Brenda K. Monroe v. Board of Commissioners, City of Jackson, Tennessee, and County Board of Education, Madison County, Tennessee

380 F.2d 955, 1967 U.S. App. LEXIS 5547
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedJuly 21, 1967
Docket17119_1
StatusPublished
Cited by31 cases

This text of 380 F.2d 955 (Brenda K. Monroe v. Board of Commissioners, City of Jackson, Tennessee, and County Board of Education, Madison County, Tennessee) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Brenda K. Monroe v. Board of Commissioners, City of Jackson, Tennessee, and County Board of Education, Madison County, Tennessee, 380 F.2d 955, 1967 U.S. App. LEXIS 5547 (6th Cir. 1967).

Opinion

*957 O’SULLIVAN, Circuit Judge.

In 1963 a suit was filed by Brenda K. Monroe and others, Negro children and their parents, to bring about the desegregation of the public schools of the City of Jackson, and of Madison County, Tennessee. 1

The District Court required the school authorities to submit plans to accomplish desegregation and ultimately granted the relief sought by approving parts of a submitted plan and ordering other steps to-be- taken. Separate opinions were written, one involving the City of Jackson schools, reported as Monroe v. Board of Commissioners of the City of Jackson, Tennessee, et al., 221 F.Supp. 968 (W.D.Tenn.1963) and the other relating to Madison County schools, reported in Monroe v. Board of Commissioners, etc., et al., 229 F.Supp. 580 (W.D.Tenn. 1964). Appeals to this Court from these cases were dismissed by agreement. Obedient to the above decisions, all grades of the schools involved have been desegregated.

The litigation with which we now deal arises from Motions for Further Relief filed in the District Court by plaintiffs. By these motions, plaintiffs sought to accomplish greater integration of the school children, desegregation of the teaching staffs, and the enjoining of described practices of the school authorities which were alleged to be violative of the District Judge’s original decrees and contrary to new developments in the law. The District Judge, again, dealt separately with the city and the county schools in disposing of the Motions for Further Relief. His decision as to the city schools is reported in Monroe v. Board of Commissioners, City of Jackson, 244 F.Supp. 353 (W.D.Tenn.1965) and as to the County Schools in Monroe v. Board of Education, Madison County, Tennessee, et al., 269 F.Supp. 758 (W.D.Tenn.1965). These are the cases before us on this appeal; the plaintiffs are the appellants. These opinions, with the earlier ones reported at 221 F.Supp. 968 and 229 F.Supp. 580, supra, set out the facts and we will restate them only where needed to discuss the present contentions of the plaintiffs-appellants.

1) Compulsory integration.

Appellants argue that the courts must now, by reconsidering the implications of the Brown v. Board of Education decisions in 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954) and 349 U.S. 294, 75 S.Ct. 753, 99 L.Ed. 1083 (1955), and upon their own evaluation of the commands of the Fourteenth Amendment, require school authorities to take affirmative steps to eradicate that racial imbalance in their schools which is the product of the residential pattern of the Negro and white neighborhoods. The District Judge’s opinion discusses pertinent authorities and concludes that the Fourteenth Amendment did not command compulsory integration of all of the schools regardless of an honestly composed unitary neighborhood system and a freedom of choice plan. We agree with his conclusion. We have so recently expressed our like view in Deal et al. v. Cincinnati Board of Education, 369 F.2d 55 (CA 6, 1966), petition for cert. filed, 35 LW 3394 (U.S. May 5, 1967) (No. 1358), that we will not here repeat Chief Judge Weick’s careful exposition of the relevant law of this and other circuits. He concluded “We read Brown as prohibiting only enforced segregation.” 369 F.2d at 60. We are at once aware that we were there dealing with the Cincinnati schools which had been desegregated long before Brown, whereas we consider here Tennessee schools desegregated only after and in obedience to Brown. We are not persuaded, however, that we should devise a mathematical rule that will impose a different and more stringent duty upon states which, prior to Brown, maintained a de jure biracial school system, than upon those in which the racial imbalance in its schools has come about from so-called *958 de facto segregation — this to be true even though the current problem be the same in each state.

