Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law on Detroit-Only Plans of Desegregation

    UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN 

SOUTHERN DIVISION

RONALD BRADLEY, et al.,

Plaintiffsv.

WILLIAM G. MILLIKEN, et al.,

Defendants
DETROIT FEDERATION OF TEACHERS,
LOCAL #231, AMERICAN.FEDERATION 
OF TEACHERS, AFL-CIO,

Defendant-
Intervenorand

DENISE MAGDOWSKI, et al.,
Defendants
Intervenoret al. ..

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CIVIL ACTION NO: 
35257

FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
ON

. DETROIT-ONLY PLANS OF DESEGREGATION

1^ accordance with orders of the court defendant 
Detroit Board of Education submitted two plans, limited 
'-O the corporate limits or the city, for desegregation 
of the public schools of the city of Detroit, which we will 
refer to as Plan A and plan C; plaintiffs submitted a 
similarly limited plan, which will be referred to as the 
Foster Plan. Hearings were had on said plans on March 14, 
x5, 16, 17 and 21, 1972. In considering these plans the 
court coos not limit itself to the proofs offered at the 
heading just concluded; it considers as part of the evidence 
bearing on the issue (_i. e. , City-Only Plans) all proofs 
submitted in the case to this point, and it specifically 
incorporates herein by reference the Findings and 

Conclusions contained in its "Ruling on Issue of Segregation, 11 
filed September 27, 1971.

EXHIBIT C



The court makes the following factual findings.-

PLAN A .

1. The court finds that this plan is an elabora­
tion and extension of the so-called Magnet Plan, previously 
authorized for implementation as an interim plan pending 
hearing and determination on the issue of segregation.

2. As proposed we find, at the high .school level, 
that it offers a greater and wider degree of specialization, 
but any hope that it would be effective to desegregate the 
public schools of the City of Detroit at that level is 
virtually ruled out by the failure of the current model to ■ 
achieve any appreciable success. .

3. We find, at the Middle school level, that the 
expanded model would affect, directly, about 24,000 pupils 
of a total of 140,000 in the grades covered; and its effect 
would be to' set up a school system within the school system, 
and would intensify the segregation in schools not included 
in the Middle School program. In this_sense, it would 
increase segregation.

4. As conceded by its author, Plan A is neither a 
desegregation nor an integration plan.

PLAN C.

1. The court finds that Plan C is a token or part
time desegregation effort.

2. We find that ahis plan covers only a portion 
of the grades and would leave the base schools no less 
racially identifiable.

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PLAINTIFFS‘ PLAN.

1. The court finds that Plaintiffs' Plan would 
accomplish more desegregation than now obtains in the system, '
or would be achieved under plan A or Plan C.

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2'. ̂ We find further that the racial composition of 

the student body is such that the plan's implementation would 
clearly make the entire Detroit public school system 
racially identifiable as Black.

3. The plan would require the development of trans­
portation on a vast scale which, according to the evidence, 
could not be furnished, ready for operation, by the opening - 
or the 1972-73 school year. The plan contemplates the 
transportation of 82,000 pupils and would require the 
acquisition of some 900 vehicles, the hiring and training
of a great number of drivers, the procurement of space
for srorage and maintenance, the recruitment of maintenance personnel
and the not negligible task of designing a transportation
system to service the schools.

4. The plan would entail an overall recasting
or the Detroit school system, when there is little assurance 
that it would not have to undergo another reorganization if 
a metropolitan plan is adopted.

5. It would involve the expenditure of vast sums 
or money and effort which would be wasted or lost.

6. The plan does not lend itself as a building 
block for a metropolitan plan.

7. The plan would make the Detroit school system
more identifiably Black, and leave many of its schools 75 to ■

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90 per cent Black.

8. It would change a school system which is now 
Black and White to one that would be perceived as Black, 
thereby increasing the flight of Whites from the city and 
the system, thereby increasing the Black student population.

9. It would subject the students and parents, 
faculty and administration, to the trauma of reassignments, 
with little likelihood that such reassignments would 
continue for any appreciable time.

In summary, we find that none of the three plans 
would result in the desegregation of the public schools of 
the Detroit school district.

CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

1. The court has continuing jurisdiction of this 
action for all purposes, including the granting of effective 
relief. ■ See Ruling on Issue of Segregation, September 27, 
1971.

