Keyes v. School District No. 1.

Denver (1973) 7-1 Facts: While no law was ever made mandating the segregation of Denver schools, such segregation occurred. This was done with several things such as messing with school zones and mobile classrooms. The effect was segregation amongst the districts in the Detroit area. Issue: Was the segregation of students de jure and therefore a violation of their rights? JB: while there might have been de Jure segregation, the case at hand involved only one district and plaintiffs would have to in separate trials show the circumstances where each surrounding districting committed de jure segregation. Holding: The School board officials are found to have committed de jure segregation. Rationale: (Justice Brennan) The District Court erred in separating Negroes and Hispanos for the purposes of defining a segregated school.(687) We have never suggested that plaintiffs in school desegregation cases must bear the burden of proving the elements of de jure segregation as to each and every school or each and every student within the school system. [W]here the plaintiffs prove that the school authorities have carried out a systematic program of segregation affecting a substantial portion of the students, schools, teachers, and facilities within the school system, it is only common sense to conclude that there exists a predicate for a finding of the existence of a dual school system.(687) It is obvious that a practice of concentrating Negroes in certain schools by structuring attendance zones or designating feeder schools on the basis of race has the reciprocal effect of keeping other nearby schools predominantly white.(687) Commons sense dictates the conclusion that racially inspired school boards actions have an impact beyond the particular schools that are the subjects of those actions.(688) the prior doing of other similar acts, whether clearly as a part of a scheme or not, is useful as reducing the possibility the act in question was done with innocent intent.(688) It establishes, in other words, a prima facie case of unlawful segregative design on the part of school authorities, and shifts to those authorities the burden of proving that there segregated schools within the system are not the result of intentionally segregative actions.(688) We emphasize that the differentiating factor between de jure segregation and so-called de facto segregation is purpose or intent to segregate. (688) Concurrence: (Justice Douglas) [T]here is, for the purposes of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as applied to the school cases, no difference between de facto and de jure segregation. (689) Concurring in part, dissenting in part: (Justice Powell) I would hold, quite simply, that where segregated public schools exist within a school district to a substantial degree, there is a prima facie case the duly constituted public authorities are sufficiently responsible to warrant imposing upon them a nationally applicable burden to demonstrate they nevertheless are operating a genuinely integrated school system. (689) Dissent: (Justice Rehnquist)

[U]less the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment now be held to embody a principle of taint, found in some primitive

legal systems but discarded centuries ago in ours, such a result can only be described as a product of judicial fiat.