Green v. County School Board

391 U.S. 430 (1968)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Ps brought this action seeking injunctive relief against D's continued maintenance of an alleged racially segregated school system. New Kent County is a rural county. About one-half of its population of some 4,500 are Negroes. There is no residential segregation in the county; persons of both races reside throughout. The school system has only two schools, the New Kent school on the east side of the county and the George W. Watkins school on the west side. The 'school system serves approximately 1,300 pupils, of which 740 are Negro and 550 are White. The School Board operates one white combined elementary and high school [New Kent], and one Negro combined elementary and high school [George W. Watkins]. There are no attendance zones. Each school serves the entire county.' The 21 school buses -- 11 serving the Watkins school and 10 serving the New Kent school -- travel overlapping routes throughout the county to transport pupils to and from the two schools. Virginia imposed constitutional and statutory provisions mandating racial segregation in public education. These provisions were held to violate the Federal Constitution. D continued the segregated operation of the system after Brown on new statutes enacted by Virginia in resistance to those decisions. One statute, the Pupil Placement Act, divested local boards of authority to assign children to particular schools and placed that authority in a State Pupil Placement Board. Children were each year automatically reassigned to the school previously attended unless upon their application the State Board assigned them to another school; students seeking enrollment for the first time were also assigned at the discretion of the State Board. By September 1964, no Negro pupil had applied for admission to the New Kent school under this statute and no white pupil had applied for admission to the Watkins school. D in order to remain eligible for federal financial aid, adopted a 'freedom-of-choice' plan for desegregating the schools. Each pupil, except those entering the first and eighth grades, may annually choose between the New Kent and Watkins schools, and pupils not making a choice are assigned to the school previously attended; first and eighth-grade pupils must affirmatively choose a school. The District Court denied Ps' prayer for an injunction and granted D leave to submit an amendment to the plan with respect to employment and assignment of teachers and staff on a racially nondiscriminatory basis. The Court of Appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.