Soria

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION FOLLOWING NINTH CIRCUIT’S REMAND

This is a school desegregation case. Plaintiffs, Mexican American and Black American elementary school students, brought this action against defendant, the Oxnard School District Board of Trustees (the School Board/the Board) in order to obtain an affirmative plan of desegregation. On May 10, 1971, this court heard plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment on the question of the School Board’s accountability for racial imbalance which, the parties agreed, prevailed at nine of Oxnard’s twelve elementary public schools. In granting summary judgment, this court treated the case as a de facto segregation matter and ruled, contrary to the School Board’s contention, that the question of the Board’s intent to segregate its elementary schools did not raise a genuine issue of material fact in this case. This court’s “Memorandum Granting Motion for Summary Judgment” is reported at 328 F.Supp. 155 (1971). In granting summary judgment, this court held that segregated elementary schools denied plaintiffs their rights to equal protection of the laws, guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. To redress that denial, this court charged the…