PASADENA CITY BOARD OF EDUCATION ET AL. v. SPANGLER ET AL.
No. 75-164
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 27-28, 1976—Decided June 28, 1976
427 U.S. 424
Phil C. Neal argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs were Lee G. Paul, Peter D. Collisson, Robert G. Lane, Philip B. Kurland, and Alan L. Unikel.
Fred Okrand argued the cause and filed a brief for respondents Spangler et al. Solicitor General Bork argued the cause for the United States. With him on the brief were Assistant Attorney General Pottinger, Deputy Solicitor General Wallace, and Brian K. Landsberg.*
*Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed by Vilma S. Martinez and Morris J. Baller for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund; by Nathaniel R. Jones, William L. Taylor, Paul R. Dimond, William E. Caldwell, Norman J. Chachkin, Thomas D. Barr, John W. Douglas, J. Harold Flannery, Albert E. Jenner, Jr., Milan C. Miskovsky, Whitney North Seymour, and Chesterfield Smith for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People et al.; by Jack Greenberg, James M. Nabrit III, Charles Stephen Ralston, Drew S. Days III, and Melvin Leventhal for the N. A. A. C. P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.; by Ralph J. Moore, Jr., Richard M. Sharp, David Rubin, Peter T. Galiano, and Horace Wheatley for the National Education Assn. et al.; and by Nathaniel S. Colley for the Western Regional Office, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, et al.
Raymond B. Witt, Jr., filed a brief for the Board of Education of Chattanooga, Tenn., as amicus curiae.
In 1968, several students in the public schools of Pasadena, Cal., joined by their parents, instituted an action in the United States District Court for the Central District of California seeking injunctive relief from allegedly unconstitutional segregation of the high schools of the Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD). This action named as defendants the Pasadena City Board of Education, which operates the PUSD, and several of its officials. Before the defendants had filed an answer, the United States moved to intervene in the case pursuant to Title IX, § 902, of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 266,
Following remand from this decision, the District Court held a trial on the allegations that the Pasadena school system was unconstitutionally segregated. On January 23, 1970, the court entered a judgment in which it concluded that the defendants’ educational policies and procedures were violative of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court ordered the defendants “enjoined from failing to prepare and adopt a plan to correct racial imbalance at all levels in the Pasadena Unified School
“[t]he plan shall provide for student assignments in such a manner that, by or before the beginning of the school year that commences in September of 1970 there shall be no school in the District, elementary or junior high or senior high school, with a majority of any minority students.” 311 F. Supp. 501, 505 (1970).
The court went on to retain
“jurisdiction of this cause in order to continue to observe and evaluate the plans and the execution of the plans of the Pasadena Unified School District in regard to the hiring, promotion, and assignment of teachers and professional staff members, the construction and location of facilities, and the assignment of students.” Ibid.
The defendant school officials voted to comply with the District Court‘s decree and not to appeal. They thereupon set out to devise and submit the plan demanded by the District Court. In February the defendants submitted their proposed plan, the “Pasadena Plan,” and on March 10, 1970, the District Court approved the plan, finding it “to be in conformance with the Judgment entered herein January 23, 1970.” App. 96. The “Pasadena Plan” was implemented the following September, and the Pasadena schools have been under its terms ever since.
In January 1974, petitioners, successors to the original defendants in this action, filed a motion with the District Court seeking relief from the court‘s 1970 order. Peti-
The District Court held hearings on these motions and, on March 1, 1974, denied them in their entirety. In an opinion filed May 3, the court discussed its reasons for refusing the relief requested by petitioners. 375 F. Supp. 1304 (1974). Petitioners appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. A divided panel of that court affirmed the District Court, 519 F. 2d 430 (1975), but all three members of the panel expressed substantial reservations about some of the District Court‘s actions and the implications of some portions of its orders as they bore on the future operations of the Pasadena schools. Judges Ely and Chambers were apparently satisfied that the District Judge would heed the reservations expressed in their separate opinions, however, and they were content to affirm the District Court‘s order and remand the case. Judge Wallace dissented from the affirmance. Because the case seemed to present issues of importance regarding the extent of a district court‘s authority in imposing a plan designed to achieve a unitary school system, we granted certiorari. 423 U. S. 945 (1975). We vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case to that court for further proceedings.
