The opinion
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA
KATHY R. DUHON, ET AL. CIVIL ACTION
VERSUS NO: 90-1669
ANN T. TATJE, ET AL.
SECTION: "A"
ORDER AND REASONS
On October 22, 2024, the Court held oral argument on the following motions:
1) Motion for Further Relief, Discovery, and Evidentiary Hearing (Rec. Doc.
220) filed by “the plaintiffs.”
2) Motion to Substitute Named Plaintiffs (Rec. Doc. 228) filed by “the plaintiffs.”
Both motions are opposed.
The motions were taken under advisement following argument by counsel. (Rec.
Doc. 235, Minute Entry).
The motions were filed by counsel with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational
Fund, Inc. (“the LDF”) and local counsel, Mr. Gideon Carter, on behalf of “Plaintiffs,” who
purport to be the original plaintiffs (Hermon Harris, Jr., et al. ) from a desegregation case
that was first initiated in 1963—over 61 years ago—and resulted in certain consent
decrees/orders that remain in effect today.1 But given that no person who was a plaintiff in
1 The 1963 desegregation case, which was designated as Civil Action 13,212, is a separate and
distinct lawsuit from the captioned case, Kathy R. Duhon, et al., which was filed in May of 1990.
Duhon was consolidated with the old Harris case, which by 1990 had long been closed and
concluded in light of the various consent decrees/orders that had been entered to resolve the case.
The Harris case predated the case numbering system currently used in the federal court system so
the consolidated Harris and Duhon actions both report under the case designation given to the
later-filed Duhon action, Civil Action no. 90-1669.
The LDF has confirmed that “the plaintiffs” who are purporting to currently seek relief from
the 1963 case is participating in the matters currently before the Court, and given that no
new plaintiff has been added to the Harris case since 1963, the St. John the Baptist
School Board (“the Board”) has raised legitimate questions about who exactly is driving the
recent resurgence of litigation in this case.
The docket sheet includes the United States of America as a plaintiff-intervenor in
the case but the United States is not a signatory to the pending motions and has not
assumed an active role in recent events.
I.
The premise underlying the Motion for Further Relief, Discovery, and
Evidentiary Hearing filed by the LDF is that the Board is in violation of the desegregation
orders/decrees entered in resolving the Harris case because the Board continues to
operate the Fifth Ward Elementary School (“FWE”), which has a predominately black
student body, and which due to its proximity to the Denka Performance Elastomer plant—a
plant accused of emitting unacceptably dangerous levels of chloroprene into the
surrounding air—constitutes an inferior and unequal facility. The LDF contends that the
problem at FWE is exacerbated by the fact that the FWE facility does not have an indoor
gymnasium which means that the children who attend the school must play outside during
recess.
The Denka plant has certainly gained notoriety in recent years. It has been the
subject of multiple lawsuits (federal and state), some of which are still ongoing. Denka has
faced scrutiny from the EPA as well as private community lawsuits. Environmental issues
surrounding the Denka plant have been raised in many venues and executive agencies
the Court are not the Duhon plaintiffs from the 1990 lawsuit but rather the Harris plaintiffs from the
original 1963 lawsuit.
(federal and state).
The ultimate relief that the LDF seeks is for the Court to order the FWE school
closed and all of the students reassigned to LaPlace Elementary. But to get to that ultimate
relief, the LDF first seeks discovery and an evidentiary hearing. The LDF wanted to close
the FWE school prior to the start of the 2024-25 school year but at an in person status
conference held on June 20, 2024, the Court informed the parties that the school would
not be closed prior to the start of the school year because the start of school was fast-
approaching. (Rec. Doc. 222, Minute Entry).
The Court been informed that just days ago, at its November 7, 2024 meeting, the
Board approved by a vote of 7 to 4 to close FWE at the end of the 2024-25 school year,
thereby mooting for the most part of the relief that the LDF was seeking in its Motion for
Further Relief, Discovery, and Evidentiary Hearing. (Rec. Doc. 236, Status Report).
