Refighting Yesterday's Battles

Jim Crow is dead. Why not bury him?

Jeff Taylor | December 8, 2006

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o:p> /o:p> /p> p class="MsoNormal">In 1969 a U.S. District Court judge ordered CMS to use all means, including busing, to desegregate after a black student brought suit challenging a student assignment plan that kept him out of a nearby all-white school. In 1971 the Supreme Court upheld that ruling with its Swann opinion. o:p> /o:p> /p>

But by the mid-90s busing in Char-Meck chiefly served to hide low-performing, often minority, populations by spreading them across a well-funded county system. Meanwhile, white students were denied access to some magnet programs as a result of racial targets. In that environment Gauvreau and several other parents sued CMS in federal court seeking to have the busing mandate removed and CMS declared a "unitary" system, the opposite of "separate but equal."

In 1999 the district court agreed and ruled that CMS had achieved "unitary status" and, further, that race could not be used in future student assignments. CMS immediately appealed that ruling to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Initially, a three-judge panel sided with CMS on student assignment, but then a full en banc ruling doubled back to side with the parents, but with a significant caveat.

p class="MsoNormal">"The appeals court was not ready to say that race could never be used, as the trial court had ruled, so it refused to go that far," Gauvreau explains. o:p>