Court Rules Town Can Stop Busing

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Charlotte schools no longer practice intentional segregation and can scrap a 30-year-old, court-ordered busing plan.

The decision means the 105,000-student system in the city and surrounding Mecklenburg County no longer has to use race to determine a student’s school assignment.

“This case is hopefully the final chapter in the saga of federal court control over the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools,” said the decision by the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.

The district was ordered in 1971 to use busing to achieve racial equality, and since then has bused students in urban areas to mostly white suburbs, and vice versa.

After the Charlotte schools were ordered to use busing, the same order was imposed on dozens of other school districts around the nation.

After meeting privately to review the court’s 7-4 ruling, the school board said it would not appeal to the Supreme Court.

“By virtue of our vote, which was unanimous, we took action not to file an appeal,” said school board chairman Arthur Griffin. “We want to move to the next stage.”

Attorney James Ferguson, who represented black parents who wanted busing kept in place, said he needed more time to review the decision with his clients before deciding on an appeal.

He said he was encouraged that “four members of the court issued strong dissenting opinions.” He also said that he was surprised the school board, which had been allied with the black parents, reacted so quickly.

“I’m very surprised they made such a hasty decision,” he said. “This is a complex decision and it just came down today. We won’t reach a hasty decision.”

Unless the ruling is appealed, the desegregation plan will be abandoned at the start of the next school year.

“This [plan] started out as an important mechanism to provide quality education to students of all races,” said attorney William Helfand, who represents a white parent whose lawsuit challenging his child’s kindergarten assignment ultimately led to Friday’s ruling. “It became dormant and a mechanism to deny children these things.

“It denied African American children good schools in their own neighborhoods and forced them to be bused across town. And it denied white children the opportunity to attend magnet schools because of their race.”

In February, lawyers for black parents and the school board argued before the court that the desegregation order should remain in place.