We are asked to follow United States v. Jefferson County Board of Education, 372 F.2d 836 (CA 5, 1966), which seems to hold that the pr e-Brown biracial states must obey a different rule than those which desegregated earlier or never did segregate. This decision decrees a dramatic writ calling for mandatory and immediate integration. In so doing, it distinguished Bell v. School City of Gary, Indiana, 324 F.2d 209 (CA 7, 1963), cert. den. 377 U.S. 924, 84 S.Ct. 1223, 12 L.Ed. 2d 216, on the ground that no pr e-Brown de jure segregation had existed in the City of Gary, Indiana. 372 F.2d at 873. It would probably find like distinction in our Deal decision because of Cincinnati’s long ago desegregation of its schools. We, however, have applied the rule of Deal to the schools of Tennessee. In Mapp v. Board of Education, 373 F.2d 75, 78 (CA 6, 1967) Judge Weick said,

“To the extent that plaintiffs’ contention is based on the assumption that the School Board is under a constitutional duty to balance the races in the school system in conformity with some mathematical formula, it is in conflict with our recent decision in Deal v. Cincinnati Board of Education, 369 F.2d 55 (6th Cir. 1966).”

However ugly and evil the biracial school systems appear in contemporary thinking, they were, as Jefferson, supra, concedes, de jure and were once found lawful in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 16 S.Ct. 1138, 41 L.Ed. 256 (1896), and such was the law for 58 years thereafter. To apply a disparate rule because these early systems are now forbidden by Brown would be in the nature of imposing a judicial Bill of Attainder. Such proscriptions are forbidden to the legislatures of the states and the nation — U.S.Const. Art. I, Section 9, Clause 3 and Section 10, Clause 1. Neither, in our view, would such decrees comport with our current views of equal treatment before the law.

This is not to say that Tennessee school authorities can dishonestly construct or deliberately contrive a system for the purpose of perpetuating a “maximum amount” of its pr e-Brown segregation. Northcross v. Board of Education of City of Memphis, 333 F.2d 661, 664 (CA 6, 1964). But to the extent that United States v. Jefferson County Board of Education, and the decisions reviewed therein, are factually analogous and express a rule of law contrary to our view herein and in Deal, we respectfully decline to follow them.

2) Gerrymandering.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Mapp v. BD. OF EDUC. OF CITY OF CHATTANOOGA, TENN.
630 F. Supp. 876 (E.D. Tennessee, 1986)
In Re Malesus Area Concerned Parents
557 F.2d 1225 (Sixth Circuit, 1977)
Berry v. School Dist. of Benton Harbor
442 F. Supp. 1280 (W.D. Michigan, 1977)
Monroe v. County Board of Education
557 F.2d 1225 (Sixth Circuit, 1977)
Spangler v. Pasadena City Board Of Education
537 F.2d 1031 (Ninth Circuit, 1976)
Evans v. Buchanan
379 F. Supp. 1218 (D. Delaware, 1974)
Brewer v. School Board of Norfolk
456 F.2d 943 (Fourth Circuit, 1972)
Monroe v. Board of Commissioners of Jackson
453 F.2d 259 (Sixth Circuit, 1972)
Goss v. Board of Education
320 F. Supp. 549 (E.D. Tennessee, 1970)
Northcross v. Board of Education
312 F. Supp. 1150 (W.D. Tennessee, 1970)
Spangler v. Pasadena City Board of Education
311 F. Supp. 501 (C.D. California, 1970)
Davis v. School District of the City of Pontiac, Inc.
309 F. Supp. 734 (E.D. Michigan, 1970)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
380 F.2d 955, 1967 U.S. App. LEXIS 5547, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/brenda-k-monroe-v-board-of-commissioners-city-of-jackson-tennessee-and-ca6-1967.