Deseg case continues its way through court

A couple of rulings in the St. Mary school desegregation case by U.S. District Judge Robert Summerhayes of the Western District of Louisiana this summer may have demonstrated that jurists, like teachers, take off points for tardiness.

Now in its sixth decade, the St. Mary desegregation case continues to wind its way through U.S. District Court.

The goal since the case was reopened in 2012 is to resolve the case with a designation that St. Mary Parish schools have achieved “unitary status.” That status would mean the School Board would be free, in fact and theory, from direct federal oversight for the first time since 1965.

The court handled two motions, one by the state of Louisiana and the other from the School Board, in a single order in July.

In one, attorneys for the state government had sought designation as amicus curiae, or a friend of the court.

“In other words,” Summerhayes wrote, “the State requests the ability to file responsive briefs and position statements with the Court, and to participate in formal and informal discovery, including site visits.

“The State grounds its request on its ‘interests in guarding against federal overreach and in maintaining federalism’s proper balance between state and federal powers [which] are already at play.’”

Summerhayes ruled that the state is allowed to file friend of the court briefs and to participate in oral arguments on “motions and matters arising in this case.” The state’s perspective could be helpful, the judge said.

But the ruling denied what the judge says the state seems to suggest: a role equivalent to the U.S. Justice Department, or even more far-reaching participation under rules allowing an “intervention of right.”

Those rules can allow intervention by people who may be affected by a court case but are not parties to the case itself.

Summerhayes ruled against that expanded role for the state, stating that federal authorities have been involved in the case since 1969. The intervention of right rules require timely action, and the state made its claim long after the case was certified as a class action lawsuit and after discovery was closed in
February 2022.

He also said that the School Board has been represented by attorneys experienced in desegregation cases.

The other motion dealt with who has access to the identities of people who come forward to offer with information about the case.

The parties had agreed to a protective order designed to allow the sharing of information among the attorneys. To obey laws prohibiting the release of identities or identifying information, the order limits information about certain people mostly to the attorneys in the case and to the court itself.

The protected information includes “the names of educators, class members, and community members who have reached out to counsel for the plaintiff class or the United States seeking assistance or providing information in connection with this Litigation,” according to Summerhayes’ summary of the motion.

The School Board later moved to allow the information to be shared with School Board members and top central office administrators. The attorneys argued that they can’t adequately represent the School Board against allegations without the help of the school personnel.

Summerhayes upheld a magistrate’s ruling denying the School Board’s motion, saying it was filed more than a year after the protective order was in place. He also argued that the School Board’s need for the expanded “eyes only” list was foreseeable when the order was negotiated.

Summerhayes wrote: “Now, at the close of discovery, the School Board essentially seeks to rewrite these provisions and expose the identities of School Board employees, teachers, and community members who provided information to the Plaintiffs and the United States with the expectation that the Protective
Order would shield their identities from supervisors and School Board administrators.”

The rulings represent two more steps on a road that began in August 1965, when the lawsuit was filed on behalf of five Black children who were sent to what was then St. Mary’s segregated school system.

Two months later, the federal court ruled that the School Board must present two reports each year, which the board filed until 1983.

Court documents indicate that the Western District appeared ready to grant unitary status, but the matter faded away for reasons that aren’t clear from the record.

Unitary status generally requires that school system must show that it has eliminated segregation in key areas, known as “Green factors” after the case in which they were articulated. Those factors are student assignment to schools, facilities, extracurricular activities, teacher and principal assignments, and, more recently, discipline policies and access to academic programs.

The desegregation lawsuit is captioned Claude Boudreaux et al vs. the St. Mary Parish School Board et al.