United States v. School District of the City of Ferndale, Michigan

616 F.2d 895
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedApril 4, 1980
Docket79-1006
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 616 F.2d 895 (United States v. School District of the City of Ferndale, Michigan) 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
United States v. School District of the City of Ferndale, Michigan, 616 F.2d 895 (6th Cir. 1980).

Opinion

EDWARDS, Chief Judge.

This is a school desegregation case brought by the United States of America through the Attorney General of the United States, under the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, 20 U.S.C. §§ 1701-1758 (1976), and the State and Local Fiscal Assistance Act of 1972, 31 U.S.C. §§ 1221-1265 (1976), and under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000c-6 (1976).

It follows lengthy litigation begun in 1969 wherein the HEW decided to cut off all federal grants to the Ferndale School District because it found that the District was operating an intentionally segregated school, the Ulysses S. Grant School, for the great majority of black students in the District.

HEW’s decision was appealed to and affirmed by this court, and certiorari was denied by the United States Supreme Court. School District of Ferndale, Michigan v. HEW, 474 F.2d 1349 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 824, 94 S.Ct. 126, 38 L.Ed.2d 57 (1973).

Thereafter the instant litigation was filed in 1974 seeking to require the Ferndale School District to desegregate the Grant School. Motions to dismiss as to both the School District and the State defendants were made, heard, and granted by the District Judge, and on appeal were reversed by this court in an opinion by Judge Celebrezze, portions of which we reprint as Appendix A. The case was then remanded for trial and was ultimately tried by the same District Judge.

She admitted the record of the preceding HEW hearing and decision on the federal funds question. She also heard considerable additional evidence on the charges involved in the present desegregation case. At the conclusion of the trial, the District Judge found several instances of intentional segregative actions in the history of the Ferndale School District and the Grant School. Her ultimate conclusions, however, were that there was a “neutral” basis for the establishment of the Grant School in 1926 as a “neighborhood school” and that the instances of unconstitutional segregative actions which she found had in subsequent years been so attenuated in effect as to require no finding of present constitutional violation and (with one minor exception) no remedy applicable to desegregation of the Ferndale schools. In this regard she quoted and relied upon Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman, 433 U.S. 406, 97 S.Ct. 2766, 53 L.Ed.2d 851 (1977) (Brinkman I). This case has now been further explicated by Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman, 443 U.S. 526, 99 S.Ct. 2971, 61 L.Ed.2d 720 (1979) (Brinkman II), and Columbus Board of Education v. Penick, 443 U.S. 449, 99 S.Ct. 2941, 61 L.Ed.2d 666 (1979).

Founding our decision upon the total record, our reversal of certain clearly erroneous findings of the District Judge, and the additional light shed by Brinkman II and Columbus, we hold that there was intentional segregation in the construction and operation of the Grant School, and continuing segregative effect upon the Grant School and the Ferndale School District System to the date of trial. We therefore reverse and remand for appropriate relief.

BACKGROUND

This case covers over a half century of history of a relatively small school district located immediately adjacent to the northern boundary of the City of Detroit and encompassing within its borders all or portions of several small Detroit suburbs. Some of the crucial facts occurred in the 1920’s on the eve of a population explosion in Detroit and its northern suburbs, occasioned in part by the building of the Ford *897 Motor Company Highland Park Plant. Ferndale and its neighboring municipalities encompassed wholly or partly in the Fern-dale School District were at the time subject to many subdivision covenants restricting housing occupancy to members of the Caucasian race. In a half-mile square area at the southeast corner of the Ferndale School District, however, the Forest Grove and Detroyal subdivisions were not so restricted. This record discloses that black families had located in these subdivisions beginning approximately in 1920 and that by 1926 a substantial number of black families had homes there. The black children from the Forest Grove neighborhood were admitted freely to the Ferndale School District schools until 1925, with most attending the Ridgewood and Washington Schools. In 1926 the school population of black children had increased to over 100, the overwhelming majority of whom were enrolled at the Jefferson Elementary School which opened in 1925, constituting approximately one-third of its enrollment. In that year there is evidence of “racial turmoil” at the Jefferson School.

CLAIMS OF THE PARTIES

It is the claim of plaintiffs HEW and the Attorney General that starting in 1925 a continuous course of conduct on the part of the Ferndale School District was begun to build a school (named for Ulysses S. Grant) for black children and to effect the intentional segregation of them within the boundaries of the half-mile square racially unrestricted area referred to above, and that as a result, purposeful segregation has affected the black children in that area from 1926 to the present, and the effects of that segregation have never been attenuated or dissipated so that equitable relief is now required from the federal courts.

Defendants, on the other hand, contend that the events beginning in 1925 which are referred to above, represent merely appropriate and educationally sound planning and construction of a neighborhood school to meet the needs of an increasing school population and that no segregative intent was involved. They also contend that if there had been segregative intent involved in the construction of the school at issue, the effects of that segregation have long since been attenuated and particularly have been dissipated by the inauguration in 1975 of an “open classroom” program at the school in question and the inauguration also in 1975 of a freedom of choice system for all students, augmented by free transportation.

THE DISTRICT JUDGE’S FINDINGS

The District Judge who heard this case found that the building of the Grant School had the effect of segregating the black children in that attendance area but that this had not been the intent or the purpose of the Board in constructing the school. She also found 'that the choice of an all black faculty in the Grant School when it was opened represented de jure segregative conduct on the part of the School District, but that there was no evidence that the School District hired a black faculty with the intent or motive of segregating black students.

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Bluebook (online)
616 F.2d 895, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-school-district-of-the-city-of-ferndale-michigan-ca6-1980.