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Volume 5, Number 3
SUPREME COURT RULES IN SCHOOL DESEGREGATION CASE
On January 15, the Supreme Court in a 5-3 decision remanded the Board of Education of Oklahoma City Public Schools v. Robert L. Dowell case to the District Court to determine whether the school board "had complied in good faith with the desegregation decree ... and whether the vestiges of discrimination had been eliminated to the extent practicable". If the District Court determines that the school board has met this obligation, the Supreme Court opined, the injunction against the school board should be lifted. Second, the Court said the District Court should review the school district's 1985 neighborhood assignment plan to deter mine if its implementation violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
The Court's opinion overturned the decision of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals which had found that the school board "had not made a sufficient showing of changed circumstances that would justify the dissolution of the injunction." The Supreme Court ruled that "the Court of Appeals' test is more stringent than is re quired either by our cases dealing with injunctions or by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."
Background
In 1977, District Court Judge Luther Bohannon declared the Oklahoma City school system unitary, i.e., free from vestiges of prior discrimination. But he kept in place the injunction and stated that the court "does not foresee that the termination of its jurisdiction will result in the dismantlement of the [school desegregation] Plan or any affirmative action by the defendant to undermine the unitary system so slowly and painfully ac complished over the 16 years during which the case has been pending before the Court." In 1985 the school board substituted a neighborhood school assignment system for grades K-4, and the plaintiffs challenged the school board's action. The neighborhood assignments resulted in student populations in 11 of 64 elementary schools greater than 90 percent African American, in 22 schools greater than 90 percent white, and 31 racially mixed schools. In 1987, Judge Bohannon dissolved the 1972 school desegregation decree, and terminated any further jurisdiction over the school district. The court of appeals reversed, finding that the school board "had not made a significant showing of changed circumstances that would justify the dissolution of the injunction." The importance of the injunction is that without the injunction in place, plaintiffs will face a greater burden of proof if forced to go back into court to challenge new segregative actions. (For a thorough discussion of the case, and the oral argument, see CIVIL RIGHTS MONITOR, vol. 5, no. 1 and vol. 5, no. 2.)
  
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