Foreword

The Pasadena example presents a due process flaw in desegregation class actions whereby students subject to such race-based assignments, and their parents, lack a separate voice in the proceedings. As the real parties in interest to a declaration subjecting such students to perpetual reassignment, they could have made a much stronger objection than that it “inconvenienced” their board.

It seemed to me that similarly onerous conditions were imposed upon the DeKalb County School System in the ruling by the Eleventh Circuit appealed by the DCSS in Freeman v. Pitts, which were:

... The DCSS must consider pairing and clustering of schools, drastic gerrymandering of school zones, and grade reorganization...
 

The DCSS and the district court must consider busing regardless of whether plaintiffs support such a proposal.
 

The DCSS's neighborhood plan is not inviolable ...
Pitts by Pitts v. Freeman.

These conditions affected not only the petitioner DCSS, but more directly the students who would be subject to reassignment on the basis of their race. Since the DeKalb students were not parties before the high court, I believed their interests should be separately presented by Groundswell Intervenors, as amici curiae. Accordingly, their amici curiae brief was filed in the Freeman case in support of the petition of DCSS.

Upon the favorable result in Freeman on March 31, 1992, Groundswell Intervenors filed a motion on April 6 in the Carlin case to terminate court jurisdiction. But the San Diego Board switched from its 1981 position, urging termination, to urging its continuance in opposition to the Groundswell motion and subsequent motions.

It took until July 1, 1998 for Groundswell Intervenors to end the Carlin case, over strong opposition by the Carlin Plaintiffs and Defendant Board, first before the trial court and then the appellate court. The extraordinary experience in restoring local control, under those circumstances, by ending a class action aimed at non-class persons is reported upon by me as their lawyer in the following two books.

The first book, published in 1998, Busing — Not Integration — Opposed, illustrates how the Constitution was invoked by Groundswell in opposition to the continuing effort by the Plaintiff-Class in the Carlin case to racially
 

Jackson v. Pasadena City School Dist., 59 Cal.2d 876 (1963)
Pasadena, California
 

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

Pasadena 

Spangler v. Pasadena City Bd. of Ed., 611 F.2d 1239 (9th C.A., 1979)
Pasadena, California
 

Pitts II 

Pitts by Pitts v. Freeman (11th Cir. 1989), 887 F.2d 1438,1443
DeKalb County School System (DCSS),
DeKalb County, Georgia
 

Freeman 

Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U.S. 467, 112 S.Ct. 1430 (1992)
DeKalb County School System (DCSS),
DeKalb County, Georgia
 

Board of Education v. Superior Court, 61 Cal.App.4th 411 (Feb.1998)
[conclusion of Carlin v. Board of Education]
San Diego, California
 

— Handbook: Foreword, pages v - ix —