MIDDLEBROOK v. SCHOOL DIST. OF COUNTY OF KNOX
805 F.Supp. 534 (1991)
LaKenya MIDDLEBROOK, an infant by her next friend Harold MIDDLEBROOK, et al., Plaintiffs,
v.
SCHOOL DISTRICT OF the COUNTY OF KNOX, TENNESSEE, et al., Defendants.
No. CIV 3-91-0461.
United States District Court, E.D. Tennessee, At Knoxville.
August 24, 1991.
William Gordon Ball, and Herbert Moncier, Knoxville, Tenn., for plaintiffs.
Richard T. Beeler, Knox County Law Director, and John E. Owings, Deputy Law Director, Knoxville, Tenn., and Alfred A. Lindseth, Alexa R. Ross, Southerland, Asbill & Breenan, Atlanta, Ga., for defendants.
MEMORANDUM OPINIONJORDAN, District Judge.
This civil action is before the Court for consideration of the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction under Fed.R.Civ.P. 65 [doc. 3]. The plaintiffs, representatives of black students enrolled in the Knox County, Tennessee school system, and of disabled1 students enrolled in the same school system, seek to enjoin the defendants, the School District of the County of Knox, the members of its school board, and the superintendent of this school system2, from going forward with the implementation of a plan for the desegregation of this school system. For the reasons stated in this Memorandum Opinion, the Court has concluded that it must deny this motion for a preliminary injunction. I. PROCEDURAL HISTORYThe plaintiffs filed their complaint and their motion for a preliminary injunction on August 9, 1991. On the same day, they filed a motion [doc. 2] asking the Court to order an expedited discovery schedule. This litigation has proceeded in a state of emergency from its inception, because the
desegregation plan under attack will begin to be enforced in the 1991-1992 school year, scheduled to begin on Monday, August 26, 1991. On August 9, the Court set the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction for a hearing on August 15 [doc. 4]. On August 12, with the agreement of counsel for both sides3, the Court continued this hearing to August 21, and granted the plaintiffs' motion for expedited discovery [doc. 5]. At the request of the Court, the defendants filed their memorandum of law [doc. 20], on August 19. The plaintiffs filed theirs on August 20 [doc. 24]. The parties exchanged and filed witness lists, and this action proceeded to the hearing on the plaintiffs' motion as scheduled on August 21.
1. The Court will in this Memorandum Opinion use the adjective "black" to refer to students of African descent, in the manner in which the adjective is used frequently in litigation and adjudication under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court will use the adjective "disabled" to describe the condition of "children with disabilities," as that phrase is defined in 20 U.S.C.A. § 1401(a)(1) (West 1991 Supp.), part of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, formerly the Education of the Handicapped Act, as amended and codified. The Court is conscious of the fact that there is some disagreement concerning the appropriateness of these terms, and therefore hastens to state its intent not to insult any group or individual by its use of these words.
2. For convenience, except where clarity might require more specificity, the Court will in this Memorandum Opinion refer to the defendants collectively as "the school board."
3. The Court takes this opportunity to state that all counsel for both sides have shown throughout the course of this litigation to this point a degree of cooperation, competence, and professionalism which should make their clients proud, and which should help to remind the public of the necessity and importance of good attorneys to the delivery of justice in this nation's courts.
4. Expert witnesses and attorneys involved in this case have stressed the importance of the use of defined phrases in referring to the demographic facts which are so important in litigation of this nature. For the Court's purposes, a school is predominantly black if its student population is 50% + 1 black, and a school is predominantly white if its student population is 50% + 1 other than black. The Court recognizes that there are more than two races of human beings, and hastens to state that it does not intend by its use of this terminology to insult any person or group. However, neither side adduced any evidence to show the involvement of other races in the Knox County school system, and the plaintiffs' entire case, apart from their case concerning disabled students, focused upon alleged discrimination against black students as a discrete minority.
5. The OCR definition of racial identifiability referred to in the plan is a guideline under which, for example, a school is identifiably black if the percentage of its student population which is black is 20 percentage points or more above the system-wide average percentage. Therefore, a Knox County school with a 33% black population is identifiably black. While this definition or guideline leads in this case to the seemingly nonsensical conclusion that an all-white school is not identifiably white, this is a function of the fact that the student population of the Knox County school system is more than 80% white.