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Title: Parents On Desegregation: Yes Court on Parents: No
Author:
ID: LL160
Issue: SU2-3
Issue Date: 2005-05-01
Edition: School
Type: Article

Body: A parentsí group has no right to intervene in a lawsuit to oppose school desegregation, according to a non-published opinion recently issued by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The U.S. Department of Justice ordered the Evangeline Parish School District in Louisiana to desegregate in 1965. According to the appellate courtís opinion, Evangeline Parish has ìcomplied unenthusiastically and half-heartedly with federal desegregation decreesî during the past 40 years. Judge Tucker L. Melancon took over the case in 1996 and began a series of meetings with interested parties in an attempt to resolve the matter. The parties entered into consent decrees in 1997 and 1998. When little progress had been made by 2001, the federal government requested a status conference. Relations among various parties were still strained and contentious, so the court initiated another series of meetings that resulted in another consent decree that, among other things, called for ncreased desegregation in district schools.

Progress was slow, but by February 2003, the school board announced it had a plan under development. The following May James K. Guillory and other community members founded the Evangeline Parish chapter of the National Association for Neighborhood Schools. According to the opinion, the associationís mission is to end race-based and socioeconomic-based school assignments and restore the neighborhood school concept. When members of the local chapter learned in late 2003 that the superintendent was drafting a desegregation plan, they filed a motion to intervene in the desegregation suit. The United States opposed the motion. The school board did not take a position other than to maintain that it could adequately represent the interests of the school district.

In late 2003, a committee of school administrators completed a draft compliance plan, which called for consolidation and reorganization of the school district. At hearings conducted March 15 and 16, 2004, the district court considered the parentsí motion to intervene. On March 25, 2004, the district court authorized implementation of the consolidation plan. The next day it denied the parentsí motion to intervene and they appealed.

The appellate court affirmed the district court's denial of the parentsí motion to intervene as a matter of right. The court said that they ìfailed to present a legally cognizable interest that would be impeded or impaired by the consolidation plan.î The court noted that, according to their pleadings, the parents sought intervention to:

Oppose the ìconsolidationî of schools, the mandatory assignment of students because of their race, and the use of tax money for that purpose because, they contended, such action was unnecessary and may have been in violation of the equal protection, due process and other rights of applicants and their children.

Preserve the rights of parents to enroll their children in the public school nearest their home and to preserve the identity and traditions of their local communities, neighborhoods, towns and villages ñ the heart of which is the public school.

Establish that the Evangeline Parish School system was, in law and in fact, unitary (or, at the very least, partially unitary) and that the school system was entitled to be released from court supervision.

The appellate court found that the district court correctly held that ìan interest in maintaining local community schools, without a showing that consolidation would hamper the avowed goal of eliminating the vestiges of past discrimination, fails to constitute a legally cognizable interest in a school desegregation case.î

The court noted that, while the parentsí neighborhood school interest was vital to them and their children personally, it was not legally cognizable under the federal trial rules. The court noted the parents did not challenge the plan as a deficient implementation of the standing desegregation orders and 2001 decree. Instead, they challenged it as an undesirable and unnecessary commitment of resources. The court found that parentsí policy views of a school board-approved plan were insufficient to establish interest to intervene in the desegregation suit. Accordingly, the appellate court dismissed the parentsí action.

See Graham v. Evangeline Parish Sch. Brd, 223 F.R.D. 407, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 21434 (W.D. La., 2004).



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