The Board voted, to reassign the FWE students to LaPlace Elementary and to East St.
John Prepatory School even though the LDF wanted all of FWE’s students reassigned to
LaPlace Elementary.
When Hermon Harris, Jr. and his co-plaintiffs filed suit against the Board in 1963,
like many lawsuits of its time it sought to challenge the prior de jure segregated system of
public schools that were being operated in the parish.2 There was little to dispute insofar
as the school system was racially segregated by law. Various consent decrees and orders
were entered numerous times over the years (1966, 1967, 1969, 1992) in order to
2 The Harris case predated electronic court record keeping. This Court does not have a copy of the
old paper court record—it is in the custody of the archives where old court records are sent when
cases are long-closed. In October 1990, a copy of the manually-typed docket sheet was scanned
into the Duhon docket sheet. (Rec. Doc. 13).
desegregate the school system in St. John the Baptist Parish.3 The consolidated Harris
and Duhon actions were reassigned to this Court via random reallotment by order of Chief
Judge Vance on July 28, 2009. (Rec. Doc. 100). A third consent judgment was approved
by the Court and entered on August 26, 2021 pertaining to the Emily C. Watkins
Elementary School. (Rec. Doc. 113).
But the issues currently being raised in the LDF’s Motion for Further Relief,
Discovery, and Evidentiary Hearing pertain to the orders and consent decrees entered
in the original Harris matter. This is because the desegregation orders that the LDF is
accusing the Board of violating were entered as part of the resolution of the Harris case.
The case has been closed for decades but the LDF asserts without contradiction that all of
the old desegregation decrees/orders entered in the case pertaining to the school system
in St. John the Baptist Parish are extant, remain in effect, and the Board remains subject
to the requirements of those decrees/orders because there has never been a judicial
finding that the Board has attained “unitary status” so as to terminate court oversight of the
school system in the parish.
Throughout the years following the reassignment of Duhon (with the Harris case
incorporated into it) to Section A, the Court has received regular formal status reports and
various consent motions but nothing contested until last summer when on July 14, 2023,
the LDF on behalf of “Private Plaintiffs Hermon Harris, et al.” asked for an emergency
status conference to discuss concerns that children attending the FWE school face a
heightened risk of cancer due the school’s proximity to the Denka plant. (Rec. Doc. 198,
Status Report). The LDF explained that its attorneys and the Board had been in
3 None of these orders and decrees are available to the Court in the electronic record but some
have been photocopied and attached to the memoranda.
agreement that FWE should be closed prior to the commencement of the 2023-24 school
year but then the Board had abruptly changed its position. The school was perhaps going
to close instead prior to the 2024-25 school year but the LDF thought that was too long to
wait.4
In light of the request for an emergency status conference, the Court held two
telephone conferences and one in person conference. At the July 27, 2023 telephone
4 At the time that the briefing was submitted prior to the oral argument, the Board was not
committed to closing FWE except that the Board advised that is was currently preparing a
comprehensive study for the entire school district that may result in some closings, consolidations,
or realignments, at one or more schools in the district—that study was expected to be completed in
the fall of 2024—then a proposal would be set forth that may resolve concerns related to FWE.
Although the Board’s reasons for refusing to close FWE prior to the 2024-25 school year,
whether the school should close at all, and the fallout from closing the school were not at issue
during the oral argument, for completeness it bears noting that the Board raised concerns that
closing FWE as the LDF seeks to do is a piecemeal approach to any problems in the district that
will have farther reaching effects than simply closing one school—which is something the Board is
convinced that the LDF is actually trying to do. The Board points out that if FWE is closed then in
effect East St. John Preparatory School will close because FWE is its only feeder school. The
Board accuses the LDF of having this second closure as an ulterior motive. And furthermore, the
Board is adamant that if the LDF’s chosen remedy—sending all of the FWE students and staff to
LaPlace Elementary is implemented—then there will be no desegregation benefits from such a
move because the black to white ratio at LaPlace Elementary would go way up which is actually a
backwards step in the desegregation effort.