2. On the basis of the court's finding of illegal 
school segregation, the obligation of the school defendants 
is to adopt and implement an educationally sound, practicable 
plan of desegregation that promises realistically to achieve 
now and hereafter the greatest possible degree of actual 
school desegregation. Green v. County School Board, 391 U.S. 
430; Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, 396 U.S. 
19; Carter v. West Feliciana Parish School Board, 396 U.S. 
290; Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education,
402 U.S. 1.

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3. Detroit Board of Education Plans A and C 
«re legally insufficient because they do not promise to 
effect significant desegregation. Green v. County School 
Board, supra, at 439-440.

^ • Plaintiffs' Plan, while it would provide a 
racial mix more in keeping with the Black-White proportions 
of the student population than under either of the Board's 
plans or as the system now stands, would accentuate the 
racial identifiability of the district as a Black school 
system, and would not accomplish desegregation.

5. ihe conclusion, under the evidence in this 
case, is inescapable that relief of segregation in the 
public schools or the Crty of Detroit cannot be accomplished 
within the corporate geographical limits of the city. The 
Sf-a-t-e. hnwAver,. cannot escape its constitutional duty to 
desegregate the public schools of the City of Detroit by 
pleaaing locai authority. As Judge Merhige pointed out 

Bradley v. Richmond, (slip opinion p. 64):

"The power conferred by state law on central and 
local officials to determine the shape of school 
attendance units cannot be employed, as it has been 
here, zor the purpose and with the effect of sealing 
off white conclaves of a racial composition more 
appealing to the local electorate and obstructing the 
desegregation of schools. The equal protection 
clause has required far greater inroads on local 
government structure than the relief sought here, 
which is attainable without deviating from state *
statutory forms. Compare Reynolds v. Sims, 377 u.S.
_<3~>, Gomillion v. Ligntfoou, 364 U.S. 339; Serrano v. 
Priest, 40 U.S.L.W. 2128 (Calif. Sup. Ct. Aug. 30, 1971)
"In any case, if political boundaries amount to 
insuperable obstacles to desegregation because of 
structural reason, such obszacles are self-imposed. 
Political subdivision lines are creations of the state 
itself, after all."

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School district lines axe simply matters of 
political convenience and may not be used to deny 
constitutional rights. If the boundary lines of the 
school districts of the city of Detroit and the surround­
ing suburbs were drawn today few would doubt that they 
could not withstand constitutional challenge. In seeking 
for solutions to the problem of school segregation, other 
federal courts have not "treated as immune from intervention 
the administrative structure of a state's educational 
system, no the extent that it affects the capacity to 

desegregate. Geographically or administratively independent 
units have been compelled to merge or to inititate or 
continue cooperative operation as.a single system for school 
desegregation purposes."1

xhau i_he court must look oeyond the limits of the
iX2troiu school district for a solution to the problem of
segregation in the Detroit public schools is obvious;
'■hat it has the authority, nay more, the duty to (under
tne circumstances of this case) do so appears plainly
anricipatied by Brown II,2 seventeen years ago. While other
school cases have not had to deal with our exact 
■ _ • 3situation, the logic of their application of the command 

of Brown II supports our view of our duty.

.onc" •
Date: MARCH ^  0 , 1972. .

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FOOTNOTES

1Bradley v. Richmond, supra (slip opinion p. 68).

Brown'v. Bd. of Ed. of Topeka, 349 U.S. 294, pp. 300-301.

Haney v. County Board of Education of Sevier County,
410 F.2d 920 (8th Cir. 1969); Bradley v. School Board of the 
City of Richmond, supra, slip opinion pp. 664-65; Hall v.
St. Helena Parish School Board, 197 F. Supp. 649 (E.D. La. 
1961), affd. 287 F.2d 376 (5th Cir. 1961) and 368 U.S. 515 
(1962); Lee v. Macon County Bd. of Educ., 448 F.2d 746, 752 
(5th Cir. 1971); Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339 (1960); 
Turner v. Lirtleton-Lake Gaston School Dist., 442 F.2d 584 
(4th Cir. 1971); United States v. Texas, 447 F.2d 551 
(5th Cir. 1971); Lemon v. Bossier Parish School Board, 446 . 
F.2d 911 (5th Cir. 1971).

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