I
We must first deal with petitioners’ contention that there no longer exists any case or controversy sufficient
Counsel for the individual named respondents, the original student plaintiffs and their parents, argue that this litigation was filed as a class action, that all the parties have until now treated it as a class action, and that the failure to obtain the class certification required under Rule 23 is merely the absence of a meaningless “verbal recital” which counsel insists should have no effect on the facts of this case. But these arguments overlook the fact that the named parties whom counsel originally undertook to represent in this litigation no longer have any stake in its outcome. As to them the case is clearly moot. And while counsel may wish to represent a class of unnamed individuals still attending the Pasadena public schools who do have some substantial interest in the outcome of this litigation, there has been no certification of any such class which is or was represented by a named party to this litigation. Except for the intervention of the United States, we think this case would clearly be moot. Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U. S. 393 (1975); Indianapolis School Comm‘rs v. Jacobs, 420 U. S. 128 (1975).
The case did not remain an individual private action seeking to desegregate the Pasadena schools, however. The United States intervened in this case pursuant to
II
Petitioners requested the District Court to dissolve its injunctive order requiring that there be no school in the PUSD with a majority of any minority students enrolled. The District Court refused this request, and ordered the injunction continued. The court apparently based this decision in large part upon its view that petitioners had failed properly to comply with its original order. This conclusion was in turn premised upon the fact that although the School Board had reorganized PUSD attendance patterns in conformity with the court-approved Pasadena Plan, literal compliance with the terms of the court‘s order had been obtained in only the initial year of the plan‘s operation. Following the 1970-1971 school year, black student enrollment at one Pasadena school exceeded 50% of that school‘s total enrollment. The next year, four Pasadena schools exceeded this 50% black enrollment figure; and at the time of the hearing on petitioners’ motion some five schools, in a system of 32 regular schools, were ostensibly in violation of the District Court‘s “no majority of any minority” requirement. It was apparently the view of the majority of the Court of Appeals’ panel that this failure to maintain literal compliance with the 1970 injunction indicated that the District Court had not abused its discretion in refusing to grant so much of petitioner‘s mo-
We do not have before us any issue as to the validity of the District Court‘s original judgment, since petitioners’ predecessors did not appeal from it. The District Court‘s conclusion that unconstitutional segregation existed in the PUSD; its decision to order a systemwide school reorganization plan based upon the guidelines which it submitted to the defendants; and the inclusion in those guidelines of the requirement that the plan contain provisions insuring that there be no majority of any minority in any Pasadena school, all became embodied in the 1970 decree. All that is now before us are the questions of whether the District Court was correct in denying relief when petitioners in 1974 sought to modify the “no majority” requirement as then interpreted by the District Court.
The meaning of this requirement, as originally established by the District Court, was apparently unclear even to the parties. In opposing the petitioners’ request for relief in 1974, counsel for the original individual plaintiffs and counsel for the Government jointly stipulated that they were aware “of no violations of the Pasadena Plan up to and including the present.” These
Petitioners have argued that they never understood the injunction, or the provisions of the plan which they drafted to implement that order, to contain such a requirement either.3 But at the hearing on petitioners’ motion for relief the District Court made it clear that its understanding of the decree was quite different from that of the parties. In response to the arguments of petitioners’ counsel, the judge stated that his 1970 order “meant to me that at least during my lifetime there would be no majority of any minority in any school in Pasadena.” App. 270.