At the oral argument the attorneys for the Board informed the Court that at the November 7,
2024 meeting the Board would take up the issue of closing FWE school in accordance with a 5-0
recommendation to do so, thereby possibly mooting the motions currently before the Court. The
LDF’s counsel was not particularly optimistic regarding this assertion given the Board’s alleged
reneging on previous assurances regarding plans to close FWE. The Court notes that the Board’s
meeting agenda for that meeting included the following item of New Business for public comment:
Strategic Planning Committee - As part of the initial phase of the Strategic Planning
Committee’s Key Performance Indicators for the 2025-2026 School Year, the
Committee requests Board approval to merge Fifth Ward Elementary School with
East St. John Preparatory on the ESJP campus, creating a K-8th grade
configuration. The merger would include a redistricting of Fifth Ward Elementary,
East St. John Preparatory and LaPlace Elementary School, with the Fifth Ward
Elementary students that live in close proximity of LaPlace Elementary, being
redistricted to attend LaPlace Elementary School.(Requires action).
St. John the Baptist Parish Public Schools Board Meeting Agendas,
https://www.stjohn.k12.la.us/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=526222&type=d&pREC_ID=104196
6 (last visited Nov. 6, 2024).
Again, as noted above, at its November 7, 2024 meeting, the Board voted to close FWE at
the end of the 2024-25 school year.
conference, the Court questioned why the Board couldn’t simply close FWE at mid-school
year (because the Board attorneys pointed out the logistical impossibility of closing the
school so close to the start of the fall semester). (Rec. Doc. 202, Minute Entry). Two
footnotes included in the minute entry from that telephone conference have hit a nerve for
both parties:
Footnote 2 of the 7/27/2023 Minute Entry states (emphasis added):
Although not discussed at the conference, standing would also
likely be an obstacle to obtaining, as part of this case, the
coercive relief suggested by the Status Report. The “Private
Plaintiffs” on whose behalf the Status Report and Request for
Emergency Status Conference (#198) was filed, are Hermon
Harris, Jr., et al., the original plaintiffs from the civil action filed
in 1963, as well as the plaintiffs to the civil action filed in 1990, a
case filed over 33 years ago. It would seem highly unlikely that
any of them would have children attending FWE in 2023, and
therefore no plaintiff in this lawsuit can claim the injury-in-fact
necessary for standing to move for coercive relief not related to
the consent decree. While the Court retains jurisdiction to oversee
enforcement of the desegregation consent decree regardless of the
status of the plaintiffs who originally filed the desegregation lawsuit,
coercive relief to compel closure of a school based not on
segregation but on environmental safety concerns would require that
at least one of the Private Plaintiffs have standing to move for such
relief. And of course, it is unclear to the Court what the basis for
federal subject matter jurisdiction over a coercive claim to
immediately close the FWE school would be.
Footnote 3 of the 7/27/2023 Minute Entry states (emphasis added):
When the Court mentioned possible closure after the fall semester,
the School Board pointed out the likely disruption that would result
from a mid-school year closure/reassignment plan. While the Court
maintains that the safety of the children should be the paramount
concern of all involved, the possibility of disruption, which could
negatively impact some students (and their parents) more than
others, may cause the parents involved to oppose such an interim
plan. It is not permissible to have plaintiffs who are not
impacted by the problem at hand, and therefore are “plaintiffs”
in name only, seeking relief that may negatively impact parents
and children who are not parties to this case.
A follow-up telephone conference was scheduled for August 30, 2024, prior to
which the Court had hoped to receive a joint proposal from the parties to close FWE and
therefore moot the need for possible coercive relief.
No joint proposal to close FWE was received.
