A Stand Against Busing

All across America, thousands of little schoolchildren have been ordered to board countless numbers of buses to be carried across neighborhood, city, and county lines in order to achieve some magical racial mixing of bodies which satisfies the arbitrary and absurd sociological notions of misguided federal judges and bureaucrats. In Michigan, in Maryland, in North Carolina, in Virginia, and in many other states--north, south, east and west--some of our federal courts have defied the very meaning of "equal protection of the law" by assigning and transporting helpless schoolchildren on the basis of race, creed, and color.

The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment itself is a wise provision of law. It is a plain and unambiguous provision. It means that no state shall deny to any person within its boundaries the equal protection of the law. Properly interpreted, it prohibits a state from treating persons similarly situated in a different manner.

The Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown against Board of Education of Topeka held that a state violates the clause if it denies any child admission to any of its public schools on account of the child's race. Over the past decade, the federal courts and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare have turned their backs on the mandate of the 1954 Supreme Court decision--that race be eliminated as a determinant in assigning children to public schools.

Paradoxically, the federal courts and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare have come to insist that race be used as a basis for pupil assignment. They have required the adoption of school assignment plans which are expressly designed to alter the racial composition of schools in a manner sufficient to satisfy some mysterious mathematical level deemed by the courts and the bureaucracy to be sociologically acceptable. It is, indeed, a great and sad irony that the federal courts and the federal bureaucracy would require the use of racial quotas and racial balancing to effectuate a constitutional principle which forbids government to treat people differently on account of their race. Quite clearly the federal courts have perverted and distorted the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as it has been applied to the assignment of schoolchildren to the public schools.

Most Americans have waited and hoped with great patience for the Supreme Court to regain its judicial sanity and to reject lower federal court orders which impose massive busing and racially based pupil assignment plans in order to achieve racial balance. They have waited in vain.

In 1971 the Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Board of Education. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court passed over its most recent opportunity to strike a blow for freedom. Indeed, by sustaining the order of the federal district court requiring the massive busing of schoolchildren to achieve racial balance in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County schools, the Supreme Court seems to have closed the door to any hope that our courts will return to a reasonable interpretation of the equal protection clause. Despite statements to the contrary--statements constructed upon a tortuous use of the English language--the Supreme Court imposed nothing less than a scheme for racial balance in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County schools.

Having waited for so long for so little from the federal courts, the American people are now rightly demanding that some fundamental alteration in the present state of the law be brought about so as to put an end to the senseless busing of innocent little children for the purpose of achieving racial balance. The proposed constitutional amendment introduced on January 23, 1973, by Senator Allen (D-Ala.) and me will put an end to the judicial and bureaucratic tyranny which has imposed this terrible hardship on millions of our schoolchildren and their parents.

This proposed amendment would absolutely prohibit any court and any government agency from assigning schoolchildren to or requiring them to attend a particular school on account of race, creed, or color. It would constitute, in effect, a supporting provision in the Constitution for the true interpretation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, namely, that government is forbidden to use race, creed, or color in connection with its official policies and programs.

I intend to join in support of other legislative efforts to prevent the issuance of more ruinous judicial orders and bureaucratic decrees which has so unsettled our citizens over the past several years. For as long as I have been in the Senate, I have fought vigorously against the usurpation by federal courts and by bureaucrats of authority and responsibility lawfully vested in local school boards around our country. I have continually urged the Congress to express its opposition to judicial and bureaucratic tyranny by enacting strong and effective legislation. Occasionally, we have been able to adopt provisions in the form of amendments to various pieces of legislation which on their face would seem to have been sufficient to put an end to busing. And yet, after every such seemingly successful effort, the Congress has been surprised by a twisted judicial interpretation of its language or studied disregard of it by government bureaucrats. Thus, in addition to continued consideration of legislative solutions to this matter, I am convinced that we must also move toward a constitutional amendment.

I hope that we can act to restore the people's faith in our form of government as a government based upon principles of individuals liberty and equal treatment under the law for all. The adoption of this proposed constitutional amendment would, in my opinion, restore this faith by bringing order out of the chaos which presently engulfs the public schools of America.

Sam J. Ervin Jr., the North Carolina Democrat who became somewhat of a folk hero during last summer's Senate Watergate hearings, took this stand against busing on April 10, 1973, during special Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on a proposed constitutional amendment on busing.