefore refer the matter to the Court-appointed School Monitor to report and recommend, after appropriate proceedings, as to a suitable remedy.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Procedural History

In 1985, this Court found that the City of Yonkers ("the City") and the Yonkers Board of Education ("the YBE") had intentionally segregated the Yonkers public schools ("the YPS"). See United States v. Yonkers Bd. of Educ., 624 F.Supp. 1276 1376-1545 (S.D.N.Y.1985) ("Yonkers I")¹, aff'd, 837 F.2d 1181 (2d Cir.1987) ("Yonkers III"). The following year, we ordered a remedy, which came to be known as the "educational improvement plan," or "EIP I." See United States v. Yonkers Bd. of Educ., 635 F.Supp. 1538 (S.D.N.Y.1986) ("Yonkers II"), aff'd, 837 F.2d 1181 (2d Cir.1987). The centerpiece of EIP I was a voluntary magnet school program that was designed to eliminate the severe racial imbalance that had previously existed with respect to student and faculty assignments, as well as to alleviate inequalities in facilities and extracurricular offerings. See id. By all accounts, the plan—which organized schools and programs around particular themes and assigned students based on their thematic and programmatic preferences— was a dramatic success. School enrollments were totally desegregated within one year of EIP I's implementation and, moreover, "[t]he transition took place in a relatively smooth and peaceful manner, without the disturbances and disruption which plagued desegregating school districts elsewhere in this country." United States v. City of Yonkers, 833 F.Supp. 214, 216 (S.D.N.Y.1993) ("Yonkers IV").

Despite EIP I's obvious successes, local school officials in Yonkers came to believe that it had only partially remedied the many entrenched problems which, they believed, were the legacy of the prior segregation.² These officials were unable to implement more thorough reform, however, because all available funds were being used to implement EIP I. The YBE, therefore, in 1987, filed a cross-claim against the State of New York and various state agencies and officials (collectively, "the State Defendants"), seeking a contribution of state funds that could be used to eradicate all remaining vestiges of public school segregation in Yonkers.³

After the State Defendants' motions to dismiss and for summary judgment were denied,⁴ the Court commenced a trial, which was to be conducted in three stages. Because the State Defendants would not be liable for remedial funding if segregation had been completely eradicated by EIP I, the first stage ("the 1993 trial") sought to determine whether or not there were vestiges of segregation. Our conclusion —that vestiges of segregation remained —was premised upon two findings of fact. We found, first, that a disparity existed with respect to the level of academic achievement attained by minority and non-minority students, see Yonkers IV, 833 F.Supp. at 220-22; and second, that the causes of that disparity were a combination of low teacher expectations for minority students and a curriculum that predated desegregation and had become anachronistic, see id. at 222.

Having found that vestiges existed, the Court then turned, in the trial's second phase ("the 1994 trial"), to the question of whether or not the State could be held liable for the pre-1985 segregation of the YPS and, therefore, required to contribute to the remedy. At the conclusion of that phase, we found that, as a matter of fact, the State Defendants' conduct had been a contributing cause to the pre-1985 segregation, but nevertheless concluded, following Arthur v. Nyquist, 573 F.2d 134 (2d Cir.1978), that the State Defendants could not be held liable for their role in that violation. See United States v. City of Yonkers, 880 F.Supp. 212 (S.D.N.Y.1995). The Court of Appeals affirmed our factual finding (i.e., that the State Defendants' conduct had contributed to the pre-1985 segregation), but reversed our legal conclusion. The court held that the State Defendants were liable, along with the City and the YBE, for the prior segregation of the YPS and that the State Defendants' could therefore be required to contribute funding for remedial measures. See United States v. City of Yonkers, 96 F.3d 600 (2d Cir.1996) ("Yonkers V").

The court's decision in Yonkers V required this Court to proceed to the third, and final, stage of the trial that had begun in 1993. The principal focus of the third stage ("the 1997 trial") was to determine an appropriate remedy. However, because four years had by that time elapsed since our initial finding that vestiges of segregation remained, the parties were also permitted to present evidence as to whether or not any vestiges continued to exist as of 1997. At the conclusion of the trial's third stage, we re-affirmed our prior finding that vestiges of segregation remained and ordered the state to contribute funding for additional remedial measures, which came to be known as "EIP II." See United States v. Yonkers Bd. of Educ., 984 F.Supp. 687 (S.D.N.Y.1997) ("Yonkers VI").

The State Defendants and the City appealed, but sought no stay of our order, which was therefore in effect from October 8, 1997 until the Court of Appeals' stay order of August 5, 1999.⁵ Because it believed that we had not articulated in detail all of the reasoning that underlay our findings, nor provided a detailed summary of the evidence, the Court of Appeals characterized our findings with respect to vestiges as "vague." See United States v. City of Yonkers, 197 F.3d 41, 51 (2d Cir.1999) ("Yonkers VII"). Nevertheless, a majority of the appellate panel was able to discern two vestiges that, it believed, we had identified. It characterized those vestiges as (1) that "Yonkers' curriculum and teaching techniques are insufficiently multi-cultural," id. at 51; and (2) "low teacher expectations for minority students," id. at 52. The majority found the record to be legally insufficient to support those findings, and, therefore, reversed. The majority also explained that it had scrutinized the record and (at least initially) determined that it could support no "alternative findings" of vestiges. See id. at 45.

The third member of the panel, Judge Sack, filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. Although Judge Sack agreed that this Court had not set forth an adequate basis to support our finding of vestiges, he dissented on the ground that it would have been preferable for the Court to remand for further factual findings, rather than to reverse the findings we had made, scrutinize the record, and foreclose the possibility of any alternative findings of vestiges. See United States v. City of Yonkers, 181 F.3d 301, 321-30 (2d Cir.1999) (Sack, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). After the NAACP sought reargument and an en banc hearing, the majority, for reasons that are not disclosed, came to agree with Judge Sack's views. It, therefore, vacated its prior opinion and remanded the case. The "limited purpose" of the remand was to permit this Court

to make further findings on the present record and in light of this opinion as to whether—or not—there are remaining vestiges of segregation in the Yonkers school system, and if so what they are and what record evidence is relied on for support.

Yonkers VII, 197 F.3d at 46.

B. Scope of Remand

It is not without some trepidation that we now approach that limited task. We have been directed to render more detailed findings of fact in support of a conclusion that two members of the panel that will hear this case on appeal⁶ have expressly rejected. According to a published, though withdrawn, opinion, those two have "conducted [their] own careful scrutiny of the record, to see if it could support findings of vestige[s] ..." and, after that careful study, were "convinced that a remand would waste judicial resources and put off what in the end would be the same result." United States v. City of Yonkers, 181 F.3d at 313 n. 3

Our trepidation is enhanced by the fact that, despite our best efforts and the...