The Containment by Michelle Adams

Author:Michelle Adams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

PART III

MILLIKEN V. BRADLEY

17

NOW MORE THAN EVER

Judge Roth had issued a momentous decision. Michigan state attorney general Frank Kelley, however, strongly disagreed with the ruling. He would write later in his autobiography of his concern that court-ordered metropolitan desegregation might derail his prospects for higher office. “What I could instantly see was how unpopular this idea [cross-district busing] was. I also knew, however, that if the courts were to order such a thing, I would legally have to defend and enforce that ruling. Which, politically, would be the kiss of death.”1 Pointing to the fact that Roth had made no finding of intentional segregation against the suburbs, the state attorney general called the decision to include them in the remedy “wrong” and legally unsustainable.2 Kelley vowed to appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary. There, the state attorney general anticipated a receptive audience. Conservative justices would vindicate Michigan’s position, he believed. As the Detroit Free Press put it, “It was still [Kelley’s] opinion that the present Supreme Court, appointed in part by Mr. Nixon, will not uphold cross-district busing orders such as those issued by Roth.”3 Kelley made good on his promise, immediately appealing to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals—along with the rest of the defendants—Roth’s June 14, 1972, metropolitan ruling.4

Roth’s metropolitan ruling had set out the broad guidelines for desegregation, but it was up to the desegregation panel to work out the details. It was hard at work. In late June 1972, the panel ordered several “test runs” between two Detroit high schools and the Bloomfield Hills and West Bloomfield Hills school districts to check school bus trip times and traffic conditions.5 Acting on the panel’s recommendations, in mid-July Roth added the state treasurer as a defendant and ordered her to pay for the acquisition of 295 buses “for the purposes of providing transportation under an interim [desegregation] plan.”6 The extra buses, if purchased, would roll when school opened in just a few short months.

On July 13, 1972, the Sixth Circuit stayed Judge Roth’s order requiring the bus purchase.7 Then, just a few days later, the appellate court clarified its intentions. It continued the stay on the purchases “until entry by the District Judge of a final desegregation order or until certification by the District Judge of an appealable question.”8 What this really meant was that the appellate court didn’t want Roth to take any significant steps toward ordering metropolitan desegregation—such as by requiring the expenditure of significant funds to purchase buses—until it had had a chance to weigh in on the major issues in the case. Or, as Dimond explained, the “Sixth Circuit, with the reputation of a defender of segregation in the North and South and one of the most conservative of the courts of appeal, was not about to allow Judge Roth to implement the nation’s first substantial cross-district desegregation plan before any appellate review.”9

Typically, parties cannot appeal to a higher court until a case has concluded. Only then are the questions presented by the case ready for appellate review.

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