The August 30, 2023 follow-up telephone conference went forward but the parties
had not been able to agree to a joint proposal regarding the fate of FWE. (Rec. Doc. 204,
Minute Entry). The Court declined to schedule a follow-up conference because it was clear
that no joint proposal would be forthcoming and as of that time no motion for coercive relief
was pending.
It wasn’t until June 12, 2024, that the LDF filed the Motion for Further Relief,
Discovery, and Evidentiary Hearing and this triggered an in person status conference on
an expedited basis because the LDF wanted to close the FWE school prior to the start of
the 2024-25 school year. The in person status conference was held on June 20, 2024, but
the Court informed the parties that the school would not be closed prior to the start of the
school year because the start of school was fast-approaching.
The LDF attorneys had brought to the status conference what was characterized as
limited discovery directed at the issues raised in the Motion for Further Relief,
Discovery, and Evidentiary Hearing (neither the Court nor defense counsel had seen
these discovery requests prior to the status conference). The Court instructed the LDF’s
attorneys to proceed with serving their discovery requests on the defendants. (Rec. Doc.
222, Minute Entry). Defense counsel accepted service of the discovery requests at the
status conference as a courtesy to move things along. A follow-up telephone conference
was scheduled for August 1, 2024.5
The Court cancelled the August 1, 2024 follow-up phone conference when it
received a letter dated July 25, 2024 from the LDF’s counsel asking the Court to convert
the follow-up phone conference to an in person status conference and order the Board
members to attend in person because the Board had not responded to discovery requests
and seemed to possibly be “stonewalling these desegregation proceedings.” The Court did
not reset the follow-up telephone conference.
As it turns out, once the Board’s attorneys actually reviewed the discovery requests,
they determined that those discovery requests weren’t really limited and tailored to the
issues raised in the Motion for Further Relief, Discovery, and Evidentiary Hearing at
all, but instead were extremely broad and leaning toward “fishing” beyond the relief sought
in the pending motion.6
Shortly thereafter the LDF filed the Motion to Substitute Named Plaintiffs in
which the LDF is seeking to address the standing concerns noted in Footnotes 2 and 3 of
the July 27, 2023 Minute Entry quoted above, and in the Board’s opposition to the Motion
for Further Relief, Discovery, and Evidentiary Hearing. The LDF seeks to put an actual
plaintiff before the Court.
5 It has become apparent that both sides interpreted the Court’s instruction to the LDF at the June
20, 2024 status conference to proceed with serving its discovery as a directive from the Court
“authorizing” discovery in this case. This is not what the Court intended.
6 The Board has attached the LDF’s discovery to its opposition and asks the Court to rescind its
“authorization” to the LDF to proceed with discovery. The Court agrees that the scope of the LDF’s
discovery requests far exceeds the issues presented in the pending Motion for Further Relief,
Discovery, and Evidentiary Hearing. The discovery seeks information about compliance going
back to 1965 and 1992; the 30(b)(6) notice wants the Board to produce someone to testify about
any and all efforts in this desegregation case from 1963 to present; the LDF has noticed 15
depositions. At the oral argument the Court relieved the Board of any obligation to respond to the
LDF’s discovery request pending further orders of the Court.
II.
The relief that the LDF seeks on behalf of “Plaintiffs” in its Motion for Further
Relief, Discovery, and Evidentiary Hearing is for the Court to order the FWE school
closed and all of the students and staff reassigned to LaPlace Elementary.
According to the LDF: 334 students currently attend the FWE school; 77.2 % Black;
16.8 % Hispanic; 5.1% White. 79.6% of the faculty assigned to the school is Black. Very
few students live in the school’s neighborhood. Thus, FWE is not a neighborhood school
and many of the Black children who attend the school are bussed in from neighborhoods
that are closer to LaPlace Elementary. Even for the 25 students who do live a mile or less
from the Denka plant, the LDF contends that relocating them away from the plant during
school hours will reduce their exposure times.
