Topeka Fails in Erasing School Bias, Court Says

The school board in Topeka, Kan., has failed to carry out fully the mandate of the landmark 1954 Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education desegregation ruling, a federal appeals court ruled in keeping the case open.

In an opinion published Friday but not made available until Monday, the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed an October, 1986, ruling that could have closed the case that paved the way for nationwide school desegregation.

“We are convinced that Topeka has not sufficiently countered the effects of both the momentum of its pre-Brown segregation and its subsequent segregative acts in the 1960s,” the appeals court said. The panel also reversed a lower court ruling that the Topeka school district had not violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Case Reopened in 1979

“We won. We feel vindicated by the decision,” said Rich Jones, an attorney for the group of parents of 17 children that reopened the Brown case in 1979. Included in the group was Linda Brown Buckner, whose maiden name provided the title for the landmark 1954 ruling.

The court noted that neither the Topeka school district nor the Topeka community is actively resisting desegregation and cited the national recognition of the district’s innovative curriculum.

“This active engagement has largely been directed at concerns other than desegregation, however,” the appeals court said, and “for the most part, the Topeka school district has exercised a form of benign neglect.

“The duty imposed by the Constitution, and articulated in numerous cases by the highest court in this land, requires more,” the appeals court said.

The court sent the case back to the Kansas U.S. District Court, saying that Judge Richard Rogers of Topeka erred in requiring the plaintiffs to prove intentional discriminatory conduct.

“We are convinced that defendants (the Topeka school board) failed to meet their burden of proving that the effects of this past intentional discrimination have been dissipated,” the court said.

The case springs from the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a class-action lawsuit filed by black Topeka residents against the school district. The lawsuit challenged the constitutionality of a Kansas law authorizing school segregation.