Poindexter v. Louisiana Financial Assistance Commission

275 F. Supp. 833
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Louisiana
DecidedJanuary 15, 1968
DocketCiv. A. 14683
StatusPublished
Cited by58 cases

This text of 275 F. Supp. 833 (Poindexter v. Louisiana Financial Assistance Commission) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Poindexter v. Louisiana Financial Assistance Commission, 275 F. Supp. 833 (E.D. La. 1968).

Opinion

WISDOM, Circuit Judge:

This class action by Negro schoolchildren and their parents against the Louisiana Financial Assistance Commission *835 and others 1 attacks the constitutionality of Act 147 of 1962 2 Under that law the Commission administers a program of tuition grants to pupils attending private schools in Louisiana. The United States intervened as a party plaintiff; 3 directors of four private schools for Negro retarded children intervened as parties defendant. 4

In an earlier opinion in this case the court disposed of various motions, including the defendants’ motion to dismiss for lack of the plaintiffs’ standing to sue and a motion to dissolve the three-judge court. Poindexter v. Louisiana Financial Assistance Commission, E.D.La.1966, 258 F.Supp. 158. The matter is now before us on the merits. 5

* * *

The free lunches and textbooks Louisiana provides for all its school children are the fruits of racially neutral benevolence. Tuition grants are not the products of such a policy. They are the fruits of the State’s traditional racially biased policy of providing segregated schools for white pupils. Here that policy has pushed the State to the extreme of using public funds to aid private discrimination endangering the public school system and equal educational opportunities for Negroes in Louisiana.

As certainly as “12” is the next number of a series starting 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, Act 147 fitted into the long series of statutes the Louisiana legislature enacted for over a hundred years to maintain segregated schools for white children. 6 After the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in the School Segregation Cases, 7 the legislature rapidly expanded the series. As fast as the courts knocked out one school law, the legislature enacted another. Each of these laws, whether its objective was obvious 8 or nonobvious, was designed to provide a state-supported sanctuary for white children in flight from desegregated public schools.

Act 147 of 1962 is unconstitutional. The purpose and natural or reasonable effect of this law are to continue segregated education in Louisiana by providing state funds for the establishment and support of segregated, privately operated schools for white children. The United States Constitution does not permit the State to perform acts indirectly through private persons which it is forbidden to do directly. The evidence before the Court shows that the tuition grants have supplied a heavy predominance of funds needed to establish and maintain post-1954 and especially post-1962 private segregated schools. The Commission’s recent decision to reduce its aid to less than 50 per cent of the funds required for operating a school fails to take the curse off the Act. Any affirmative and purposeful state aid promoting private discrimination violates-the equal protection clause. There is no such thing as the State’s legitimately being just a little bit discriminatory.

*836 I.

The Statute

Act 147 of 1962 (LSA-R.S. 17:2951-17:2953) authorizes state tuition grants for children attending “private non-sectarian elementary or secondary schools” in Louisiana. The statute creates the Louisiana Financial Assistance Commission to administer the program. The Commission is composed of three members appointed by the governor. 9 Payments are “by check to the parent or guardian of, or the person standing in loco parentis to, the applicant.” The statute is tied in with the public school system in the sense that to receive a grant, the applicants must be “eligible * * * for admission to elementary or secondary schools within the public school system of the state.” Applicants must furnish “satisfactory evidence of admissibility to a private non-sectarian * * * school * * * legally constituted and operated under constitution and laws of the state.” As thus far administered, each grant amounts to two dollars a day based on an assumed school term of 180 days, or $360, but limited to an amount not to exceed the tuition obligation actually incurred by the applicant.

In 1961 the Legislature transferred 2.5 million dollars from the Public Welfare Fund to the Education Expense Grant Fund to maintain tuition grants. 10 Act 147 authorized the monthly transfer of $200,000 from the Education Expense Grant Fund, supported by sales tax deductions, to a fund to be administered by the Commission. In 1963 the Legislature increased this amount to $300,000 a month. 11

October 29, 1966, the Commission adopted a resolution stating, in part:

“[T]he Commission has concluded that, except with respect to applicants on behalf of children attending private schools for retarded children, it will not pay tuition grants to applicants whose children attend any private school predominantly maintained through such tuition grants. In order to avoid unnecessary disruption of the present classes with consequent injury to the students, this policy shall be effective for school sessions commencing after June 1967.”

The resolution was adopted to meet the holding in Griffin v. State Board of Education, E.D.Va.1965, 239 F.Supp. 560 (unappealed) and the definition of “public school” in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 12 Griffin held that state tuition grants are an unconstitutional application of a grant-in-aid law and discriminatory state action only when they “predominantly maintain” a segregated school. For purposes of Title IY (Public Education), the Civil Rights Act of 1964, § 401(c), defines “public school” as an institution “operated wholly or predominantly from or through the use of government funds or property.” 13 The Commission construes the resolution as authorizing payments to applicants attending a school supported by tuition grants which amount to any sum less than fifty per cent of the school’s annual operating costs.

*837 II.

Purpose and Motive

We are not unmindful of the distinction courts draw between “purpose” and “motive”. We accept the first Justice Harlan’s statement, quoted by the defendants: “In a legal sense the object or purpose of legislation is to be determined by its natural and reasonable effect, whatever may have been the motive of the legislature”. 14

Recognition of the distinction between purpose and motive does not prohibits courts from looking beyond the face .of the statute. As we said in Hall v. St. Helena, E.D.La.1961, 197 F.Supp. 649, aff’d 368 U.S. 515, 82 S.Ct.

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Bluebook (online)
275 F. Supp. 833, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/poindexter-v-louisiana-financial-assistance-commission-laed-1968.