The legal theory underlying the relief sought is that continuing to operate a school,
more specifically a predominately Black school, at the current location near the Denka
plant, violates the desegregation consent decrees/orders that were entered in the Harris
case and that remain in effect to this day. The LDF also claims that continuing to operate
the school at its current site violates “the plaintiffs’” constitutional rights. Specifically, due to
its proximity to the Denka plant, the FWE school constitutes an “inferior” and “unequal”
facility, and since “equalization” cannot be attained in light of the proximity to the Denka
plant, the school must be closed per the mandates of the consent decrees/orders entered
in Harris.
In response, the Board points out that the original (since 1952) all-Black school that
was on the site where FWE now sits was torn down and rebuilt in 1993. The Denka plant
was built in 1968 and so it actually pre-existed the new school being built on the old site.
The Board points out that all of this was done—meaning putting FWE at its current location
in proximity to Denka—with consent and under the auspices of the extant desegregation
orders with no issues raised until now. In fact, the Board points out that in 2017 it filed an
unopposed motion to reorganize the grade levels at FWE, which this Court granted and no
one raised any concerns with the Denka plant. The Board surmises that the LDF actually
has hidden motives to close not only the FWE school but also East St. John Preparatory
Academy, which shares the same attendance zone.
The Board argues that the Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the
environmental issues being raised because the prior Harris case was about de jure
segregation, not environmental issues. As the Board points out, the Denka plant was
constructed in 1968 which was several years after Harris was filed. Thus, the Board asks
how a new environmental issue could possibly be a vestige of the prior de jure segregated
school system that the Harris plaintiffs sought to dismantle? The Board argues that the
Court should not allow the LDF to raise environmental issues for the first time in a 61-year
old case whose purpose was to dismantle the prior de jure segregated school system.
For simplicity at this juncture, the Court assumes without deciding that the LDF has
accurately described the mandates of the desegregation consent decrees/orders entered
in response to the Harris litigation that remain in effect today. Since it appears to be
undisputed that the Board remains subject to the desegregation decrees/orders that were
entered over the years for the purpose of eliminating de jure segregation of the schools in
the parish, the Court will also assume without deciding that continuing to operate FWE at
its current situs, and busing minority students to attend school at FWE, constitutes
violations of the extant desegregation orders.
Based on the Board’s recent decision to close FWE prior to the start of the 2025-26
school year, the Court considers the relief sought in the LDF’s Motion for Further Relief,
Discovery, and Evidentiary Hearing to be moot. Whether the violation is characterized
simply as operating a predominately Black school at the FWE situs, or as busing minority
children away from their neighborhoods to attend school at the inferior FWE school, the
issue of those alleged violations is moot given the school’s imminent closure. Whether the
current reassignment plan, which includes East St. John Prepatory School (the LDF
wanted all of FWE’s students reassigned to LaPlace Elementary) is a problematic is not an
issue currently before the Court.
Even if some aspect of the LDF’s Motion for Further Relief, Discovery, and
Evidentiary Hearing survived mootness, the Court remains persuaded that it lacks
subject jurisdiction to proceed to act on the motion because the LDF filed the Motion for
Further Relief, Discovery, and Evidentiary Hearing without having an actual plaintiff
before the Court.
Federal courts are courts of limited subject matter jurisdiction with power restricted
by Article III of the Constitution to resolving disputes that constitute “Cases” and
“Controversies.” Food & Drug Admin. v. Alliance for Hippocratic Med., 602 U.S. 367, 378
(2024); Perez v. McCreary, Veselka, Bragg & Allen, P.C., 45 F.4th 816, 821 (5th Cir. 2022)
(citing U.S. Const. art. III, § 2; TransUnion, LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. 413, 423 (2021);
Clapper v. Amnesty Int'l USA, 568 U.S. 398, 408 (2013); Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife,
504 U.S. 555, 560–61 (1992)). A lawsuit is not a “Case[ ]” or “Controvers[y]” within the
subject matter jurisdiction of a federal court unless the plaintiff can prove that he has
standing to bring suit. Id. (citing Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560–61). To have standing to sue in
federal court, a plaintiff must show that he has suffered an injury “fairly traceable” to the
defendant’s conduct which the court's judgment would likely redress. Deanda v. Becerra,
96 F.4th 750, 755–56 (5th Cir. 2024) (citing Laufer v. Mann Hosp., L.L.C., 996 F.3d 269,
272 (5th Cir. 2021)); Clapper, 568 U.S. at 409.
