Citations
- 264 F.2d 780
Full opinion text
PER CURIAM.
The parents of a number of Negro children in Montgomery County, North Carolina, brought this suit to secure an injunction against the Superintendent of Schools and the County Board of Education, directing the defendants to present a plan of desegregation of the races in the schools and forbidding them to assign Negroes to particular schools because of their race. The complaint was filed on July 29, 1955, as a class action by thirteen adults personally and as the next friends of the forty-five minor plaintiffs, all of whom are Negroes. The defendants filed an answer on September 22, 1955, alleging that the plaintiffs had failed to exhaust the administrative remedies provided by the State, in that they did not comply with the statutes of the State which regulate the assignment and enrollment of pupils in the public schools. On this account, the defendants moved the court to dismiss the suit, and the District Judge after hearing granted the motion.
We are of the opinion that the present case is ruled by the prior decisions of this court in Carson v. Board of Education, 4 Cir., 227 F.2d 789, and Carson v. Warlick, 4 Cir., 238 F.2d 724. In the first of these cases the following statement was made in the per curiam opinion (at page 790):
«* * * The Act of March 30, 1955,* entitled ‘An Act to Provide for the Enrollment of Pupils in Public Schools’, being chapter 366 of the Public Laws of North Carolina of the Session of 1955, provides for enrollment by the county and city boards of education of school children applying for admission to schools, and authorizes the boards to adopt rules and regulations with regard thereto. It further provides for application to and prompt hearing by the board in the case of any child whose admission to any public school within the county or city administrative unit has been denied, with right of appeal therefrom to the Superior Court of the county and thence to the Supreme Court of the state. An administrative remedy is thus provided by state law for persons who feel that they have not been assigned to the schools that they are entitled to attend; and it is well settled that the courts of the United States will not grant injunctive relief until administrative remedies have been exhausted. * * *»
This case was brought to this court a second time, in Carson v. Warlick, supra, after the Supreme Court of North Carolina in Joyner v. McDowell County Board of Education, 244 N.C. 164, 92 S.E.2d 795, had interpreted the Pupil Placement Act of the State, and had held that the factors involved in the selection of appropriate schools for a child necessitated the consideration of the application of any child or children individually and not en masse. It was shown to this court that the plaintiffs, in the action in the court below, had not attempted to comply with the provisions of the statute as so interpreted but had merely inquired of the Secretary of the Board of Education what steps were being taken for the admission of ■ colored children to the schools of the town of Old Fort, and that the school authorities in reply merely pointed out that no Negro pupil had made application to attend the school and that the board therefore had no cause to take any action in that connection. We therefore reaffirmed our previous decision and held that the plaintiffs were not entitled to relief because they had not exhausted their administrative remedies. In the course of the opinion Judge Parker said (238 F.2d at pages 728-729):
“Somebody must enroll the pupils in the schools. They cannot enroll themselves; and we can think of no one better qualified to undertake the task than the officials of the schools and the school boards having the schools in charge. It is to be presumed that these will obey the law, observe the standards prescribed by the legislature, and avoid the discrimination on account of race which the Constitution forbids. Not until they have been applied to and have failed to give relief should the courts be asked to interfere in school administration. As said by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294, 299, 75 S.Ct. 753, 756, 99 L.Ed. 1083:
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