Answer to Motion of Defendant-Intervenors Detroit Federation of Teachers

    UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN 

SOUTHERN DIVISION

RONALD BRADLEY, et al., 
Plaintiffs,

v s .

WILLIAM G. MILLIKEN, et al., 
Defendants,

and
DETROIT FEDERATION OF TEACHERS, 
LOCAL NO. 231, AMERICAN FEDERATION 
OF TEACHERS, AFL-CIO,

Defendant-Intervenor,

Civil Action 
No. 35257

and
DENISE MAGDOWSKI, et al.,

Defendants-Intervenor,
et al.

____________________________________________ /

ANSWER ‘•
TO MOTION OF DEFENDANT-INTERVENORS 
DETROIT FEDERATION OF TEACHERS

NOW COMES the Board of Education of the City of Detroit, 
by its attorneys, RILEY.AND ROUMELL, and answers the Motion by 
Detroit Federation of Teachers for Injunction and/or for Supple­
ment to Order for Development of Plan of Desegregation, re 
Financing and Terminations, and for its answer says as follows:

1. With regard to so much of the Motion as is directed 
against the State Defendants, the Defendant Detroit Board takes 
no position for reasons stated to this Court on June 14, 1972, 
when a similar Motion was proposed by the Organization of School



# #
Administrators and Supervisors in their Application for Admission 
as Plaintiff-Intervenors.

2. With regard to so much of the Motion as would 
require the rehiring of certain personnel by the Detroit Board, 
Defendant Detroit Board opposes said Motion. Granting this 
portion of movant's requested relief would directly interfere 
with the rights of Defendant Detroit Board to employ and manage 
the employment of its teaching personnel, flying in the face 
of the specific finding of this Court in its ruling of September 
27, 1971, that the employment practices of the Detroit Board 
were free of racial discrimination. It should be noted that 
even the teacher terminations of which movant complains closely 
reflect the racial composition of the school faculty as a whole. 
This is not true because any racial criteria was used in deter­
mining which teachers should be terminated, but because the 
teaching faculty of the district is so thoroughly integrated 
that terminations of certain classifications totally independent 
of a racial criteria does not disturb the racial balance of 
the faculty.

Movant's reliance on Oliver,et al v. Kalamazoo 
Board of Education is misplaced. The Board of Education in 
that case had only some few years before the filing of the 
action begun to hire black teachers in any number. Thus, when 
the school district encountered financial difficulties and 
undertook the "pink slipping" of recently hired probationary 
teachers, the result would have been to take out of the service 
the majority of all black teachers employed by the district, 
and thereby radically change the racial composition of the 
district's faculty. No such result occurs in this case. The 
racial composition of the district's faculty is not materially

i



affected at all by the termination.

Movant argues that "the loss of these 720 black 
| teachers will further skew, and adversely, the racial proportions 

Of teachers in the desegregation area." The assumption under­
lying movant's position apparently is that the "loss" of these 
teachers to the Detroit system is synonymous with their "loss" 

j to the desegregation area. Assuming that the achievement of
a more than token presence of black faculty meirbers at all schools 

| within the desegregation area requires reassignment of teaching 
jj Personnel r it would appear that the Court's ruling would require |J that an even greater number of black faculty members be "lost" I
j to the Detroit system than movant complains of. The imoort
| _ "
| of the Court's ruling is not that black faculty members must
| continue to teach in Detroit, but that more black faculty members
j must begin to teach throughou the desegregation area outside of
| Detroi. It is difficult to see how the loss of employment

within Detroit, of which a by-product is certainly availability
I for emPl°yment outside of Detroit, in any way hampers the imple-
I . ' ' Imentation of the order of this Court. - . j

Therefore, while the Defendant Detroit Board would be
jj delighted to have the financial capacity to retain all of thej;
jj teachers whose termination is complained of, and would do so 
J j  were the funds available to allow such action, Defendant Detroitj !
jj Board respectfully submits that there is nothing in this case 
jj . ,
jj which requires or permits this Court to mandate such action.
i

j Respectfully submitted,
RILEY AND ROUMELL

Attorneys for Defendant Detroit 
Board of Education 
720 Ford Building .
Detroit, Michigan 48226 
Telephone; 962-8255

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