When the District Court‘s order in this case, as interpreted and applied by that court, is measured against what this Court said in its intervening decision in Swann v. Board of Education, 402 U. S. 1 (1971), regarding
The District Court apparently believed it had authority to impose this requirement even though subsequent changes in the racial mix in the Pasadena schools might be caused by factors for which the defendants could not be considered responsible. Whatever may have been the basis for such a belief in 1970, in Swann the Court cautioned that “it must be recognized that there are limits” beyond which a court may not go in seeking to dismantle a dual school system. Id., at 28. These limits are in part tied to the necessity of establishing that school authorities have in some manner caused unconstitutional segregation, for “[a]bsent a constitutional violation there would be no basis for judicially ordering assignment of students on a racial basis.” Ibid. While the District Court found such a violation in 1970, and while this unappealed finding afforded a basis for its initial requirement that the defendants prepare a plan to remedy such racial segregation, its adoption of the Pasadena Plan in 1970 established a racially neutral system of student assignment in the PUSD. Having
In so concluding, we think it important to note what this case does not involve. The “no majority of any minority” requirement with respect to attendance zones did not call for defendants to submit “step at a time” plans by definition incomplete at inception. See, e. g., United States v. Montgomery Board of Education, 395 U. S. 225 (1969). Nor did it call for a plan embodying specific revisions of the attendance zones for particular schools, as well as provisions for later appraisal of whether such discrete individual modifications had achieved the “unitary system” required by Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294, 300 (1955). The plan approved in this case applied in general terms to all Pasadena schools, and no one contests that its implementation did “achieve a system of determining admission to the public schools on a nonracial basis,” id., at 300-301.
There was also no showing in this case that those post-1971 changes in the racial mix of some Pasadena schools which were focused upon by the lower courts were in any manner caused by segregative actions chargeable to the defendants. The District Court rejected petitioners’ assertion that the movement was caused by so-called “white flight” traceable to the decree itself. It stated that the “trends evidenced in Pasadena closely approximate the state-wide trends in California schools, both segregated and desegregated.” 375 F. Supp., at 1306. The fact that black student enrollment at 5 out of 32 of the regular Pasadena schools came to exceed 50% during the 4-year period from 1970 to 1974 apparently resulted from people randomly moving into, out of, and
“It does not follow that the communities served by [unitary] systems will remain demographically stable, for in a growing, mobile society, few will do so. Neither school authorities nor district courts are constitutionally required to make year-by-year adjustments of the racial composition of student bodies once the affirmative duty to desegregate has been accomplished and racial discrimination through official action is eliminated from the system.” 402 U. S., at 31-32.
It may well be that petitioners have not yet totally achieved the unitary system contemplated by this quotation from Swann. There has been, for example, dispute as to the petitioners’ compliance with those portions of the plan specifying procedures for hiring and promoting teachers and administrators. See 384 F. Supp. 846 (1974), vacated, 537 F. 2d 1031 (1976). But that does not undercut the force of the principle underlying the quoted language from Swann. In this case the District Court approved a plan designed to obtain racial neutrality in the attendance of students at Pasadena‘s public schools. No one disputes that the initial implementation of this plan accomplished that objective. That being the case, the District Court was not entitled to require the PUSD to rearrange its attendance zones each year so as to ensure that the racial mix desired by the court was maintained in perpetuity. For hav-
At least one of the judges of the Court of Appeals expressed the view that while all of the petitioners’ contentions which we have discussed might be sound, they were barred from asserting them by their predecessors’ failure to appeal from the 1970 decree of the District Court.4 But this observation overlooks well-established rules governing modification of even a final decree entered by a court of equity. See Pennsylvania V. Wheeling & Belmont Bridge Co., 18 How. 421 (1856); United States v. Swift & Co., 286 U. S. 106 (1932); System Federation v. Wright, 364 U. S. 642 (1961). In the latter case this Court said:
“There is also no dispute but that a sound judicial discretion may call for the modification of the terms of an injunctive decree if the circumstances, whether of law or fact, obtaining at the time of its issuance have changed, or new ones have since arisen. The source of the power to modify is of course the fact that an injunction often requires continuing supervision by the issuing court and always a continuing willingness to apply its powers and processes on behalf of the party who obtained that equitable relief.” Id., at 647.
Even had the District Court‘s decree been unambiguous and clearly understood by the parties to mean what that court declared it to mean in 1974, the “no majority of any minority” provision would, as we have indicated
There is little real dispute among the parties with our observations thus far.5 Indeed, as the Government points out, each of the judges of the Court of Appeals disapproved both the District Court‘s statement regarding its lifetime commitment to the “no majority of any minority” rule and the substance of that rule itself, to the extent that either indicated a continuing, rigid insistence upon some particular degree of racial balance. Brief for United States 37. The Government adds that these disapprovals were, in its view, quite proper, and it concludes they were sufficient to remove the “no majority of any minority” requirement from this case.
