Learn about the case — historical background and documents
The Federal Courts and Their Jurisdiction
The legal efforts to desegregate the New Orleans public schools involved three federal courts: the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, usually involving a single judge, such as Judge Wright, but sometimes a three-judge panel convened to assess the constitutionality of state legislation enacted to block school desegregation; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit; and the Supreme Court of the United States.
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana
District courts are located throughout the United States in over 90 districts, with jurisdiction to hear all cases involving what are called “federal questions”—cases involving an alleged violation of federal statute, federal treaty, or a federal constitutional provision and some disputes based on state law violations, if the parties to the dispute are residents of different states (diversity jurisdiction).
In this case, the black plaintiffs alleged that the Orleans Parish School Board had violated the plaintiffs’ rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by assigning their children to racially separate schools. Judge J. Skelly Wright, a U.S. district court judge in New Orleans, presided over this case in the district court and issued the most critical rulings in the case.
The Eastern District of Louisiana was established by Congress in 1881. (Twice before 1881, Congress had divided Louisiana into two federal judicial districts and then reunited the state as a single judicial district.) At the time of the Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board proceedings, Congress had authorized the district court to have two judges. Judge Wright served on the court from 1949 to 1962, and Judge Herbert Christenberry served from 1947 to 1975.
Certain aspects of the Bush v. Orleans case were heard by a three-judge district court. Congress first required three-judge district courts in 1908 in certain cases brought under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act or the Interstate Commerce Act. Between 1910 and 1976, if a party contended that a state official was enforcing a state statute or state constitutional provision that violated the U.S. Constitution, federal law required that a district court consisting of three federal judges hear the case. These three-judge district courts sat only when a need for them arose and were appointed by the chief judge for the court of appeals in the circuit. The law required that at least one of the three judges be a court of appeals judge. Appeals from the three-judge courts went directly to the Supreme Court.
Because some of the claims in the New Orleans desegregation litigation involved the implementation of Louisiana state statutes that the plaintiffs argued violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, on several occasions a three-judge district court was assembled. United States District Court Judge Skelly Wright sat on all of these three-judge courts and wrote the opinion for the court in every instance.
Three-judge district courts are still required by federal law in cases challenging the constitutionality of the apportionment of congressional seats or apportionment of state legislatures.
United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
After a U.S. district court judge has rendered a decision, in most cases either party may appeal that decision to a U.S. court of appeals. At the time of the Bush case, there were eleven courts of appeals organized by Congress in the regional judicial circuits of the United States (there are now twelve regional circuits and one special subject-matter circuit, each of which has a court of appeals). The appeal from a decision of a U.S. district court judge almost always goes to the court of appeals for the “circuit” in which the case arose. Cases appealed from U.S. district courts in Louisiana go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which meets in New Orleans. The Fifth Circuit court of appeals heard cases in 1960 from the district courts in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. (In 1980, Congress divided the Fifth Circuit and organized Georgia, Alabama, and Florida as the Eleventh Circuit.) The U.S. courts of appeals typically hear appeals in panels of three judges. In this case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard several appeals from Judge Skelly Wright’s rulings in the district court.
A party that loses in the U.S. court of appeals can ask either the original panel of three judges or all of the judges in that particular court to reconsider the panel’s decision. In 1960, there were seven active-status judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. When the full court agrees to hear a case appealed to all of the judges, it is known as hearing the case “en banc.” The court is not required to hear a case en banc and does so infrequently. On several occasions in the New Orleans school desegregation litigation, the Orleans Parish School Board asked the Fifth Circuit court of appeals to hear a case en banc, but the court consistently refused to do so.
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the nation. Congress authorized it to review cases from U.S. courts of appeals, state supreme courts, and three-judge federal courts that involve “federal questions”—questions of interpretation of a federal statute, treaty, or constitutional provision. With a few exceptions, the Supreme Court is not required to hear any particular case. The Supreme Court agreed to consider certain claims raised in the Bush v. Orleans case, and it consistently affirmed the decisions of the lower courts. The Supreme Court, however, never exercised a full review of the Bush case.
Bush v. Orleans Parish School Board and the Desegregation of New Orleans Schools