NAACP’s Latest Suit Revives Issue of ‘Metro’ Busing

The NAACP’s latest desegregation suit in Los Angeles, revived by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, seems to regularly prompt this puzzled inquiry: How do you desegregate a school system in which only 19% of the students are white?

Though somewhat irked by the question, attorneys for the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People reply that “one option” would be for the courts to enact a metropolitan desegregation plan, using white students from, for example, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and the South Bay communities to desegregate schools in south Los Angeles.

The legal argument goes like this: The state is a defendant in the NAACP law suit, and school districts are legal creations of the state. If the civil rights attorneys can show in court that the state laws or acts caused or contributed to segregation in Los Angeles, the court could fashion a remedy that crossed district boundaries and ordered busing among the white and black communities.

Attorneys and desegregation activists say such an outcome in the Los Angeles case is possible, but not likely.

In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a court-ordered merger of the Detroit school district and districts in the suburbs, dashing the hopes of civil rights attorneys who saw metropolitan plans as a way to remedy segregation in city schools. Since most urban school districts had become overwhelmingly black or Latino, desegregation within the city limits had become virtually impossible.

But while the courts have frowned on forced mergers of city and suburban districts, some judges have recently ordered voluntary busing across district lines.

In 1983, federal courts found that Missouri’s history of segregation contributed to the problems of the St. Louis schools. As a remedy, the court set up a desegregation program that was both mandatory and voluntary.

The city and suburban school districts were required to set up magnet schools and busing programs that exchanged black and white students. But children who participate do so voluntarily.

A similar program for Kansas City is pending in the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The key thing is the role of the state,” said University of Chicago Prof. Gary Orfield. “If you can prove a history of state government action that has a continuing effect (of segregation), a court can order a cross-district remedy.”

Burden on Plaintiff

“It’s not easy. It puts a tremendous burden of proof on the plaintiffs,” said Orfield, a desegregation advocate who has testified in many court cases, including the state court trial in Los Angeles.

Unlike Missouri, California does not have a clear and recent history of legal school segregation. But even attorneys for the Los Angeles district acknowledge that the state has had discriminatory laws in the past and has permitted racially discriminatory housing policies.

A cross-district plan is “a definite possibility” if the NAACP case dwells on the state’s history, said Jerry Halverson, associate superintendent and chief attorney for the school district.

“The difficulty in predicting now is that no one knows the scope of the lawsuit or what factual or evidentiary matters they (NAACP) will point to,” Halverson said.

Case Began in 1981

Though the NAACP suit in federal court was filed in 1981, the case lay dormant for several years while the two sides fought over procedural issues. In October, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the last of the appeals, allowing a trial to proceed with both the state and Los Angeles school district as defendants.

Suburban districts, however, were not named in the lawsuit--a key point, according to legal observers, because courts have not forced a merger of school systems unless the other districts were included in the trial.

Joseph Duff, attorney for the local NAACP chapter, says he is reluctant to even talk about a metropolitan remedy.

“People get so fired up when you just mention it that it detracts from everything else,” Duff said. “The question of a remedy is premature at this point.”

Prosecutor Asks Time

Last week, Duff told U.S. District Judge A. Wallace Tashima that he would need until June 30, 1986, to examine documents and interview witnesses as part of building his case against the school district and the state.

After that, attorneys for the school district said they may need as long as nine more months to prepare a defense. Under that schedule, trial would not begin until early in 1987.

In an interview, Duff said he will seek to prove that the state has “a recent statutory history” of racial discrimination. In addition, he contends that Los Angeles officials have discriminated against blacks through housing policies, student assignment plans and unequal spending in minority schools.

Law Changed in ’47

Until 1880, Duff said, California had laws permitting the exclusion of blacks from white schools. Other discriminatory laws--against Asians, Latinos and blacks--stayed on the books until 1947, he said.

In Duff’s view, the $150-million voluntary integration program in Los Angeles, an effort which is funded mostly by the state, has been a failure.

“They haven’t brought about the desegregation of one school,” he said. Though black students have the option of being bused to a regular, integrated school or a special magnet school, few whites are bused into predominantly black schools, he pointed out.

“The burden of desegregation is entirely on the victims,” Duff said. The district’s plan, he added, “is based on the premise of maintaining a dual system.”

Intentional or Unavoidable?

It will be up to Judge Tashima to decide whether the Los Angeles officials have intentionally caused and perpetuated school segregation, or whether it was a natural and unavoidable consequence of housing patterns.

If the NAACP succeeds in proving its case, Tashima could order state officials to set up a cross-district busing plan to desegregate the south Los Angeles schools.

“School district boundaries are not sacrosanct. The state can change them . . . and that is one reason for having them (state officials) in the case,” Duff said.

Though Duff suggested that the state could force such a change, most other desegregation advocates say the cross-district busing would have to be voluntary.

Courts Reluctant

“Unless you can show that the state and the other districts engaged in boundary manipulation” to create segregated schools, courts have been generally unwilling to force inter-district busing, said William Taylor, a veteran civil rights activist with the Center for National Policy Review in Washington.

The St. Louis case showed that a metropolitan desegregation plan is still possible, “although it has been pretty much one-way so far,” Taylor said.

This year, 7,100 students are bused out of the city to suburban schools, but only about 500 white suburbanites are bused into city schools, said Robert Bartman, assistant commissioner in the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. The goal is to have 15,000 students bused out by the fifth year of the plan and to have 1,000 bused in, he added.

State Didn’t Agree

The St. Louis plan was agreed to by civil rights attorneys and school district officials, but not by the state.

“We didn’t participate. We just got to pay,” Bartman said.

The court required the state of Missouri to spend nearly $80 million a year to beef up education programs in the St. Louis schools and to bus black students to one of the 23 surrounding suburban districts.

Bartman said the state may also be assessed another $27 million to set up a three-year program of school improvement and voluntary busing to remedy segregation in Kansas City, a case that was heard two weeks ago in a federal appeals court.

Massive L.A. Program

Though the St. Louis order was considered large and precedent-setting by civil rights activists, its plan is dwarfed by the voluntary integration program in effect in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles district says it buses about 40,000 students a day under several integration efforts. Moreover, the district has smaller classes in the “racially isolated” schools of the inner city.

Attorneys for the other defendant in the case--the state--say they would like to arrange a settlement before the trial.

“We don’t want to fight another 25 years over this,” said G. R. Overton, a deputy attorney general. “The superintendent (Bill Honig) thinks this sort of litigation detracts from the effort to improve the quality of education in the schools, and he wants the case settled.”

Proposal Sought

Overton said he has asked NAACP officials to propose a settlement plan, but hasn’t received an answer.

Even if the case goes to trial, Overton said he doubted the state would be found guilty.

“I don’t think there’s any liability on our part in the reasonably recent past. In the early part of this century, yes. But not in the recent past,” he said.

However, most of the attorneys, no matter which side they represent, are quick to add a caution: Desegregation cases are invariably long and complex, and the results are unpredictable.

Said Orfield, the Chicago professor: “You are trying to pass judgment on the whole racial history of your community. It really depends on what the facts show and how that local judge views it.”