A federal appeals court ruled today that Gardendale can't form its own school system and agreed with a judge's finding that racial motives were involved in the attempt to split from the Jefferson County system.

It's a ruling Gardendale plans to appeal.

The three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered that U.S. District Court Judge Madeline Haikala rescind the part of her order from last year that allowed Gardendale to secede over a three-year period from Jefferson County schools and form its own system.

Circuit Judge William Pryor, a former Alabama Attorney General, wrote the opinion.

"The district court (Haikala) found that the Gardendale Board acted with a discriminatory purpose to exclude black children from the proposed school system and, alternatively, that the secession of the Gardendale Board would impede the efforts of the Jefferson County Board to fulfill its desegregation obligations," according to the 11th Circuit opinion. "Despite these findings, the district court devised and permitted a partial secession that neither party requested."

"We conclude that the district court committed no clear error in its findings of a discriminatory purpose and of impeding the desegregation of the Jefferson County schools, but that it abused its discretion when it sua sponte (own her own) allowed a partial secession. We affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand with instructions (to Haikala) to deny the motion to secede."

Gardendale school officials say they will appeal and repeatedly denied the court's findings that the idea for the system was racially motived.

Michael Hogue, President of the Gardendale City Schools Board of Education, stood on the front steps of the Hugo Black United States Courthouse in Birmingham, and read from a written statement late Tuesday afternoon.

"The Gardendale Board of Education is deeply grieved and disappointed by the opinion of the three-judge panel refusing to allow us to operate our own city schools in Gardendale," Hogue said. "We believe our actions have always reflected only our desire to form a new, welcoming, and inclusive school system to help schoolchildren and parents succeed, and we will continue to fight to achieve this by seeking further review in the federal courts."

Hogue said they believe the three-judge panel misunderstood the evidence that was offered to the district court and has misapplied the law. "A decision that blames Gardendale for the comments of private citizens on social media, is both contrary to the Constitution and a fundamental miscarriage of justice--and it is one that we will continue to appeal," he said.

"In our view, the judges mistakenly attributed what they saw as improper motives by a few to the Board of Education and the City as a whole," Hogue said. "We plan to pursue all legal options to vindicate the rights of our residents and receive permission to operate what we have always desired: an excellent school system, open to all students of all races, and dedicated to improving the education of our children."

"We know the heart and intent of this board and of the residents of Gardendale as a welcoming community, and we believe our actions reflect just that," Hogue said. "This is not the result we deserve, and the fight is not over."

Live at the Hugo L. Black Courthouse with Dr. Michael Hogue Posted by Anna Beahm on Tuesday, February 13, 2018

But the 11th Circuit did leave the door open for Gardendale to come back later with a more acceptable proposal for a system later on.

"If the Gardendale Board, for permissible purposes in the future, satisfies its burden to develop a secession plan that will not impede the desegregation efforts of the Jefferson County Board, then the district court may not prohibit the secession," according to the ruling. "We do not belittle the 'need that is strongly felt in our society' to have '[d]irect control over decisions vitally affecting the education of one's children,'" according to the ruling that cites a previous case. "Indeed, the "local autonomy of school districts is a vital national tradition,'" the opinion states, quoting another case.

"We hold only that the desire for local autonomy must yield when a constitutional violation is found and remains unremedied," the court ruled.

Haikala had noted in her order that some of the organizers of the movement to form a Gardendale system had stated in pamplets an social media that the city didn't want their schools to turn out like a few other schools in the area. Those schools had become more racially mixed in recent years.

Gardendale's mayor repeated that race wasn't a factor.

"We didn't do it for racial motivations," said Gardendale Mayor Stan Hogeland. "We did it to provide better education for our kids."

Haikala ruled in a 190-page order on April 24 that despite finding some Gardendale residents had racial motives for splitting off from the Jefferson County system, she would allow the city to form its own school system under certain conditions. Those conditions included appointing an African American to the school board, forming a plan on how it would avoid discrimination, paying the county for the high school (potentially more than $50 million), and operating two elementary schools for two years before being allowed to also operate the middle school and high school.