Implicit in the requirements for Article III standing, which is necessary to subject
matter jurisdiction in federal court, is that there be a plaintiff on whose behalf relief is being
sought. The controlling jurisprudence mandates that the named plaintiff who brings the
lawsuit must have legal standing in order for a federal court to have subject matter
jurisdiction over the complaint, but that issue only arises when you have an actual person
as the party-plaintiff. Without an actual plaintiff involved there is no Article III case or
controversy and consequently no subject matter jurisdiction.
The LDF filed the Motion for Further Relief, Discovery, and Evidentiary Hearing
on behalf of “Plaintiffs,” who purport to be Hermon Harris, Jr. and his co-plaintiffs from the
original lawsuit filed in March 1963. (Rec. Doc. 220-1, Memorandum in Support at 2). But
neither Hermon Harris, Jr. nor any co-plaintiff of his from 1963, is actually before the Court
pursuing the relief prayed for. The Court is not persuaded that the LDF—which is a legal
non-profit organization that provides legal representation to aggrieved parties—it is not
itself an aggrieved party with a claim or injury of its own to pursue, has the authority to
seek coercive relief against the Board in the name of persons (Hermon Harris, Jr., et al.)
who obtained the relief that they sought decades ago but who are no longer before the
Court. If any of those original plaintiffs are alive and could be located, it is far from clear
that they would satisfy the requirements of Article III standing.
So the Board legitimately questions who the LDF is representing in the current
controversy and who authorized the LDF to move for relief in the name of the Harris
plaintiffs from 61 years ago to seek to close FWE. The Board finds this question
particularly puzzling because in 3 different community meetings held at the LDF’s behest
to discuss closing FWE, the Board states that there was near unanimous opposition from
the citizenry to the closure and relocation of FWE (the LDF disputes this statement). The
Board complains that it has no idea who the actual plaintiff is that it is having to litigate
against.
To the Court’s knowledge, desegregation cases do not present an exception to the
requirement for legal standing, which goes to subject matter jurisdiction in federal court.
There can be no legal standing without an actual plaintiff. The issue is not whether the
Harris plaintiffs from 1963 had legal standing to pursue the relief that they sought to obtain
61 years ago. Surely, they did. But the Harris plaintiffs are not before the Court at this time
so the issue of their standing to pursue the relief that they sought in 1963 is irrelevant to
the current matters pending in 2024. The fact that a desegregation order that remains
extant was entered in litigation that the Harris plaintiffs pursued 61 years ago does not
create a perpetual “nominal” plaintiff whose name a legal non-profit can invoke when trying
to obtain coercive relief in a federal court. It likewise does not create standing in perpetuity.
It is undisputed that the extant Harris orders and decrees continue to bind the Board, and
those orders continue to inure to the benefit of the school children in the parish. But when
coercive relief is sought in 2024 based on an alleged violation of those orders/decrees—
and to be sure the coercive relief being sought by the LDF is very specific—there must be
an actual plaintiff before the Court on whose behalf that relief is being sought and that
plaintiff must have standing. No plaintiff, means no standing and therefore no subject
matter jurisdiction in federal court.7
In sum, even if some aspect of the LDF’s Motion for Further Relief, Discovery,
and Evidentiary Hearing survived mootness following the Board’s recent decision to
close FWE, without a “real” plaintiff who has legal standing to pursue the relief being
sought, the Motion for Further Relief, Discovery, and Evidentiary Hearing must be
denied without prejudice.
