Opinion - Briggs - Supp.529

The public schools are facilities provided and paid for by the states. The state's regulation of the facilities which it furnishes is not to be interfered with unless constitutional rights are clearly infringed. There is nothing in the Constitution that required that the state grant to all members of the public a common right to use every facility that it affords. Grants in aid of education or for the support of the indigent may properly be made upon an individual basis if no discrimination is practiced; and, if the family, which is the racial unit, may be considered in these, it may be considered also in providing public schools. The equal protection of the laws does not mean that the child must be treated as the property of the state and the wishes of his family as to his upbringing be disregarded. The classification of children for the purpose of education in separate schools has a basis grounded in reason and experience; and, if equal facilities are afforded, it cannot be condemned as discriminatory for, as said by Mr. Justice Reed in New York Rapid Transit Corp. v. City of New York, 303 U.S. 573, 578, 58 S.Ct. 721, 724, 82 L.Ed. 1024: 'It has long been the law under the Fourteenth Amendment that 'a distinction in legislation is not arbitrary, if any state of facts reasonably can be conceived that would sustain it."4

We are cited to cases having relation to zoning ordinances, restrictive covenants in deeds and segregation in public conveyances. It is clear, however, that nothing said in these cases would justify our disregarding the great volume of authority relating directly to education in the public schools, which involves not transient contacts, but associations which affect the interests of the home and the wishes of the people with regard to the upbringing of their children. As Chief Justice Taft pointed out in Gong Lum v. Rice, supra (275 U.S. 78, 48 S.Ct. 93), 'a more difficult' question is presented by segregation in public conveyances than by segregation in the schools.

We conclude, therefore, that if equal facilities are offered, segregation of the races in the public schools as prescribed by the Constitution and laws of South Carolina is not of itself violative of the Amendment. We think that this conclusion is supported by overwhelming authority which we are not at liberty to disregard on the basis of theories advanced by a few educators and sociologists. Even if we felt at liberty to disregard other authorities, we may not ignore the unreversed decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States which are squarely in point and conclusive of the question before us. As said by the Court of Appeals of the Fourth Circuit in Boyer v. Garrett, 183 F.2d 582, a case involving segregation in a public playground, in which equality of treatment was admitted and segregation was attacked as being per se violative of the Fourteenth Amendment: 'The contention of plaintiffs is that, notwithstanding this equality of treatment, the rule providing for segregation is violative of the provisions of the federal Constitution. The District Court dismissed the complaint on the authority of Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 16 S.Ct. 1138, 41 L.Ed. 256; and the principal argument made on appeal is that the authority of Plessy v. Ferguson has been so weakened by subsequent decisions that we should no longer consider it as binding. We do not think, however, that we are at liberty thus to disregard a decision of the Supreme Court which that court has not seen fit to overrule and which it expressly refrained from reexamining, although urged to do so, in the very recent case of Sweatt v. Painter (339 U.S. 629), 70 S.Ct. 848 (94 L.Ed. 1114). It is for the Supreme Court, not us, to overrule its decisions or to hold them outmoded.'

To this we may add that, when seventeen states and the Congress of the United States have for more than three-quarters of a century required segregation of the races in the public schools, and when this has received the approval of the leading appellate courts of the country including the unanimous approval of the Supreme Court of the United States at a time when that court included Chief Justice Taft and Justices Stone, Holmes and Brandeis, it is a late day to say that such segregation is violative of fundamental constitutional rights. It is hardly reasonable to suppose that legislative bodies over so wide a territory, including the Congress of the United States, and great judges of high courts have knowingly defied the Constitution for so long a period or that they have acted in ignorance of the meaning of its provisions. The constitutional principle is the same now that it has been throughout this period; and if conditions have changed so that segregation is no longer wise, this is a matter for the legislatures and not for the courts. The members of the judiciary have no more right to read their ideas of sociology into the Constitution than their ideas of economics.

It is argued that, because the school facilities furnished Negroes in District No. 22 are inferior to those furnished white persons, we should enjoin segregation rather than direct the equalizing of conditions. In as much as we think that the law requiring segregation is valid, however, and that the inequality suffered by plaintiffs results, not from the law, but from the way it has been administered, we think that our injunction should be directed to removing the inequalities resulting from administration within the framework of the law rather than to nullifying the law itself. As a court of equity, we should exercise our power to assure to plaintiffs the equality of treatment to which they are entitled with due regard to the legislative policy of the state. In directing that the school facilities afforded Negroes within the district be equalized promptly with those afforded white persons, we are giving plaintiffs all the relief that they can reasonably ask and the relief that is ordinarily granted in cases of this sort. See Carter v. County School Board of Arlington County, Virginia, 4 Cir., 182 F.2d 531. The court should not use its power to abolish segregation in a state where it is required by law if the equality demanded by the Constitution can be attained otherwise. This much is demanded by the spirit of comity which must prevail in the relationship between the agencies of the federal government and the states if our constitutional system is to endure.

Decree will be entered finding that the constitutional and statutory provisions requiring segregation in the public schools are not of themselves violative of the Fourteenth Amendment, but that defendants have denied to plaintiffs rights guaranteed by that amendment in failing to furnish for Negroes in School District 22 educational facilities and opportunities equal to those furnished white persons, and injunction will issue directing defendants promptly to furnish Negroes within the district educational facilities and opportunities equal to those furnished white persons and to report to the court within six months as to the action that has been taken by them to effectuate the court's decree.

Injunction to abolish segregation denied.

Injunction to equalize educational facilities granted.
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