United States v. Scotland Neck City Board of Education, 14929

• Decision Date: 23 March 1971
• Docket Number: 14930.,No. 14929,14929
• Citation: 442 F.2d 575
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, and Pattie Black Cotton, Edward M. Francis, Public School Teachers of Halifax County, et al., Appellees, v. SCOTLAND NECK CITY BOARD OF EDUCATION, a body corporate, Appellant. UNITED STATES of America, and Pattie Black Cotton, Edward M. Francis, Public School Teachers of Halifax County, and others, Appellees, v. Robert MORGAN, Attorney General of North Carolina, the State Board of Education of North Carolina, and Dr. A. Craig Phillips, North Carolina State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

442 F.2d 575 (1971)

UNITED STATES of America, and Pattie Black Cotton, Edward M. Francis, Public School Teachers of Halifax County, et al., Appellees, v. SCOTLAND NECK CITY BOARD OF EDUCATION, a body corporate, Appellant.

UNITED STATES of America, and Pattie Black Cotton, Edward M. Francis, Public School Teachers of Halifax County, and others, Appellees, v. Robert MORGAN, Attorney General of North Carolina, the State Board of Education of North Carolina, and Dr. A. Craig Phillips, North Carolina State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Appellants.

Nos. 14929, 14930.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued September 16, 1970.

Reargued December 7, 1970.

Decided March 23, 1971.

William T. Joyner, Raleigh, N. C., and C. Kitchin Josey, Scotland Neck, N. C. (Joyner & Howison, Raleigh, N. C., and Robert Morgan, Atty. Gen. of N. C., on brief) for appellants.

Brian K. Landsberg, Atty., Dept. of Justice (Jerris Leonard, Asst. Atty. Gen., David L. Norman, Deputy Asst. Atty. Gen., Francis H. Kennedy, Jr., and Robert Dempsey, Attys., Dept. of Justice, and Warren H. Coolidge, U. S. Atty., on brief) for appellee United States.

James R. Walker, Jr., (Samuel S. Mitchell, Raleigh, N. C., on brief) for appellees Pattie Black Cotton, and others.

Before BOREMAN, BRYAN and CRAVEN, Circuit Judges.

Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge, and SOBELOFF, BOREMAN, BRYAN, WINTER, CRAVEN and BUTZNER, Circuit Judges sitting en banc, on resubmission.

Argued Sept. 16, 1970.

Before BOREMAN, BRYAN and CRAVEN, Circuit Judges.

Reargued Dec. 7, 1970.

Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge, and SOBELOFF, BOREMAN, BRYAN, WINTER, CRAVEN and BUTZNER, Circuit Judges sitting en banc, on resubmission.

CRAVEN, Circuit Judge:

The Scotland Neck City Board of Education and the State of North Carolina have appealed from an order of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina entered May 23, 1970, declaring Chapter 31 of the 1969 Session Laws of North Carolina unconstitutional and permanently enjoining any further implementation of the statute.¹ We reverse.

Chapter 31 of the 1969 Session Laws of North Carolina,² enacted by the North Carolina General Assembly on March 3, 1969, provided for a new school district bounded by the city limits of Scotland Neck upon the approval of a majority of the voters of Scotland Neck in a referendum. The new school district was approved by the voters of Scotland Neck on April 8, 1969, by a vote of 813 to 332 out of a total of 1,305 registered voters. Prior to this date, Scotland Neck was part of the Halifax County school district. In July 1969, the United States Justice Department filed the complaint in this action against the Halifax County Board of Education seeking the disestablishment of a dual school system operated by the Board and seeking a declaration of invalidity and an injunction against the implementation of Chapter 31. Scotland Neck City Board of Education was added as a defendant in August 1969, and the Attorney General of North Carolina was added as a defendant in November 1969. On August 25, 1969, the District Court issued a temporary injunction restraining the implementation of Chapter 31, and thereafter on May 23, 1970, made the injunction permanent. The District Court reasoned that Chapter 31 was unconstitutional because it would create a refuge for white students and would interfere with the desegregation of the Halifax County school system.

It is clear that Chapter 31 is not unconstitutional on its face. But a facially constitutional statute may in the context of a given fact situation be applied unfairly or for a discriminatory purpose in violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 6 S.Ct. 1064, 30 L.Ed. 220 (1886). We cannot judge the validity of the statute in vacuo but must examine it in relation to the problem it was meant to solve. Poindexter v. Louisiana Financial

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED Assistance Commission, 275 F.Supp. 833 (E.D.La.1967).

