Schools & School Boards — Court Upholds School District ‘Unitary’ Status

Everett v. Pitt County Board of Educ. (Lawyers Weekly No. 001-099-15, 53 pp.) (Diaz, J.) No. 13-2312, June 3, 2015; USDC at Greenville, N.C. (Howard, J.) 4^th Cir.

Holding: The 4^th Circuit upholds a decision by a North Carolina federal district court that defendant school district, which is subject to desegregation orders dating from 1970, has achieved unitary status; the court also upholds denial of a motion for injunctive relief filed by a group of parents who challenged the school board’s 2011-2012 student assignment plan.

This appeal arises from two desegregation orders entered in 1970 by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. The district court determined then that the Greenville City and Pitt County Boards of Education were operating racially segregated schools and directed them to submit desegregation plans that would establish a nonracial, unitary school district. Following the school boards’ initial compliance with the orders, the cases were administratively closed and lay dormant for over 35 years.

In 2008, a dispute arose between the Pitt County Board of Education and the Greenville Parents Association concerning the board’s explicit consideration of race when devising student assignment plans. The parties ultimately settled, and the district court entered a consent order approving the settlement and directing the parties to work together toward attaining unitary status for the school district.

Three years later, plaintiffs, a group of parents and the Pitt County Coalition for Educating Black Children, moved to enjoin the implementation of the board’s 2011-12 student assignment plan, arguing that it failed to move the school district toward unitary status. The district court denied relief, but we vacated that ruling, holding that the district court erred when it failed to place the burden on the board to show that the 2011-12 student assignment plan moved the school district toward unitary status.

On remand, the board filed a motion requesting that the district court declare the school district unitary. After a five-day bench trial, the district court granted the board’s motion and dismissed plaintiffs’ request for an injunction as moot. We conclude that the district court acted within its discretion in choosing to address the board’s motion for declaration of unitary status before ruling on plaintiffs’ motion for injunctive relief. And because the court did not clearly err in determining that the school district is unitary, we affirm.

In sum, the district court did not err by first determining that the Pitt County school district is unitary, and then denying plaintiffs’ motion to enjoin the 2011-12 student assignment plan as moot. And because the district court did not clearly err in finding that the school district is in fact unitary, the judgment of the district court is affirmed.

Dissent

Wynn, J.: The district court’s errors here are twofold and interrelated: First, the district court failed to consider the effects of the 2011-2012 plan when determining whether the school board complied in good faith with prior orders, a condition precedent to the district court’s declaration of unitary status. Second, the district court gave retroactive effect to its declaration of unitary status so as to retroactively release the board of its obligations under controlling desegregation orders in direct contravention of this court’s opinion in Everett v. Pitt Cnty. Bd. of Educ., 678 F.3d 281, 288 (4th Cir. 2012) (Everett I).  The district court’s order should not be affirmed. It should be vacated and remanded for proceedings consistent with our opinion in Everett I and controlling Supreme Court precedent.

In failing to fully address the impacts of the 2011-2012 plan, the district court declined to determine whether the school board complied in good faith with prior orders, and retroactively relieved the board of obligations under those 53 orders. The district court’s declaration of unitary status should be vacated, and this case remanded. I respectfully dissent.