Motion to Substitute Named Plaintiffs
After the Board filed its opposition to the Motion for Further Relief, Discovery,
and Evidentiary Hearing, which seized upon the doubts regarding standing that the Court
had raised in its July 27, 2023 Minute Entry, the Motion to Substitute Named Plaintiffs
was filed. This motion is clearly an attempt to bring an actual plaintiff before the Court,
which as explained above, is a required first step in satisfying the Article III standing
requirements necessary to subject matter jurisdiction in federal court. But none of the
persons who are seeking to join this lawsuit to prosecute the Motion for Further Relief,
Discovery, and Evidentiary Hearing have Article III standing because none of the
proposed plaintiffs have a particularized injury in fact attributable to the ongoing operation
of the FWE school sufficient to support standing.
These are the proposed new plaintiffs:
Ms. Green is Black and is the parent of a minor child who is Black
(S.N.), and who currently attends East St. John High School, which is
operated by the Defendants and located in St. John the Baptist Parish,
Louisiana ("St. John Parish"). Ms. Green herself attended Fifth Ward
Elementary in St. John Parish, as a child.
Ms. Smith is Black and is the parent of two minor children who are
7 The parties have gone down the proverbial rabbit hole over the question of whether the Harris
case was adjudicated as a pre-Rule 23 class action. The Court remains persuaded that the LDF
cannot pursue the relief it seeks in 2024 without having an actual plaintiff before the Court. The
question of class status in 1963 is not determinative.
Samoan American and Native American (B.F. and B.F.), and who both
currently attend Emily C. Watkins Elementary School, which is operated by
Defendants and located in St. John Parish, Louisiana. Previously,
Ms. Smith’s children attended Fifth Ward Elementary in St. John
Parish. Ms. Smith herself attended Fifth Ward Elementary in St. John
Parish, as a child.
Ms. Watkins is Black and is the great-grandparent and guardian of
a minor child who is Black (J.W.), and who currently attends East St. John
High School, which is operated by Defendants and located in St. John
Parish, Louisiana.
Movants are Black parents of minority schoolchildren currently
enrolled in schools operated by Defendants. Like the Original Plaintiffs,
Movants seek relief on their own behalf, on behalf of their minor children,
and on behalf of all other Black parents and children in St. John Parish,
Louisiana who are similarly situated and affected by the actions and
policies of Defendants. Movants are also citizens of the United States and
the State of Louisiana, and residents of St. John Parish, Louisiana.
To establish Article III standing, the plaintiff must show (i) that he suffered an
injury in fact that is concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent; (ii) that the injury
was likely caused by the defendant; and (iii) that the injury would likely be redressed by
judicial relief.” Perez, 45 F.4th at 821 (citing TransUnion, 594 U.S. at 423). Injury in fact
is the “[f]irst and foremost” of standing’s three elements. Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 338
(quoting Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Envir., 523 U.S. 83, 103 (1998)). To establish
injury in fact, a plaintiff must show that he suffered “an invasion of a legally protected
interest” that is “concrete and particularized” and “actual or imminent, not conjectural or
hypothetical.” Id. (citing Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560). A “concrete” injury must be “de facto,”
which means that it must actually exist. Id. (citing Black’s Law Dictionary 479 (9th ed.
2009)). For an injury to be “particularized,” it “must affect the plaintiff in a personal or
individual way.” Spokeo, 578 U.S. at 339 (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560).
Standing ensures that the plaintiff is not a mere bystander to the dispute but
instead has a “personal stake” in it. Alliance for Hippocratic Med., 602 U.S. at 379 (citing
TransUnion, 594 U.S. at 423). The standing doctrine serves to protect the “autonomy” of
those who are most directly affected so that they can decide whether and how to
challenge the defendant’s action. Id. at 379-80 (citing Valley Forge Christian College v.