It is here that we disagree with the Government. Violation of an injunctive decree such as that issued by the District Court in this case can result in punishment for contempt in the form of either a fine or imprisonment.
Because of related concern that outstanding injunctive orders of courts be obeyed until modified or reversed by a court having the authority to do so, this Court has held that even though the constitutionality of the Act under which the injunction issued is challenged, disobedience of such an outstanding order of a federal court subjects the violator to contempt even though his constitutional claim might be later upheld. United States v. Mine Workers, 330 U. S. 258 (1947). The Court has likewise held that a State is constitutionally free to adopt a similar rule respecting punishment as contempt of violation of injunctive orders issued by its courts. Walker v. City of Birmingham, 388 U. S. 307 (1967). In both of these cases this Court quoted its own statement in the earlier decision of Howat v. Kansas, 258 U. S. 181 (1922):
“It is for the court of first instance to determine the question of the validity of the law, and until its decision is reversed for error by orderly review, either by itself or by a higher court, its orders based on its decision are to be respected, and disobedience of them is contempt of its lawful authority, to be punished.” Id., at 190.
There is necessarily a counterpart to this well-established insistence that those who are subject to the commands of an injunctive order must obey those commands, notwithstanding eminently reasonable and
Petitioners have plainly established that they were entitled to relief from the District Court‘s injunction insofar as it required them to alter school attendance zones in response to shifts in demographics within the PUSD. The order of the District Court which was affirmed by the Court of Appeals equally plainly envisioned the continuation of such a requirement. We do not think petitioners must be satisfied with what may have been the implicit assumption of the Court of Appeals that the District Court would heed the “disapproval” expressed by each member of the panel of that court in his opinion. Instead, we think petitioners were entitled on this phase of the case to a judgment of the Court of Appeals reversing the District Court with respect to its treatment of that portion of the order.
III
Because the case is to be returned to the Court of Appeals, that court will have an opportunity to reconsider its decision in light of our observations regarding the appropriate scope of equitable relief in this case. We thus think it unnecessary for us to consider petitioners’ other contentions: that the District Court‘s 1970 in-
So ordered.
MR. JUSTICE STEVENS took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL, with whom MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN joins, dissenting.
I cannot agree with the Court that the District Court‘s refusal to modify the “no majority of any minority” provision of its order was erroneous. Because at the time of the refusal “racial discrimination through official action,” Swann v. Board of Education, 402 U. S. 1, 32 (1971), had apparently not yet been eliminated from the Pasadena school system, it is my view that the District Court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to dissolve a major part of its order.
The Court‘s conclusion that modification of the District Court‘s order is mandated is apparently largely founded on the fact that during the Pasadena Plan‘s first year, its implementation did result in no school‘s having a majority of minority students. According to the Court, it follows from our decision in Swann, supra, that as soon as the school attendance zone scheme had been successful, even for a very short period, in fulfilling its objectives, the District Court should have relaxed its supervision over that aspect of the desegregation plan. It is irrelevant to the Court that the system may not have achieved “‘unitary’ status in all other respects such as the hiring and promoting of teachers and administrators.” Ante, at 438 n. 5.
In my view, the Court, in so ruling, has unwarrantedly extended our statement in Swann that “[n]either school
In insisting that the District Court largely abandon its scrutiny of attendance patterns, the Court might well be insuring that a unitary school system in which segregation has been eliminated “root and branch,” Green v. County School Board, 391 U. S. 430, 438 (1968), will never be achieved in Pasadena. For at the point that the Pasadena system is in compliance with the aspects of the plan specifying procedures for hiring and promoting teachers and administrators, it may be that the attendance patterns within the system will be such as to once again manifest substantial aspects of a segregated system. It seems to me singularly unwise for the Court to risk such a result.
We have held that “[o]nce a right and a violation have been shown, the scope of a district court‘s equitable powers to remedy past wrongs is broad, for breadth and flexibility are inherent in equitable remedies.” Swann v. Board of Education, supra, at 15. As the Court recognizes, ante, at 432, there is no issue before us as to the validity of the District Court‘s original judgment that unconstitutional segregation existed in the Pasadena