Freeman v. Pitts

Facts of the Case

At the time of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), the segregation of children on the basis of race in the 21 southern and border states was nearly complete, with few Blacks attending other than virtually all-Black schools. The problem was exacerbated because in Brown II (1955) the Court gave a vague deadline, requiring officials to dismantle dual systems “with all deliberate speed.” Thus, segregation persisted for more than a generation of school-aged children.

It was not until the late 1960s that the Supreme Court, in Green v. New Kent County School Board (1968), ordered school officials in local districts to take affirmative steps to eliminate unconstitutional segregation “root and branch” by coming forward with plans that “promise realistically to work, and work now” (p. 439). In Green, the Court went on to command the creation of unitary systems free from discrimination not only in student assignment, but also in five additional areas of school system operations: curriculum, staffing, extracurricular activities, facilities, and transportation.

Between 1968 and 1972, in the wake of Green, over 1 million Black children entered formerly all-White schools in districts across the southeast. One of these districts was the DeKalb County School System (DCSS) serving suburban Atlanta, the focus of Freeman. DCSS entered into a consent order in 1969 to dismantle its unlawfully segregated school system. Seventeen years later, in 1986, the school board petitioned a federal trial court to declare it unitary and relieve it of judicial oversight.

A federal trial court in Freeman ruled that while the school system achieved unitary status in four of the six areas required by the Supreme Court in Green, it had not yet completely eliminated discrimination in two areas-faculty assignments and the allocation of resources. The court thus proceeded to order more relief with respect to those two facets of district operations, but declined to exert continuing control over the four other areas of school operations. One of the areas the court indicated it would order no additional relief in was student assignment, noting that officials had acted in good faith in attempting to balance the schools racially, even though the balance was fleeting due to dramatic changes in the system's Black enrollment, which grew from less than 6% to more than 47% between 1969 and 1986.

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