Americans United for Separ. of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 473(1982)).
Further, the plaintiff must establish the elements of standing for each claim being
made and for each form of relief being sought. Perez, 45 F.4th at 821 (quoting
TransUnion, 594 U.S. at 431). For example, the plaintiff may have standing to pursue
damages (a remedy that constitutes compensation for injuries suffered in the past) but
not injunctive relief (a remedy that is prospective in nature) or vice versa. Perez, 45
F.4th at 824; see TransUnion, 594 U.S. at 431 (citing Davis, 554 U.S. at 734; Friends of
the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environ. Servs. (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 185 (2000)). When
a plaintiff seeks prospective relief such as an injunction, the plaintiff must establish a
sufficient likelihood of future injury. Alliance for Hippocratic Med., 602 U.S. at 381 (citing
Clapper, 568 U.S. at 409).
None of the proposed plaintiffs have children that actually attend FWE school
and therefore can allege a particularized injury in fact from the Board’s ongoing
operation of the school. None of the proposed plaintiffs have children who are being
bused from their neighborhoods to the FWE school. That some of the parents are
themselves former students of the school does not give them a current injury in fact or
likelihood of future injury traceable to the Board’s ongoing operation of the school. That
they are Black and live in the parish is not enough because the injury in fact (which is
missing) must be particularized to the plaintiff. Merely being a parent or guardian of a
Black student in the parish is simply not enough to confer standing to seek an injunction
Page 16 of 18
to close the FWE school.
Assuming that there was a class certified in the 1960s with Mr. Harris as the lead
plaintiff, and assuming that every member of the class had standing in the 1960s, that
says nothing about whether the LDF’s new plaintiffs who want to join this lawsuit to
prosecute a claim for coercive relief have suffered in injury in fact particularized to them,
which is what standing requires. The relief being sought in 2024 is very specific. The
movant must have standing to sue for that relief, and the requirements of standing,
which go to subject matter jurisdiction, cannot be circumvented by filing a motion in a 61
year old lawsuit as opposed to filing a new lawsuit. The Court is not persuaded that
every Black citizen in the parish has Article III standing to ask a federal court to close
the FWE school and send its current student body to LaPlace Elementary.8
In sum, the Court denies the Motion to Substitute Named Plaintiffs because
the proposed new plaintiffs do not have legal standing to pursue the relief being sought.
Granting the motion would be futile.
Accordingly, and for the foregoing reasons;
IT IS ORDERED that the Motion to Substitute Named Plaintiffs is DENIED.
8 Both the problem with having no actual plaintiff and the standing problem for the proposed
plaintiffs is particularly glaring when considering the allegation that the continued operation of
FWE (and associated busing of students) is a violation of “the plaintiffs’” constitutional rights.
Only the person whose constitutional rights have been violated can seek redress in court to
vindicate that right—the claim is personal. The Article III standing requirements apply with equal
force to claims brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Tenth Street Resid. Assoc. v. City of
Dallas, 968 F.3d 492, 503 (5th Cir. 2020) (citing United States v. Hays, 515 U.S. 737, 743
(1995); Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 514 1975)).
The LDF cannot seriously contend that the Harris plaintiffs from 61 years ago are having
their constitutional rights violated in 2024 by the ongoing operation of the FWE school. And the
Court is at a loss to understand how the continued operation of the FWE school and the busing
of other parents’ children to the school could possibly violate the constitutional rights of any of
the proposed plaintiffs who seek to substitute in as parties.
Page 17 of 18
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the Motion for Further Relief, Discovery, and
Evidentiary Hearing Motion for Further Relief, Discovery, and Evidentiary Hearing
is DENIED as moot, and alternatively DENIED without prejudice at this time because
the Court lacks subject mattetjurisdiction to proceed.
¢
November 18, 2024
JAY CTZAINEY
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
Page 18 of 18