Correspondence from Pamela Karlan to Carl R. Brents (Clerk) Re: Whitfield v. Clinton

    UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN 

SOUTHERN DIVISION

RONALD BRADLEY, et al., )
)

Plaintiffs, )
)

-vs- )
)

WILLIAM G. MILLIKEN, )
)

Defendants, )
)

and )
)

DENISE MAGDOWSKI, )
)

Defendants-Intervenors, )
)

and )
)

ALLEN PARK, et al., )
)

Defendants-Intervenors, )
)

and )
)

KERRY GREEN, et al., )
)

Defendants-Intervenors, )
)

and )
)

WAYNE COUNTY INTERMEDIATE )
SCHOOL DISTRICT, et al., )

)
Added Defendants. )

)
) * 1

CIVIL ACTION 

NO. 35257

SECOND AMENDED COMPLAINT

I . Prior Proceedings

1. Pertinent prior proceedings and decisions in 

this cause in the Court of Appeals are set forth in Bradley 

v. Milliken, 433 F.2d 897 (6th Cir. 1970); Bradley v. Mil­
liken, 438 F.2d 897 (6th Cir. 1971); Bradley v. Milliken,
468 F .2d 902 (6th Cir. 1972), cert, denied, 409 U.S. 884 

(1972); Bradley v. Milliken, ___ F.2d ____ (6th Cir. Dec. 8,

1972) and Bradley v. Milliken, 484 F.2a 215 (6th Cir. en banc



1973), and Milliken v. Bradley, 414 U.S. 1038 (1973). The
pertinent prior proceedings and decisions in this cause in 

the District Court are set forth in the September 3, 1970 
Ruling on Application for Preliminary Injunction, Motion 

to Intervene, and Motion to Dismiss, aff * d in part and rev1d 
in part, 433 F.2d 897 (1970); December 3, 1970 Ruling on 

School Plans submitted, remanded with instructions, 438 F.2d 
897 (1970); February 16, 1971 Rulings and Order on Class 

Action and Standing; Ruling on Issue of Segregation, 338 F. 
Supp. 582 (E.D. Mich. 1971) , aff * d en banc, 484 F.2d 215 

(1973); Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law on Detroit-
Only Plans of Desegregation, ____ F.Supp.____ (E.D. Mich.

March 28, 1972) , af f *d en banc, 484 F.2d 215 (6th Cir. 1973) 
Ruling on Propriety of a Metropolitan Remedy to Accomplish 
Desegregation of the Public Schools of the City of Detroit,

_ F.Supp. ___(E.D. Mich. June 12 , 1973) , af f * d en banc
in part, and vacated en banc as set forth in 484 F.2d 215 

(6th Cir. 19 73) ; Ruling on Desegregation Area and Development 
of Plan, Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law in Support 
Thereof, 345 F.Supp 914 (E.D. Mich. 1972), vacated en banc in 
part and reinstated en banc in part as set forth in 484 F.2d 
215 (6th Cir. 1973) ; Order for Acquisition of Transportation,

___ F.Supp. ____ (E.D. Mich. July 11, 1972) , vacated en banc

as set forth in 484 F.2d 215 (6th Cir. 1973), and Milliken v. 

Bradley, 414 U.S. 1038 (1974), rev'd in part, aff'd in part.
2. The jurisdiction of this Court is invoked under 

28 U.S.C. §1331 (a), 1343 (3) and (4), this suit being a suit to 
redress the deprivation under color of Michigan law, statute, 
regulation, custom and/or usage of rights, privileges and 
immunities secured by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amend­
ments to the Constitution of the United States, and/or by 42 
U.S.C. §§1981, 1982, 1983 , 1988 and 2000e providing for the 

equal rights of all citizens and persons and for the same

-2

N*



rights to the full and equal benefits of all laws and pro­

ceedings for the security of persons and property as is 

enjoyed by white citizens and persons. This is an action 

for injunctive relief, and for declaratory and other relief 
pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§2201, 2202. The matter in contro­
versy exceeds, exclusive of interest and costs, the sum or 
vale of ten-thousand dollars ($10,000.00).

