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Missouri v. Jenkins

Long-running litigation involving the Kansas City, Missouri, School District (KCMSD) made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court on three occasions. In 1989, the Court decided that the school board could be responsible for attorney fees. In 1990, the Court affirmed that the federal judiciary could require the board to levy property taxes that were sufficient to fund a desegregation remedy. However, in 1995, the Court decreed that lower federal courts exceeded their discretion in mandating a costly desegregation remedy that required the state to pay for salary increases for almost all school personnel and quality education programs.

The First Round

In 1977, the KCMSD, its school board, and the children of two school board members sued the state, surrounding suburban school systems, and various federal agencies, alleging that the defendants created and continued a system of racially segregated schools in the Kansas City area. A federal trial court realigned the parties, making the KCMSD a defendant, finding that the state and KCMSD were liable for operating a segregated school system. The plaintiffs had sought an order affecting the entire metropolitan area. However, the court limited its orders to the area within the borders of KCMSD while dismissing the surrounding school systems and federal agencies from the litigation.

In its first remedial order in 1985, a federal trial court directed officials to reduce class sizes and to expand expensive programs, such as full-day kindergarten, summer school, early childhood offerings, and tutoring programs to increase educational opportunities for all students in the KCMSD. In addition, the court ordered cash grants for schools and a return of all schools to an AAA rating, the highest state accreditation standard. These improvements cost over $220 million.

When the case first arrived before the Supreme Court, the justices held that the Eleventh Amendment did not prohibit the award of attorney fees and that they could include payments for the work of paralegals, clerks, and recent law school graduates (Missouri v. Jenkins I, 1989).

The Second Round

In another aspect of the case, in 1986, a federal trial court embarked on a plan to retain and attract nonmi-nority students back to the KCMSD by creating world-class facilities and converting its secondary schools and half of its elementary schools into magnet schools with specialized programs. The court-ordered improvements in school facilities eventually cost over $540 million. The court noted that the substantial expenditures financed air-conditioned high schools with 15 computers in every classroom, a planetarium, radio and television studios with an editing and animation lab, a model United Nations wired to allow language translation, an art gallery, movie editing and screening rooms, vocational facilities, swimming pools, and many other facilities exceeding those available in other school districts.

A year later, in 1987, the trial court ordered the state to fund increased salaries for KCMSD personnel at a cost of over $200 million per year. In 1990, the Supreme Court approved the method used in paying for the expensive improvements in the KCMSD educational system in upholding an order that required the board to increase a school levy to pay for the costs of desegregation (Missouri v. Jenkins II, 1990).

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