Johnson v. San Francisco Unified School District

339 F. Supp. 1315, 1971 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12483
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. California
DecidedJuly 9, 1971
DocketC-70 1331
StatusPublished
Cited by29 cases

This text of 339 F. Supp. 1315 (Johnson v. San Francisco Unified School District) 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
Johnson v. San Francisco Unified School District, 339 F. Supp. 1315, 1971 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12483 (N.D. Cal. 1971).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION, JUDGMENT AND DECREE

WEIGEL, District Judge.

Governing Legal Principles

More than seventeen years ago, a unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court made it clear that racial discrimination in public education violates the Constitution of the United States. Today it is established beyond all question that any law, ordinance or regulation of any governmental agency (whether federal, state, county or city) requiring or furthering such discrimination violates the Constitution of the United States. The cases so holding are legion. They have been handed down, not only by the Supreme Court of the United States, but, as well, by other courts located throughout the nation. A representative handful is set out in the margin. 1

*1318 Therefore, those citizens or groups— the record indicates that there are some —who would promote or require racial discrimination in public education cannot have their way through court action. They must either bring about an amendment to the Constitution of the United States or undertake to violate it.

The law is settled that school authorities violate the constitutional rights of children by establishing school attendance boundary lines knowing that the result is to continue or increase substantial racial imbalance. 2 The law is settled that school authorities violate the Constitution by providing for the construction of new schools or enlargement of existing ones in a manner which continues or increases substantial racial imbalance. 3 The law is settled that school authorities violate the Constitution by assigning black teachers and teachers of limited experience to “black” schools while assigning few; if any, such teachers to “white” schools. 4

The evidence in this case makes it unquestionably clear that, as to the San Francisco elementary schools, the San Francisco school authorities have done all of these things persistently and over a period of years. 5

It has been urged that the decisions forbid such practices only in those states (nearly all in the South) which, at an earlier time, had dual school systems. These contentions may possibly have some peripheral historical and geographical validity; they have no validity whatever in law or equity. It is shocking, indeed, it is nonsensical, to assume that such practices are forbidden to school authorities in Florida or North Carolina, for example, but are permitted to school authorities in California. Neither the United States Supreme Court nor any other court has drawn a Mason-Dixon Line for constitutional enforcement. None has set up any such double standard of legality in constitutional interpretation.

Misconceptions of this kind may underlie contentions that the action of the San Francisco school authorities has not been de jure in character. It is now well settled law that any rule or regulation by school authorities which creates or continues or heightens racial segregation of school children is de jure. In legal terms, “de facto” is often used as an opposite of de jure. It is not difficult to illustrate the difference between the two. If a school board has drawn attendance lines so that there is a reasonable racial balance among the children' attending a given school and if, thereafter, solely due to movement of the neighborhood population, the school attendance becomes racially imbalanced, the segregation thus arising is then de facto. On the other hand, if the school board, as in this case, has drawn school attendance lines, year after year, knowing that the lines maintain or heighten racial imbalance, the resulting segregation is de jure. 6

*1319 No evidence whatever has been brought before the Court to show that, throughout the years since 1954 (when the United States Supreme Court held that racial segregation of children was an unconstitutional denial of equal educational opportunity), the San Francisco school authorities had ever changed any school attendance line for the purpose of reducing or eliminating racial imbalance. 7

There is perhaps one more thing to be said regarding the term de jure. It need not be one stigmatizing school authorities. It does not imply criminal or evil intent. In the context of segregation, it means no more nor less than that the school authorities have exercised powers given them by law in a manner which creates or continues or increases substantial racial imbalance in the schools. It is this governmental action, regardless of the motivation for it, which violates the Fourteenth Amendment. 8

Some Practical Considerations

It has been urged upon the Court that desegregation of the San Francisco elementary schools should be delayed to a time later than the commencement, on September 8, 1971, of the next full term of the San Francisco elementary schools. Even if delay were legally permissible, it would be undesirable. And it is not legally permissible. Where, as here, the constitutional rights of children to equality of educational opportunity are being denied, the law requires the promptest possible correction, overriding considerations of expediency such as cost and inconvenience. Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, 396 U.S. 19, 90 S.Ct. 29, 24 L.Ed.2d 19 (1969); Carter v. West Feliciana Parish School Board, 396 U.S. 226, 90 S.Ct. 467, 24 L.Ed.2d 382 (1969); Keyes v. School District No. 1, 396 U.S. 1215, 90 S.Ct. 12, 24 L.Ed.2d 37 (Brennan, J.) (vacating stay). At the open-court hearings held concerning the respective plans submitted by plaintiffs and defendants, relevant testimony was given by experts employed by defendants. They declared, without qualification or contradiction by anyone, that it is feasible to put either plan into operation at the start of the school term this fall. Over-all, the delay in integrating the San Francisco elementary schools has gone on far too long. It has gone on throughout the seventeen years following the Supreme Court’s proscription of segregated schools, notwithstanding the fact that the San Francisco school authorities had for many years known of the segregation, such knowledge having come, not only from citizen groups, but from one or more studies ordered and paid for by the San Francisco Unified School District itself. 9

It has been repeatedly urged upon the Court that, since the racial population of San Francisco (and of its elementary school children) is more diverse than in other communities, racial segregation in the elementary schools ought to be permitted. The law allows no such latitude. And the facts make it ill-advised.

While plaintiffs complain only of segregation of black students, the plan they have filed, as well as that filed by defendants, provides for a balancing of all races.

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Bluebook (online)
339 F. Supp. 1315, 1971 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12483, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/johnson-v-san-francisco-unified-school-district-cand-1971.