3. The pleadings and evidence alread of record 

in this cause are now and have been on file in the District 
Court and available for inspection and/or copying by any 

interested party. Plaintiffs hereby incorporate by refer­

ence the entirety of their original Complaint, in this 
cause, filed August 18, 1970, as though set forth verbatim.

II. DEFENDANTS

4. The original Detroit School District Defen­
dants are the Board of Education of the City of Detroit, its

Superintendent (now Charles Wolfe), and the members of the 
Board of Education.

5. The original State Defendants are Governor 

William J. Milliken, Attorney General Frank J. Kelley, the 

Michigan State Board of Education and its Superintendent,
John W. Porter.

6. The intervening Detroit defendants are (a)

the Detroit Federation of Teachers Local 231, American Feder­
ation of Teachers, AFL-CIO and (b) Denise Magdowski, et al.

7. The intervening suburban defendants are Allen 

Park Public Schools, School District of the City of Berkeley, 
Brandon Schools, Centerline Public Schools, Cherry Hill 

School District, Chippewa Valley Public Schools, School 

District of the City of Clawson, Crestwood School District, 

Dearborn Public Schools, Dearborn Heights School District 

No. 7, East Detroit Public Schools, School District of the 
City of Ferndale, Flat Rock Community Schools, Garden City 

Public Schools, Gibralter School District, School District

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• •
of the City of Harper Woods, School District of the City 

of Hazel Park, Intermediate School District of the County 
of Macomb, Lake Shore Public Schools, Lakeview Public 
Schools, The Lamphere Schools, Lincoln Park Public Schools, 
Madison District Public Schools, Melvindale-North Allen 
Park School District, School District of North Dearborn 
Heights, Novi Community School District, Oak Park School 
District, Oxford Area Community Schools, Redford Union 

School District No. 1, Richmond Community Schools, School 
District of the City of River Rouge, Riverview Community 
School District, Roseville Public Schools, South Lake 
Schools, Taylor School District, Warren Consolidated 

Schools, Warren Woods Public Schools, Wayne-Westland Com­
munity Schools, Woodhaven School District, Wyandotte Public 
Schools, Grosse Pointe Schools, Southfield Public Schools, 
School District of the City of Royal Oak and Kerry Green, 
et al.

8. The added state defendant is State Treasurer 
Allison Green.

9. The added suburban defendants are (a) the 
Wayne County Intermediate School District, the Oakland 
County Intermediate School District, Fitzgerald Public 
Schools, Fraser Public Schools, Van Dyke Public Schools, 
Hamtramck School District, School District of the City of 
Troy, Highland Park City School District, School District 
of the City of Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills School District, 
Farmington Public School District, Clarenceville School Dis­
trict, West Bloomfield School District, Livonia Public School 
District, South Redford School District, Romulus Township 
School District, Inkster School District, Westwood Community 

School District, Riverview Community School District, Ecorse 
Public School District, Southgate Community School District, 
Holly Area Schools, Huron Valley Schools, Lake Orion Com­
munity School District, Rochester Community School, Walled 
Lake Consolidated School District, Avondale School District

_ 4 _



Clarkston Community Schools, South Lyon Community Schools, 

Waterford School District, Mt. Clemens Community School 

District, Anchor Bay School District, Romeo Community 
Schools, Clinton Dale Community Schools, L ’anse Creuse 

Public Schools, South Lake Schools, Utica Community Schools, 
Armada Area Schools, New Haven Community Schools, Plymouth 

Community School District, Van Buren Public School District, 
Grosse lie Township School District, Trenton Public School 

District; (b) all other school districts, if any, in the 

tri-county area except the School District of the City of 

Pontiac; (c) the Boards of Education and Members of the Boards 

of Education in each school district in the tri-county area 

except the School District of the City of Pontiac; (d) the 

Superintendents of each school district in the tri-county 
area except the School District of the City of Pontiac.

III. ADDITIONAL ALLEGATIONS

10. Various actions by the original Detroit and 

State defendants and their agents, in some instances supported 
by or in conjunction with State laws have, wholly apart from 

any actions of the suburban defendants or any of them, signif­

icantly contributed to the containment of black children in 

segregated, virtually all-black schools operated in the 

City of Detroit. The pattern of official segregation and 
containment has been an expanding one, as the black community 

within Detroit has expanded, but with the consistent result 

of establishing and maintaining racially identifiable black 

Detroit schools surrounded by racially identifiable, vir­
tually all-white schools throughout the tri-county area.