I. The History of School Desegregation in Halifax County and the Attempts to Secure a Separate School District for the City of Scotland Neck

For many years until 1936, the City of Scotland Neck was a wholly separate school district operating independently of the Halifax County school system into which it was then merged. Both the elementary and the high school buildings presently in use in Scotland Neck were constructed prior to 1936 and were financed by city funds.

Halifax County operated a completely segregated dual school system from 1936 to 1965. In 1965, Halifax County adopted a freedom-of-choice plan. Little integration resulted during the next three years. Shortly after the Supreme Court decision in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430, 88 S.Ct. 1689, 20 L.Ed.2d 716, in May of 1968, the Halifax County Board of Education requested the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction to survey their schools and to make recommendations regarding desegregation of the school system.

In July 1968, the Justice Department sent a "notice letter" to the Halifax County Board notifying them that they had not disestablished a dual school system and that further steps would be necessary to comply with Green. After negotiations with the Justice Department, the Halifax County Board agreed informally to disestablish their dual school system by the beginning of the 1969-70 school year, with a number of interim steps to be taken in the 1968-69 school year. As part of the interim steps, the seventh and eighth grades were transferred from the Brawley School, an all-black school located just outside the city limits of Scotland Neck, to the Scotland Neck School, previously all-white.

The results of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction survey were published in December of 1968. It recommended an interim plan and a long range plan. The interim plan proposed the creation of a unitary school system through a combination of geographic attendance zones and pairing of previously all-white schools with previously all-black schools. Scotland Neck School was to be paired with Brawley School, grades 1-4 and 8-9 to attend Brawley and grades 5-6 and 10-12 to attend Scotland Neck. The long range plan called for the building of two new consolidated high schools, each to serve half of the geographic area composing the Halifax County school district. The Halifax County Board of Education declined to implement the plan proposed by the Department of Public Instruction and the Justice Department filed suit in July 1969.

Paralleling this history of school segregation in the Halifax County school system is a history of attempts on the part of the residents of Scotland Neck to obtain a separate school district. The proponents of a separate school district began to formulate their plans in 1963, five years prior to the Green decision and two years prior to the institution of freedom-of-choice by the Halifax County Board. They were unable to present their plan in the form of a bill prior to the expiration of the 1963 session of the North Carolina Legislature, but a bill was introduced in the 1965 session which would have created a separate school district composed of Scotland Neck and the four surrounding townships, funded partially through local supplemental property taxes. The bill did not pass and it was the opinion of many of the Scotland Neck residents that its defeat was the result of opposition of individuals living outside the city limits of Scotland Neck.

At the instigation of the only Halifax County Board of Education member who was a resident of Scotland Neck, a delegation from the Halifax County schools attempted in 1966 to get approval for the construction of a new high school facility in Scotland Neck to be operated on a completely integrated basis. The proposal was not approved by the State Division of School Planning.

After visiting the smallest school district in the state to determine the economic feasibility of creating a separate unit for the City of Scotland Neck alone, the proponents of a separate school district again sponsored a bill in the Legislature. It was this bill which was eventually passed on March 31, 1969, as Chapter 31 of the Session Laws of 1969.

II. The Three Purposes of Chapter 31

The District Court found that the proponents of a special school district had three purposes in mind in sponsoring Chapter 31 and the record supports these findings. First, they wanted more local control over their schools. Second, they wanted to increase the expenditures for their schools through local supplementary property taxes. Third, they wanted to prevent anticipated white fleeing of the public schools.

Local control and increased taxation were thought necessary to increase the quality of education in their schools. Previous efforts to upgrade Scotland Neck Schools had been frustrated. Always it seemed the needs of the County came before Scotland Neck. The only county-wide bond issue passed in Halifax County since 1936 was passed in 1957. Two local school districts operating in Halifax County received a total of $1,020,000 from the bond issue and the Halifax County system received $1,980,000. None of the money received by Halifax County was spent on schools within the city limits of Scotland Neck. If Scotland Neck had been a separate school district at the time, it would have received $190,000 as its proportionate share of the bond issue. The Halifax County system also received $950,000 in 1963 as its proportionate share of the latest statewide bond issue. None of this money was spent or committed to any of the schools within the city limits of Scotland Neck. Halifax County has reduced its annual capital outlay tax from 63 cents per $100 valuation in 1957 to 27.5 cents per $100 valuation in the latest fiscal year. In order for the referendum to pass under the terms of Chapter 31, the voters of Scotland Neck had to...