United States v. State of Missouri

• Decision Date: 09 January 1975
• Docket Number: No. 71 C 555 (1).,71 C 555 (1).
• Citation: 388 F. Supp. 1058
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. STATE OF MISSOURI et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Missouri

388 F. Supp. 1058

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. STATE OF MISSOURI et al., Defendants.

No. 71 C 555 (1).

United States District Court, E. D. Missouri, E. D.

January 9, 1975.

Donald J. Stohr, U. S. Atty., St. Louis, Mo., David L. Norman and Daniel F. Rinzel, Civil Rights Div., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., for plaintiff.

Marvin S. Wood, Clayton, Mo., John C. Danforth and D. Brook Bartlett, Jefferson City, Mo.; Norman C. Parker, St. Louis, Mo.; Ziercher, Hocker, Tzinberg, Human and Michenfelder, Albert A. Michenfelder, Jr., and Edward K. Fehlig, Clayton, Mo; Thomas W. Wehrle and David V. Collignon, Clayton, Mo., for defendants.

FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

MEREDITH, Chief Judge.

On August 27, 1973, this Court entered an opinion and order (363 F.Supp. 739), which held that black students in the Kinloch School District had been unlawfully discriminated against because of their race and directed the State and County defendants to prepare a plan to eliminate such discrimination. Pursuant to this order, a plan was prepared and filed by the State and County boards of education on November 21, 1973, which proposed consolidation of the Kinloch, Berkeley, and Ferguson-Florissant School Districts. A revised version of this plan (hereinafter the Revised Plan) was submitted on November 15, 1974, and updated on December 31, 1974. Alternative desegregation plans have also been submitted by other parties.

The Court, having considered these plans, the evidence presented by the parties concerning these plans, and arguments of counsel, makes the following findings.

Of the plans presented to the Court, the Revised Plan is the least disruptive alternative which is educationally sound, administratively feasible, and which promises to achieve at least the minimum amount of desegregation that is constitutionally required.

This Court's order of October 4, 1974, which directed the State Board of Education to submit the Revised Plan, required that the "busing of students shall be at a minimum." Although some increase over the number of students currently transported in the three affected districts is required under the Revised Plan, this additional transportation is necessary in order to effectively desegregate. No health or safety hazard is presented by this additional transportation. Alternative plans submitted by local school district defendants, insofar as they rely on geographic zoning, will not achieve desegregation.

Defendant Ferguson-Florissant School District offered testimony that in order to effectively operate the desegregated district, as provided under the Revised Plan, a tax rate of $6.03 will be necessary. There was also testimony that the tax rate should be uniform throughout the new district and that there was no reasonable possibility that such a tax levy would be approved by the required two-thirds vote in the aftermath of a desegregation order. The Court accepts this testimony as accurate. Therefore, in order to insure the administrative feasibility of operating the new desegregated district, the Court's order provides for a tax rate of $6.03. The board of the new district will, of course, retain authority to adjust the tax levy in accordance with the provisions of Missouri Law.

The Court has legal authority to order implementation of the Revised Plan.

Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717, 94 S.Ct. 3112, 41 L.Ed.2d 1069, 1974, dealt with the question of inter-district relief, but the precise question in that case involved "the validity of a remedy mandating cross-district or inter-district consolidation to remedy a condition of segregation found to exist in only one district." (418 U.S. 744, 94 S.Ct. at 3127) The Court went on to say that "an inter-district remedy might be in order where the racially discriminatory acts of one or more school districts caused racial segregation in an adjacent district, or where district lines have been deliberately drawn on the basis of race." (418 U.S. 745, 94 S.Ct. at 3127) This latter statement accurately describes what the evidence in this case shows and what this Court has previously found, i. e., an arrangement of school districts which has caused substantial segregation and which is both a vestige of the previously imposed dual school system and a continuing effect of racially discriminatory state actions on the part of the defendants in this case.

The Ferguson-Florissant defendants challenge their inclusion in the Revised Plan on the grounds that the Ferguson-Florissant District was not directly involved in the creation of the Kinloch District as an all black district. However, it is significant that the Supreme Court in the Milliken case cited approvingly (418 U.S. 717, 94 S.Ct. 3112) two lower court cases¹ which mandated inter-district desegregation where the separate systems were an historic tool of dualism even though specific acts of discriminatory conduct were not found to have been perpetuated by adjoining school districts. The Court finds no distinction between these cases and the instant case. Moreover, the evidence set out in this Court's previous findings indicate that each defendant, including the Ferguson-Florissant School District, is, to a substantial degree, responsible for the maintenance of Kinloch as a segregated district. The only justification for the maintenance of Kinloch as a small, segregated and inadequately funded district was the opposition, based on racial consideration, of the surrounding districts to numerous proposals to alter that situation, including the rejection by the electorate of the 1949 reorganization plan. This is an instance where the failure to act or resistance for discriminatory reasons to actions tending to correct segregation amounted to a constitutional wrong. See United States v. Board of School Commissioners, Indianapolis, Ind., 503 F.2d 68, 86 (7th Cir. 1974).

In addition, in this case, only three districts, not fifty-two districts, are involved. The inter-district remedy ordered in this case is substantially consistent with Missouri law and future operation of the district will require no deviation from Missouri law. Thus, the remedy in this case will not result in extensive disruption of public education in Missouri such as may have resulted in the broad metropolitan remedy considered in Milliken. See Newburg Area Council v. Board of Education, 489 F.2d 925 (6th Cir., December 11, 1974).

Judgment will be entered in accordance with these findings.

JUDGMENT

Findings of fact and conclusions of law, dated this date, are hereby incorporated in and made a part of this judgment.

It is hereby ordered, adjudged, and decreed:

1. The defendants, their employees, agents, successors, and all those acting in concert or participation with them, are hereby permanently enjoined from discriminating against any person because of race, color, or national origin in the operation of the public schools of the territory encompassed by the Kinloch, Berkeley, and Ferguson-Florissant School Districts.

2. In order to effect an orderly desegregation, the procedure shall be substantially that provided by the Statutes of Missouri pertaining to an annexation of a six-director school district by another, RSMo 1969, V.A.M.S., section 162.441 et seq.; the Berkeley School District and the Kinloch School District shall be annexed to the Ferguson Reorganized School District R-2 (Ferguson-Florissant School District), and the boundary lines of the ...