recognizing major purpose behind school desegregation cases is to secure rights of minority groups; literal compliance with Swann may not be required when system is heavily white and all schools are majority white
How later courts described this case
- recognizing major purpose behind school desegregation cases is to secure rights of minority groups; literal compliance with Swann may not be required when system is heavily white and all schools are majority white
- schools not necessarily racially identifiable in district 88% white although 7 out of 8 elementary schools 90 + % white
- authoritatively demonstrating that degree of racial balance is only one of many factors to be considered
- where lawsuit challenging student assignment plan was filed fourteen years after court had ordered desegregation plan, district court was required to make findings whether and to what extent schools were currently segregated, and whether any current segregation was a vestige of the prior de jure segregated school system
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
ON SUGGESTION FOR REHEARING EN BANC
PER CURIAM:
Treating the Suggestion for Rehearing En Banc as a Petition for Panel Rehearing, it is ordered that the Petition for Panel Rehearing is DENIED. No member of the panel nor Judge in regular active service of this Court having requested that the Court be polled- on rehearing en banc (Rule 35, Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure; Local Fifth Circuit Rule 16), the Suggestion for Rehearing En Banc is DENIED.
Contrary to the suggestion of the appellees, we did not and do not hold that in a former de jure school system, proof and finding of discriminatory intent on the part of the educational authorities is necessarily required to establish an existing constitutional violation. When a trial court has duly found, after proper consideration of all the relevant factors, that some current condition of racial segregation or inequality exists within a school system, it will then be determined whether the existence of such condition amounts to a constitutional violation. Where the referenced current condition results from the prior de jure segregation in the school system, a present constitutional violation is established without proof or finding that the former de jure segregation was intentional, for it is so as a matter of law, and the fact that the school authorities may more recently have been in good faith and had no segregative or discriminatory intent is not dispositive of whether an existing constitutional violation is present. On the other hand, where the referenced current condition does not result from the prior de jure segregation, proof and finding of subsequent discriminatory or segregative intent on the part of the educational authorities is necessary to establish a present constitutional violation.