These actions have included, but are not limited to, new 

school construction; discriminatory reimbursement of trans­
portation funds; the validation and reimposition of the 
boundaries of the Detroit School District, imposition of a 
segregatory pupil assignment policy for the Detroit Public 
Schools, creation of segregated school regional boundaries,



recision of steps toward desegregation, and the particular 

carve-out of regional school governance units wholly within 

the Detroit School District by Act 48 of the Public Acts of 

1970; the transfer and/or transportation of students across 
school districts and within school districts with the purpose 
and/or effect of official school segregation; limitations on 
operation of bonding authority; and the operation of state 
aid and financial limitations; in conjunction with other 
official actions of segregation which left the Detroit School 
District virtually bankrupt and further identified it as a 

black school district. This consistent and repeated discrim­
ination by State officials and agencies, manifested by, among 
others, the acts listed herein, is causally related in a 

significant manner to the present, nearly total segregation 

of black children within the tri-county area in virtually all­
black public schools within the jurisdiction of the originalIs
Detroit defendants, their agents and successors. In carrying 
out this pattern and practice of official segregation, the 

State and its agencies have advantaged themselves of existing 
school district lines and jurisdictional boundaries with the 

effect of further entrenching the containment of black stud- 
dents in black Detroit schools; without any reference to 

any actions of suburban defendants, the prevailing pattern 
of racially identifiable, virtually all-white schools in 

the suburbs of Detroit is a result, in part, of the official 
policies of containment and segregation of black children in 
racially identifiable and virtually all-black schools within 
.the City of Detroit, as described above.

11. State agencies control the instrumentalities 
whose presence or cooperation is necessary to remedy the 
current but expanding pattern of official, substantial racial 
public school segregation described above. Suburban school 
districts —  like the Detroit School District, and like 

intermediate, regional and indeed all local school districts —  
are subordinate governmental entities created and fashioned by

6 -



• #
the State. Each is given varying powers to assist in carry­

ing out the State responsibility for education; the size 

or each varies and tne ooundaries of each are irregular/ 

little related to uhe boundaries of other governmental 
units/ and are often crossed by school children or school 
personnel in order to further various school programs.

The present school district boundaries serve no compelling 

state inL.ej.es u. m e  State Board of Education has consider­
able authority and power —  including, but not limited to, 

distribution of funds, accreditation or other approval, 
and general supervision and responsibility for public 

education throughout Michigan —  at its disposal to assist 
in planning and implementing any desegregation plan for 

the Detroit public schools which may extend beyond, or in­
volve districts or schools located without, the present 

geographic boundaries of the City of Detroit. The State
1
Board and Superintendent have the authority to require 

the elimination of segregation among and within school dis­
tricts in Michigan.

12. The Detroit metropolitan area has grown as 

a series of interrelated and overlapping economic, recrea­
tion, service, and governmental units with many persons 

locating in the suburbs but working and enjoying services 
in Detroit, and others living in Detroit but working and 

enjoying services in the suburbs. The school and housing 

opportunities for black citizens in the Detroit Metropolitan 

Area, however, have been and reamin restricted by discrimina­
tory governmental and private action, and distinct areas 

within the City and a few other areas of historic racial 

containment in the metropolitan area. School authorities 
at all levels have built upon and advantaged themselves 

of such racial discrimination to set up, maintain and 
identify schools as white or black.

7



• •
13. Plaintiffs allege that by action and 

inaction, the state defendants in concert with the suburban 
defendants have engaged in a pattern and practice.of sys­
tematic school site selection and approval of school con­
struction, school construction bonds and programs with the 
natural, probable and foreseeable purpose and effect of 

fostering segregation throughout the Detroit metropolitan 
area. Such segregation had and has a reciprocal effect on 

the segregation of school children in the entire metropolitan 
area including the Detroit School District.. The action and 

inaction by the state defendants, in concert with the subur­
ban defendants has had and continues to have a substantial 
effect on the racial composition of the school population 

outside of the Detroit School District as well as within the 
Detroit School District itself.