Haikala presides over the 1965 school desegregation case Stout vs. Jefferson County Board of Education. Since a 1971 order in that case, federal judges have continued oversight - including approval of attendance zones - over county schools to make sure racial balances are maintained and no discrimination occurs.

Cities allowed to split off from the Jefferson County system since the 1971 order have been required to remain under the desegregation order until their system has reached "unitary status" - achieving the goals of becoming a non-discriminatory, desegregated system.

Attorneys for black school children - including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and civil rights attorney and former federal judge U.W. Clemon - in the lawsuit appealed Haikala's ruling to the 11th Circuit, saying they agreed with Haikala's findings that the attempted split was racially motivated to keep the schools from accepting more black children. But, they disagreed with her giving Gardendale a plan for starting their own system anyway.

"We have long maintained that Gardendale's attempt to form its own school district was specifically designed to exclude Black schoolchildren," LDF's Director of Litigation Sam Spital said in a statement issued Tuesday after the ruling. "Ultimately, this separation would have created a district significantly whiter than the county as a whole, forcing some students to attend more racially segregated schools."

"Today's ruling was the only logical conclusion following a district court's direct acknowledgment that racial discrimination was a motivating factor in the City's plans to secede," Spital said. "We commend the federal appeals court for its decision that combats a disturbing re-segregation trend, seen not just in Gardendale, but in cities across the country. We must continue to thwart re-segregation efforts so that students can benefit from co-existing and learning together. We will continue doing everything in our power to ensure that state and local governments facilitate the integration of all children."

BREAKING: A federal appeals court has upheld the effort to desegregate an Alabama school district, prohibiting the city of Gardendale, AL from creating a separate, segregated, district designed to reduce the number of Black children its schools. OPINION: https://t.co/j4rFLXDViM pic.twitter.com/nFqTl74GY0 — Legal Defense Fund (@NAACP_LDF) February 13, 2018

Gardendale also had appealed to the 11th Circuit over Haikala's partial ruling and finding of racial motives. The city also disagreed that it shouldn't have to reimburse the county for taking over Gardendale High School, which was one of the contingencies in her ruling.

Gardendale residents voted for a school tax to fund a school system in 2013, and formed a school board and hired a superintendent in 2014. But it has had no students, teachers or schools.

"The city is bigger than a school system. We will move forward," Hogeland said.

Hogeland said he will be meeting with the school board, the school board attorney and city attorney to determine how to move forward. He said there are a lot of questions that need to be answered, one of them is what will be done with the tax money if the school system doesn't move forward.

The Jefferson County School System had argued that Gardendale's secession would affect its ability to achieve unitary status by taking away the schools it had built in that city. Students who didn't live in the city would have had to be reassigned to other county schools, disrupting the racial balance of its system.

"We were pleased with the 11th Circuit's review and opnion of the secession plan that Gardendale attempted to pass," Dr. Craig Pouncey, superintendent of Jefferson County Schools, said Tuesday afternoon.

"For the communities subjected to the turmoil the past four years it's time to come together and work for the continued improvement that we've made the past four years," Pouncey said. "Not only for the students in Gardendale but for all the student in Jefferson County."

Pouncey said the ruling protects the rights of all children who attend the schools, both those who live in or outside Gardendale. "If Gardendale had been given the authority to form they would have had to delete many of the (school) programs we have today because they would not have had the financial capacity to continue them," he said.

The Jefferson County Board of Education also sent out a statement regarding the ruling. "While we were not appellants, we want to make it clear that during

this process, our main concern is how to best educate all children affected by Gardendale's possible succession. Regardless of the court's final decision, we remain focused on continuing to improve education throughout the Jefferson County School District and look forward to a final decision regarding this matter."

Gardendale's proposal had been the subject of national magazines and newspapers over the past few years regarding predominantly white cities trying to splinter from racially mixed systems.

AL.com reporters Erin Edgemon and Anna Beahm contributed to this story

Gardendale Ruling by KentFaulk on Scribd