Gomperts v. Chase

329 F. Supp. 1192, 1971 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12379
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. California
DecidedJuly 19, 1971
DocketNo. C-71 1307
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 329 F. Supp. 1192 (Gomperts v. Chase) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. California primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Gomperts v. Chase, 329 F. Supp. 1192, 1971 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12379 (N.D. Cal. 1971).

Opinion

OPINION AND ORDER

SCHNACKE, District Judge.

Plaintiffs, representing classes of students, residents, taxpayers, parents and others concerned, have brought this action under Section 1983 of Title 42 U.S. C. for the avowed purpose of remedying the deprivation of rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and Title Six of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

It is their basic complaint that Sequoia Union High School District of San Mateo County, which operates six high schools, has maintained and is maintaining a system segregated by race, and that the segregation is the product of affirmative actions pursuant to a conscious plan to create and maintain the segregated system.

In the immediate proceeding, plaintiffs seek by preliminary injunction to set aside recent action of the school board modifying a plan adjusting racial imbalance earlier adopted by the board. Entitlement to such relief requires a showing that plaintiffs are likely to prevail on the ultimate trial on the merits, and that the relief is necessary to prevent damage to plaintiffs.

The application for a preliminary injunction has been heard upon affidavits. The basic facts are not seriously in dispute. The schools of the district are clearly racially imbalanced. In October, 1970, Ravenswood High School was 94% black, while four schools had less than 10% black. A higher percentage of minority teachers has been assigned to Ravenswood than to schools with lower percentages of blacks. The four schools with the smallest black enrollment are being operated somewhat above planned [1194]*1194capacity while Ravenswood is below its capacity. Test scores of students assigned to Ravenswood are lower than those of students attending the predominantly white schools in the district.

The school district has, for many years, recognized the racial imbalance. There has been, for several years, a variety of efforts made toward correcting the balance.

Ravenswood High School was only 21% black at the time it was built in 1958. While it is now 94% black, the increased black population of the school has been the product of the racial mix of new residents of the area rather than of any activity by the school board. Quite to the contrary, in the spring of 1963 the school board redrew attendance zones to incorporate into the Ravens-wood attendance zone neighborhoods with a high proportion of white residents.

To upgrade the quality of education at Ravenswood High School the board exempted Ravenswood from the district-wide ratios for staff, equipment and supplies, thus providing smaller classroom sizes and more equipment and supplies per pupil at Ravenswood than was available throughout the balance of the district.

Efforts have been made to secure voter approval of bond issues to construct new schools but these efforts have failed.

Over the years the board has permitted a variety of transfers from one attendance district to another in an effort to alleviate the concentration of blacks at Ravenswood; in 1969-70 it encouraged a voluntary plan; and in 1969 it pledged itself to take such steps as are required to improve the educational opportunities for all students at Ravens-wood High School.

In June of 1970 a plan was adopted with substantially the following features: a) effective September 7, 1971, minority enrollment at each of the district schools was not to exceed twenty-five percent; the certified staff at each school was to consist of not less than five percent nor more than twenty-five percent minority personnel; and no school plant was to be utilized at more than ten percent in excess of capacity; b) white students were to be encouraged to transfer voluntarily to Ravenswood and Menlo-Atherton, the schools with the highest minority enrollment; the black students were to be encouraged to transfer voluntarily from Ravenswood to other schools in the district; if voluntary transfers did not accomplish compliance with the twenty-five percent guideline students were to be selected on a random basis for mandatory transfer from one school to another; c) certified personnel were also to be encouraged to transfer voluntarily, or were to be involuntarily assigned if voluntary transfers failed to produce compliance with the proposed guidelines.

Between June of 1970 and July of 1971 the composition of the school board changed by virtue of an intervening election. The newly constituted board modified the June 1970 plan by providing that the percentage requirements of the former plan were to be deemed guidelines, that the voluntary transfer option was to be extended, that the ten percent ceiling on overcrowding be eliminated, and that the mandatory transfer aspects of the June 1970 plan be suspended for the school year 1971-72 to permit the board to consider viable alternatives to mandatory transfer.

In July of 1971 the board reaffirmed the previously announced program to establish at Ravenswood “an administration and faculty committed to creating excellence in education through the development of special programs and better teaching techniques” and to establish other programs to create what was termed a “New School.”

The modification of the June 1970 plan approved in July of 1971 in effect requires the board to follow and implement the June 1970 plan, except as modified.

If the plan, as modified, is carried out, the black population of Ravenswood [1195]*1195will initially be reduced from 94% to about 45%.

In order to find jurisdiction sufficient to warrant the interference by this Court with the activities of a duly elected school board, it is first necessary that the plaintiffs establish not only that there is racial imbalance as between the schools of the district, but also that such segregation has been planned, encouraged, fostered, designed, or in some way created by law or by administrative action under the color of law. Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954), teaches that when a state segregates children in public schools solely on the basis of race, the Fourteenth Amendment rights of the segregated children are violated. This falls far short, however, of prohibiting the maintenance of racially imbalanced schools, as the product of neighborhood mix or otherwise, where that imbalance exists under laws or school board activity which is racially neutral. Deal v. Cincinnati Board of Education, 369 F.2d 55 (1st Cir., 1965); Bell v. School City of Gary, Indiana, 324 F.2d 209 (7th Cir., 1963), certiorari denied, 377 U.S. 924, 84 S.Ct. 1223, 12 L.Ed.2d 216 (1964).

In effect then, and in the shorthand that has developed in these cases, we are required to find, before we may assume jurisdiction, that there has been de jure segregation.

Plaintiffs place heavy if not entire reliance upon Keyes v. School District #1, Denver, Colorado, 10th Cir., 445 F.2d 990, decided June 11, 1971, modifying and affirming the decree of the District Court reported at 313 F.Supp.

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Related

Tinsley v. Palo Alto Unified School District
91 Cal. App. 3d 871 (California Court of Appeal, 1979)
Stanton v. Sequoia Union High School District
408 F. Supp. 502 (N.D. California, 1976)
Vivian Spencer v. George F. Kugler
404 U.S. 1027 (Supreme Court, 1972)

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Bluebook (online)
329 F. Supp. 1192, 1971 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12379, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gomperts-v-chase-cand-1971.