14. The availability of financial assistance and 
the operation of the state bonding and state aid formula en­
ables suburban districts to make a larger per pupil expendi­
ture despite less tax effort, than the Detroit School District 

is able to do. The deliberate operation of this formula and 
these policies affected and continues to affect the racial 
characteristics of both city and suburban school districts 

named defendants herein. Plaintiffs by this allegation, do 
not address the issue of equality of financial assistance be­
tween city and suburban districts addressed by the Supreme 

Court in the Rodriguez case, but rather allege this violation 
as an element in the chain of multiple causation affected by 
racial discrimination which tends to identify schools as 
black or white and create inequalities with substantial ra­
cial effects.

15. The above racially discriminatory practices 
of the state defendants, separately, and in concert with 
local defendants as well as the segregatory action and inac­
tion of the Detroit School District have been a substantial 

contributing cause of inter-district segregation in the 
tri-county area.

8



• •
16. State and suburban defendants have advantaged 

themselves oi existing patterns of housing segregation in 
the Detroit metropolitan area. Housing segregation has 

itself been substantially affected and contributed to by 

action and inaction on the part of state and federal govern­
mental agencies. Plaintiffs specifically allege that the 

residential patterns within Detroit and in the surrounding 
tri—county area were and are to a significant measure con­

tributed to and/or caused by governmental action and inaction 
tending to segregate black and white persons in the Detroit 
metropolitan area.

Plaintiffs allege that the pattern of suburban 

exclusion of black persons, except for isolated pockets, is 
the product of purposeful action by a variety of state and 
suburban governmental units including the public schools,

-and including the purposeful, racially discriminatory use of 
state housing or zoning laws. Each of the defendants has 
built upon and advantaged itself of the existing racial dis­

crimination in housing to maintain a pattern of segregated 
schools which children are compelled to attend.

17. The state and suburban defendants and their 
predecessors acting through sub-units of state governments 

have engaged in acts, practices, customs and usages which 
have had the natural, probable, foreseeable and actual effect 

of incorporating public and private residential racial segre­

gation and discrimination into the school systems serving the 
tri-county area in violation of the rights of plaintiffs 

under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Consti­
tution of the United States.

18. Through their various instrumentalities, in­
cluding but not limited to zoning boards, planning commis­

sions and departments, licensing agencies, state-approved 
realtor organizations, public housing and urban renewal

- 9-



authorities, the defendants herein, and others, by various 

methods, including but not limited to,State laws or local 
ordinances prescribing minimum lot sizes and conditioning 

the construction of publicly-assisted housing facilities, 

the location of parks and highways, pursuant to a policy 
of racial discrimination, the state and suburban defendants 

have contributed to and/or caused to be established a pat­
tern, practice, custom and usage of racial residential 

segregation of blacks to prescribed residential areas, with 
the effect the plaintiffs and their parents are restricted in 

large measure to the city limits and schools of the City of 
Detroit.

19. Through their various instrumentalities but 

not limited to zoning boards, planning commissions and de­
partments, licensing agencies, state-approved realtor
organizations, public housing and urban renewal authorities,I
the state and suburban defendants herein, and others, have 
exploited the plaintiffs through a situation created by 
governmental and socio-economic forces tainted by racial 

residential segregation with the effect that the plaintiffs 
are restricted to the city limits and schools of the City of 

Detroit.
20. The state and suburban defendants have seized 

upon and taken advantage of the opportunity created by 

racial residential segregation to contain the plaintiffs to 
the city limits and schools of the City of Detroit by their 
policies and practices of drawing school attendance boundaries, 
assignment practices of students, faculty and staff, school 

construction, additions and financing with the result that the 
patterns created by racial residential segregation have been 
re-enforced in such a manner as to aggravate the existing 
racially discriminatory actions, both public and private dis­
criminatory policies, customs, practices and usages have 

resulted in a dual public school system composed of predominately

10-



• •
minority group schools and predominately white schools within 
the .tri-county area. This duality extends to staff and 
faculty assignments as well.

21- The state and suburban defendants have acted 
jointly in the following respects:

(a) To establish a suburban system of 
white schools.

