Cleveland Board of Education Et Al. v. Reed Et Al.

Background

A city school board (the petitioners) asked the Supreme Court to review two questions about a long-running desegregation case. A federal district court found that the board had taken many actions with the purpose of maintaining racial segregation and listed more than 200 such actions. That court ordered a systemwide student reassignment plan requiring each grade in every school to have a black-white ratio roughly matching the districtwide ratio. The Court of Appeals affirmed the liability finding.

Reasoning

The Supreme Court denied the petition for a writ of certiorari, so it did not hear the case on the merits and left the lower courts’ rulings in place. The opinion denying review gives no detailed majority reasoning in the text provided. Justice Rehnquist dissented, agreeing that the lower courts were correct to find systemwide segregative intent but arguing that the district court’s remedy was unusually broad and went beyond what previous decisions allow when a school board’s conduct is not the only cause of residential segregation.

Real world impact

Because certiorari was denied, the district court’s citywide reassignment plan remains effective for now, meaning student assignments across Cleveland schools may be altered to achieve the ordered racial proportions. The denial is not a Supreme Court ruling on the merits, so the scope and permanence of the remedy could change if the Court later takes up the question or if further appeals proceed.

Dissents or concurrances

Justice Rehnquist (joined by the Chief Justice and Justice Powell) would have granted review limited to whether the district court’s remedy exceeded the proven violation, warning that federal courts should not restructure city demographics unless that segregation is shown to result from the school board’s conduct.