Topeka Supplemental Brief for the Board of Education Kansas on Questions 4 and Propounded by the Court (5 )

PETER F. CALDWELL,
Counsel for the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 512 Capitol Federal Building, Topeka, Kansas.

This supplemental brief is filed in response to the order of this Court directing and requesting further briefs and argument on questions 4 and 5 heretofore propounded by the Court.

In its brief, heretofore filed herein in December, 1953, The Board of Education of Topeka urged that in the event segregation in its elementary schools were held to be unconstitutional, this case should simply be remanded to the lower court with instructions to reverse its judgment and to enter a decree requiring that segregation be terminated "as rapidly as is practicable" by the defendant Board of Education. It was suggested that by such a decree the lower court could retain jurisdiction for enforcement of the decree, and that if a need for a more specific decree should arise in the future, the lower court would have power to amplify its decree under the general power of an equity court to enforce its decree.

As was pointed out in its brief filed in December, 1953, The Board of Education of Topeka in September, 1953, adopted a resolution to terminate segregation in its elementary schools "as rapidly as is practicable"; and on September 8, 1953, terminated segregation at two of its elementary schools, to wit: Southwest and Randolph Schools.

Since that time, the Board of Education of Topeka has already taken its second far-reaching step or stride toward termination of segregation by adopting the recommendations of its superintendent of schools as set out in the following report which was made on January 20, 1954, and was approved and adopted by the Board of Education on the same date: