United States v. Board of Educ. of City of Chicago

588 F. Supp. 132
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Illinois
DecidedJuly 17, 1984
Docket80 C 5124
StatusPublished
Cited by23 cases

This text of 588 F. Supp. 132 (United States v. Board of Educ. of City of Chicago) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Board of Educ. of City of Chicago, 588 F. Supp. 132 (N.D. Ill. 1984).

Opinion

*138 SHADUR, District Judge.

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This case has tended to be sidetracked by a “false conflict” 1 created by the United States: By creating an artificial limitation on funds otherwise available or potentially available to satisfy the extensive Desegregation Plan needs of Chicago’s Board of Education (let alone the varying needs of other claimants of funds), the United States has sought to place the Board (and this Court) into a position as though the Board (and this Court) were choking off deserving educational programs. 2 That is simply not true. It is the United States itself that has created and is perpetuating that regrettable situation.

*139 This Court has held, 3 and our Court of Appeals has confirmed, 4 that the United States has broken its word by refusing to keep the promise it made on the day this lawsuit was filed, Consent Decree § 15.1, (“Section 15.1”): 5

Each party is obligated to make every good faith effort to find and provide every available form of financial resources adequate for the implementation of the desegregation plan.

In a sense the United States is not like other litigants — because the concerns created by considerations such as separation of powers and sovereign immunity tend to prevent its promises from being fully enforced in precisely the same way as promises of (say) IBM or other private defendants. For that reason this Court has previously been compelled to impose a “freeze” order to avoid the risk its ability to order relief will arguably be frustrated. Because the United States has deliberately violated its original agreement to fund the Chicago Desegregation Plan, this Court has reluctantly found it necessary to prevent the distribution to other possible grantees of United States educational funds, in order to preserve access to all the dollars that would be potentially available to fund the honoring of the United States’ freely-undertaken (and then freely-broken) obligation to the Board.

But as this Court has said during the course of hearings on this issue, the United States “has the key to its cell in its own pocket.” 6 It could have, in the exercise of its “every good faith effort,” assured that all the needed funds would be potentially available to the Board by (1) shifting available dollars to the Board to the fullest extent possible without congressional approval or (2) going to Congress with a request to allow the shifting of dollars that were already available to the Department of Education, but that required reallocation because they were not in fact going to be used for the purposes that had been the subject of the original allocation. 7 It could have done both those things if necessary. Instead the United States has chosen to pit deserving applicants for funds one against the other, and to put the issue before Congress as though the Board and this Court— rather than the United States as the breaker of its own voluntary promise — were the malefactors.

One other related point should be emphasized at the outset. Section 15.1 is part of a consent decree. Like every consent decree, it has a twofold aspect. 8 It is of course a contract — and as a contract, it is enforceable to require the contracting parties to perform their voluntarily undertaken duties. Because unlike most contracts the parties have chosen to submit it for the stamp of court approval, it is also a *140 court order —and as such, it is enforceable like any other court order, by contempt if need be. 9

On the sorry record reflected by the matters detailed in this long opinion, a private litigant that did what the United States has done would unquestionably be held in contempt — with the potential for being subjected to a fine or imprisonment as well as to an order for civil compliance. But for the United States a contempt fine is meaningless — after all it is the public interest (and not the injured opposing party) that is vindicated by a fine, with the money going to the United States itself as surrogate for the public. Thus imposition of a fine against the United States would just transfer money from one federal pocket to the other. Similarly imprisonment of the United States as such is impossible, and any possible imprisonment of defiant ranking government officials would be unseemly at best. For those reasons voluntary adherence by the United States to its solemnly undertaken responsibilities becomes all the more important, and its deliberate flouting of those responsibilities becomes all the more unpardonable.

Now the legal rights of the litigants have to be evaluated. This opinion has not been drafted in response to the United States’ conduct just referred to, but that conduct may have made the issues more clouded than would otherwise have been the case.

This Court now has before it the evidence developed in extensive hearings on remand from the Court of Appeals’ decision (“Opinion III,” see n. 4) confirming the United States’ violation of Section 15.1. Although the Court of Appeals did that, it also vacated the part of this Court’s June 30, 1983 order (the “Order,” issued contemporaneously with “Opinion II,” see n. 3) that had directed the United States to undertake an affirmative program to preserve the availability of funds potentially available to fulfill its obligations under the Decree. As the Court of Appeals put it (717 F.2d at 384), this Court had “acted with excessive dispatch” in doing so. This Court of course had shared the respect for separation of powers that underlay the Court of Appeals’ opinion. This Court’s fault, if it was one, was in a skepticism (grounded in prior conduct by the United States, not in mere surmise) as to whether the United States would in fact “fashion its proposed remedy for past non-compliance, as well as ... show that it intends to comply in the future...” (717 F.2d at 385).

As the following findings of fact (“Findings”) and conclusions of law (“Conclusions”) will reflect, this Court’s anticipatory doubts were unfortunately all too justified. Now the Department of Education has been given the opportunity mandated by the Court of Appeals, and it has failed its charge dismally. In accordance with Fed.R.Civ.P. (“Rule”) 52(a), this Court sets forth the Findings and Conclusions that constitute the grounds of its action referred to in this lengthy opinion.

FINDINGS OF FACT (“Findings”)

Adoption and Approval of the Desegregation Plan (the “Plan”), and the Nature of the Plan

Consent Decree Negotiations

101. Chicago’s Board of Education (“Board”) operates the third largest public school system in the United States.

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Bluebook (online)
588 F. Supp. 132, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-board-of-educ-of-city-of-chicago-ilnd-1984.