(b) To gerrymander school district lines 
and school attendance lines in the Inkster School 
District area to lock in a pocket of the black 

population in the metropolitan area into segre­
gated schools and school district.

(c) To segregate blacks in the River Rouge 
and Ecorse School Districts to and within school 
buildings in certain circumscribed geographic

• areas.

(d) The defendants operated segregated 
schools in the Carver School District which were 
subsequently merged with the Oak Park School 

District. Students were transported from the 

Carver School District into the Detroit School 
District because of the refusal of suburban dis­

tricts to accept the Carver students at the high 
school level. The suburban districts were and 
remain predominately white. This pattern and 
practice had and continues to have a segregatory 

effect on the school populations of the Detroit 
School District and the Oak Park School District. 

Said practice was known to State defendants and 
financed by them.

(e) The defendants operate the Ferndale 
School District with segregated attendance boun­

daries. State defendants, despite repeated requests 
by federal authorities, have refused to take any

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effective action to require the Ferndale Dis­
trict to cease operation of the.segregated 
schools that remain and operate contiguous to 
the boundary Detroit School District. The 

State has continued to finance and support the 
segregated public schools in both districts.

As a result of the state defendants1 refusal 
to act, the federal government has threatened 

to cut off $95,000 in federal assistance to the 
State Board. In addition, the Ferndale Dis­
trict has operated without federal assistance 

because of its desire to continue, with the 
assistance of the State Board, its deliberate 
pattern and practice of racial segregation.

(f) The State Board is well aware of the 
segregation in the Inkster School District, and 
action and inaction in this area is illustrative 

of the pattern of deliberate state segregation 
policies. In 1969, a report on the Inkster 
district was submitted to the State Board. The 
report stated that Inkster was the only city in 
western Wayne County with a high proportion of 
Negro residents. The report described exten­
sively the legislative gerrymandering of the 
school districts in, and around, the City of 
Inkster to keep black students segregated. The 

report stated:
"The Inkster School District serves 

less than half of the City of Inkster and 
a small part of Westland. It is located in the 
western portion of the City of Inkster. It is 
bounded by Westwood School District on the 
north, and Wayne Community School District on 
the west, and the Romulus and Taylor School Dis­
tricts on the south. The population of the 
City of Inkster is approximately 35% black, 
however, the school population is approximately 
84% black, since portions of the city are served 
by the surrounding school districts of Taylor,

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Cherry Hill, and Westwood (Dearborn No. 8).
Most white students attend schools in these 
districts or non-public schools."

(g) In 19 64 , the Superintendent of Public 
Instruction for the State of Michigan, pub­
lished guidelines for achieving racial integra­

tion in the schools in Michigan. Despite these 
guidelines and reliance upon them by federal 

agencies for funding of state activities, the 
defendants have failed to actively and effec­

tively seek the elimination of segregation from 
the public schools of the State of Michigan, 

and in particular, the tri-county area.

22. In September, 1967, the State Board of Educa­
tion adopted a five-point action program to achieve desegre­
gation and provide equal educational opportunity. The
*

piogram was designed to encourage schools to:

1. Integrate staff at all levels.
2. Redraw school district boundaries

to effectuate a greater degree of 
integration. — —

3. Select instructional materials which 
reflect the contribution of minority 
groups in the total society.

4. Allocate human and financial re­
sources so that programs designed to 
eliminate and reduce educational 
handicaps of minority group young­
sters will be effective in achieving 
a greater degree of equality of 
educational opportunity.

5. Identify and examine other courses 
which have been effective in their 
communities.

23. The racial census reports and proposals submit-
i

ted to the federal government under Title VI of the Civil 

Rights Act of 1964 demonstrate willful failure by the defen­
dants to effectively implement these programs, and in fact,

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• •
the state defendants have acquiesed to community hostility 

and to opposition within the State Board to effective de­
segregation. In October, 1967, the State Board of Educa­
tion publicly recognized as a fact that education in the 

racially isolated school is inferior education, and that 
there existed in Michigan a segregated pattern of education.

