Groundswell Intervenors Support
Challenge to Busing Order,
in Freeman v. Pitts, a Class Action,
to Restore Local Control of Student Assignment

On March 31, 1992 many parents in the DeKalb County School System, Georgia (DCSS), welcomed the decision in Freeman v. Pitts, allowing for the first time since 1969 citizens in that school district to run their own schools as to assignments of their children.

They had apparently overcome the challenges facing parents trying to have their school boards seek the end of continuous judicial sanctioning of the racial school assignments of their children in “desegregation” class actions. This is because school assignments sought in these class actions impact upon them rather than upon the board members, who are sued and must consider other interests in determining their actions.

Fortunately the interests of those in DeKalb County targeted for busing were represented when the DCSS board successfully opposed an appellate order for the indefinite busing of their children. But the difficulty that school board had in attaining the end of court supervision challenges parents to obtain ways to do so more fairly and speedily, as noted by Justice Scalia:

... (W)e must resolve — if not today, then soon — what is to be done in the vast majority of other districts, where, though our cases continue to profess that judicial oversight of school operations is a temporary expedient, democratic processes remain suspended, with no prospect of restoration, 38 years after Brown v. Board of Education... Freeman v. Pitts, supra, 112 S.Ct.1430,1450.
 

Brown I 

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)
Topeka, Kansas
 

Freeman 

Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U.S. 467, 112 S.Ct. 1430 (1992)
DeKalb County School System (DCSS),
DeKalb County, Georgia
Enstrom: filed amici curiae brief
 

— Handbook: Challenge Three, pages 45 - 54 —