Parents Can Challenge Perpetual
Court Assignment of Pupils,
In Pending Class Actions,
Toward Restoring Local Control
According to the Constitution

In Crawford III, Bustop, Inc., an intervening nonprofit corporation, presented separate objections to the Supreme Court, in behalf of a Los Angeles group to the racial reassignments of students in that district, which the Court did not reach:

Respondent Bustop, Inc., argues that far from doing “more” than the Fourteenth Amendment requires, the State actually violated the Amendment by assigning students on the basis of race when such assignments were not necessary to remedy a federal constitutional violation. See Brief for Bustop, Inc., 1-18. We do not reach this contention. Crawford III, 458 U.S. at 535, Fn. 11.

Notably, in that case Bustop, Inc. had taken a position in opposition to the busing order of the Superior Court, which the Los Angeles school board also was seeking to overturn. So the situation there differed from that which arose when the parent objections were raised to student assignments on the basis of race by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board under the purported authority of the 1971 Swann class action. It upheld its racially discriminatory assignments, and was joined in the following case by the Swann plaintiffs in opposing termination of the authority to continue them indefinitely.

Belk v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, Docket No. 99-2389, was rendered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, sitting en banc, on September 21, 2001. Pages referred to below are from its multiple opinions published on the Internet at www.ca4.uscourts.gov at that time. (Also see 269 F.3d 305.)

The Court, in its ruling, terminated court jurisdiction over the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS):
 

Carlin v. Board of Education, San Diego Unified School District,
San Diego Superior Court No. 303800 (1967-1998)
San Diego, California
 

Monroe 

Monroe v. Board of Comm'rs of City of Jackson, Tenn., 391 U.S. 450, 459 (1968)
Jackson, Tennessee
 

Swann 

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 32 (1971)
Charlotte, North Carolina
 

Crawford III 

Crawford v. Los Angeles Board of Education, 458 U.S. 527 (1982)
Los Angeles, California
 

Belk 

Belk v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, Docket No. 99-2389, U.S. Court of Appeals, 4th Cir., 269 F.3d 305 (9/21/2001)
Charlotte, North Carolina
 

— Handbook: Challenge Six, pages 75 - 84 —