24. In 1964, the State Board of Education, pur­
suant to the 1963 Michigan Constitution, issed proposed 
guidelines for school construction, directing that local 
districts consider desegregation as a part of school plant 

planning. It took no action to insure the effectiveness of 
such policy declaration on its part. It continued to fund
a segregated pattern of school construction in the tri-county 
area.

25. Ninety-five percent of all black children in
l
the tri-county area are segregated into three school dis­
tricts: Highland Park, Inkster, and Detroit. Most of the
remaining districts are more than 95% white. The exceptions 
to this general rule are Ferndale, Oak Park (Carver), Romu­
lus and River Rouge, Ecorse, Hamtramck, and Westwood, which 
have substantial percentages of black students although the 
numbers are not great.

26. The suburban defendants generally discriminate 
on the basis of race in the employment of black faculty and 
staff. Of the 54 districts originally designated in the 
district court desegregation area for pupil reassignment, 44 

of those districts had a black pupil population of less than 
5%. In those districts as of 1972, there were employed 

17,893 teachers of which only 109 (or 0.6%) were black. As 
of that date 21 of these 44 suburban districts maintained 
100% white faculties. At the same time, Detroit employed 

4,563 black teachers, or 46.5% of its faculty. Plaintiffs 
allege that this systematic employment and assignment of

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♦

white faculties to white schools in suburban districts is 
part or the systematic pattern of racial discrimination in 

the tri-county area. Such employment and assignment prac­
tices identify schools as intended for whites and has a 

reciprocal effect on other schools and school districts 
within the metropolitan area. Such assignment and employ­
ment tends to affect substantially the out-migration 

in-migration of white families and works together with sys­

tematic racial discrimination in housing, all of which have 
been taken advantage of and built upon by the school authori­
ties to the end that systematic racial segregation is 
established and maintained.

27. In March, 1970, the State Department of 

Education and State Superintendents submitted to the Depart­
ment of Health, Education & Welfare a proposal under Title IV 

of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which stated as objectives 
among other things, the "developing and implementing an 

effective state plan for school desegregation." The same
proposal also called for the "development of state school

* '

desegregation standards for adoption by the State Legisla­

ture. " No action was taken on either of these proposals by 
the State defendants. In a recommendation made by officials 

responsible for the equal educational opportunity activities 
of the State Board, the Superintendent of Public Instruction
was advised as follows:

"Under present law the State Board of 
education has the authority to qualify school 
bonds for school construction by which pro­
cess, the local district will be able to issue 
bonds that have reduced interest rates. At 
present the review process addresses itself 
to such questions as need for the project 
based upon current and probable future en­
rollment and requires a determination if the 
project will not hinder school district 
reorganization.

It is recommended that this review shall 
also include an evaluation of the probable 
effects of the proposed construction on the

- 15 -



♦

racial composition of the attendance area
to be served by the proposed facility...."
Temph’asTs iupplied]

Despite such knowledge available to the State 
Superintendent long before this recommendation,. State of­
ficials continued to fund segregated patterns of school 
construction as well as school construction which substan­
tially hindered the possibility of school district reorgani­
zation for the purpose of desegregation. For example, in 

February, 1969, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, on 
the advice of the Attorney General, qualified a bond issue 
under Act 151, Public Acts 1955, for the Ferndale School 

District, which district has been found by the Department of 
Health, Education & Welfare to have intentionally segregated 
its schools in violation of both the Construction of the 

United States and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The attitude of the State Board of Education, and indeed 
other State officials can be characterized of one of 
hostility to school desegregation efforts and hostility to­

wards the rights of black children under the Federal Consti­
tution as enuciated by the federal courts. The minutes of 

the State Board of Education include a report from the State 
Superintendent of Public Instruction claiming that suits by 
black citizens to desegregate the schools had impeded the 

progress of the Michigan Department of Education in attempting 
to achieve desegregation. The report was critical of the 
Federal courts for enforcing the Constitution in suits initi­
ated in Benton Harbor, Pontiac, Detroit, Kalamazoo, Lansing 
apd other cities.

28. In November, 1968, the Attorney General of 
Michigan and the State Civil Rights Commission considered 
resorting to anti-trust and trade restraining laws against 
real estate brokers and broker organizations with regard to 
their efforts to maintain racially segregated patterns and ex­
clusions of black brokers from broker organizations. No such 
actions were instituted.

