What was the US Supreme Court case Swann v Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education about?

Answer 1

desegregation in schools

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Answer 2

The case Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 US 1 (1971) is best remembered as the Supreme Court decision that authorized busing as a means of integrating racially segregated public schools.

The Court's decision had much broader implications, however, because it also affirmed the need for school districts to find solutions to de facto segregation (by circumstance, rather than law) caused by neighborhood economic conditions, by implementing proactive integration plans. The justices also declared federal courts had authority to oversee integration, and that integration could be achieved on the basis of mathematical formulas, quotas, and creating non-contiguous attendance zones (students could be placed in schools without regard to where they lived within the school district).

Explanation

While the Supreme Court had outlawed racial segregation in Brown v. Board of Education, (1954), and Congress eventually passed laws upholding the Court's decision, most schools districts had only passively allowed desegregation rather than actively promoting integration. This left many districts with schools that remained predominantly white or predominantly African-American due to socioeconomic reasons, because the majority of African-Americans lived in low-income areas. This was especially well illustrated in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district, which consolidated urban Charlotte city schools with suburban Mecklenburg county schools. The urban schools were primarily African-American in attendance, while the suburban schools were primarily white.

In the 1968-1969 school year, the school district served approximately 84,000 students in 107 schools. Approximately 24,000 (29%) of the student population was African-American, and more than 14,000 of these children attended schools that were at least 99% black. The school board attempted to address the problem by redrawing attendance zones, but none had a significant positive impact on integration. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund eventually brought suit against the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education on behalf of six-year-old James Swann.

In April 1969, the District Court ordered Charlotte-Mecklenburg to devise an integration plan that distributed both students and faculty in more even ratios. The court found the school board's plan unsatisfactory, and ordered it to work with an out-of-state (Rhode Island) consultant. The consultant proposed some innovative strategies that involved busing students to satellite schools based on mathematical, rather than geographical, formulas. Both the school board and community were resistant the plans, and modified them. In February 1970, the board presented the new plans to the District Court judge. The judge accepted the modified plans for junior high and high school students, but rejected modifications for elementary students and ordered the consultant's plan be implemented without revision for that age group.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit consider the appeal en banc (sitting as a full seven-judge court, rather than as a smaller, three-judge panel), with the exception of one judge who recused himself due to prior involvement with the case. The Fourth Circuit affirmed the District Court's decision regarding the junior high and high school plans, but vacated the decision for the elementary schools as creating to great a burden for the district and its students.

The US Supreme Court granted certiorari and heard oral arguments on October 12, 1970. On April 20, 1971, they released a decision with the stated objective to "eliminate from the public schools all vestiges of state-imposed segregation that was held violative of equal protection guarantees by Brown v. Board of Education..."

Chief Justice Warren Burger presented the opinion of a unanimous Court that identified four problem areas with regard to student assignment: 1) racial quotas; 2) one-race schools; 3) attendance zones; and 4) transportation.

The Court held that constitutional desegregation did not require each school to reflect the racial composition of the system as a whole, and that no rigid rules could be established to accomplish the objective of integration, but affirmed the District Court's guidelines as an acceptable starting point in integration. The solution included allowing the use of quotas, allowing a plan that grouped certain elementary, junior high, and high schools together without regard for traditional attendance zones, and providing free transportation (busing) to students for transfer to appropriate schools in order to create a better balanced racial mix.

The Supreme Court affirmed the parts of the Fourth Circuit decision that upheld the District Court's judgment, and reversed the part that overturned the District Court's judgment (in other words, the District Court decision was upheld in full).

Answer 3

desegregation in schools

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