Court in desegregation case blocks Alabama school split

MONTGOMERY — A mostly white Alabama city can’t break away from a heavily black county school system to form its own educational district, a federal appeals ruled Tuesday in a desegregation case dating to 1965.

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a judge was wrong to let the Birmingham suburb of Gardendale secede from the Jefferson County school system. The city is more than 80 percent white, while the court decision says the county system is heavily black.

U.S. District Court Judge Madeline Haikala ruled last year that Gardendale was discriminatory when it tried to form its own school system, but she decided to let a split go ahead anyway over a three-year period with certain conditions.

The appeals court agreed that a split would be discriminatory, but it said that means the city can’t break away. Haikala abused her discretion in coming up with her own remedy rather than just denying the split based on her ruling that it was racially biased, the panel said.

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