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29. In September, 1972, the Attorney General 

advised the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulation 

that the Department could adopt rules, if the Department 
“chooses to move" in that direction, which would control dis 

criminatory conduct of real estate brokers and salesmen.

30. On October 8, 1957, an Assistant Attorney 
General, on behalf of the Attorney General of the State of 
Michigan, advised the State Department of Public Instruction 
as follows. Based on existing Michigan law:

"[I]t would appear that the authority 
of the board [a local board] to estab­
lish attendance areas on the basis of 
racial discrimination could not be maintained.

Finally, Section 253 of the Act authori­
zes the Superintendent of Public Instruction 
to remove from office upon satisfactory proof 
and proper notice any member of any board who 
shall have persistently and without suffi­
cient cause refused and neglected to discharge 
any of the duties of his office....

Thus, it appears that the Superintendent 
of Public Instruction may deal with the problem 
in two ways.

First by seeking legal enforcement of 
performance of duties by school boards and their 
officers through proper court proceedings in­
stituted under the direction of the Attorney 
General."

The memo goes on to point out the decisions of the 
Michigan Supreme Court made it clear that the Superintendent 

of Schools has the authority to compel school officers to 
perform duties prescribed by law relative to schools. The 
advice continued.

"Secondly, in the event that any member 
of any board shall persistently and without 
sufficient cause refuse and neglect to dis­
charge any of the duties of his office, 
removal proceedings could be brought against 
such a board member.

Certainly in the case of school board 
members, the Superintendent of Public Instru- 
tion has two remedies: a suit to compel
performance of duties or proper removal pro­
ceedings. Relative to officers of boards of 
education, the Superintendent has one remedy, 
and that is to seek proper court enforcement 
of their duties."

-  17-



All of this advice was given in the context of
the power of the Superintendent and his duty with respect 

to activities by boards of education with respect to 

separate school and departments on the basis of race or 

color. In addition to the duty placed upon the State Super­
intendent, the memo makes it clear that the Attorney General 

of the State of Michigan has responsibility to act in this 
field, but has failed to perform that duty.

WHEREFORE, plaintiffs respectfully pray that the 
Court order a hearing of this action according to law and 
the guidelines established by the Sixth Circuit and the United 

States Supreme Court, and upon such hearing:
a. Enter a decree enjoining the segregation

found;

b. Enter a decree approving an effective 
metropolitan plan of desegregation for the Detroit Metro­
politan Area found to be affected in whole or in part by 

racial discrimination affecting public schools. Such plan 
should include the utilization of all reasonable and feasible 
methods and tools of desegregation as set forth in the guide­

lines established by the Sixth Circuit in its decision en 
banc of June 12, 1973, and the controlling decisions of the 
Supreme Court;

c. Award to plaintiffs* attorneys reasonable 
counsel fees for services rendered and to be rendered inr 
and reimbursement for all out-of-pocket expenses of, this 
action;

d. Retain continuing jurisdiction of this 
cause and grant such other and additional relief as may ap­

pear to the Court to be equitable and just.
Respectfully submitted,

— - _____

LOUIS R. LUCAS
RATNER, SUGARMON, LUCAS & SALKY 
525 Commerce Title Building 
Memphis, Tennessee 38103

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J. HAROLD FLANNERY 
PAUL DIMOND 
WILLIAM E. CALDWELL

Lawyers' Committee For 
Civil Rights Under Law 
7 33 15th. Street,N.W. 
Suite 520
Washington, D.C. 20005

JOHN A DZIAMBA 
746 Main Street 
Post Office Box D 
Willimantic, Connecticut 062

ELLIOTT'S. HALL
2755 Guardian Building 
500 Griswald Avenue 
Detroit, Michigan

NATHANIEL JONES 
General Counsel 
N.A.A.C.P.
1790 Broadway
New York, New York 10019

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

This is to certify that a copy of the foregoing 
Second Amended Complaint has been served on all counsel of 
record by depositing same to them at their of Wyes by 

United States mail, postage prepaid, this tJ T y d a y  of March
1975.