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Desegregation ruling appealed
By MELANIE AVE
© St. Petersburg Times, TAMPA -- The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has asked the nation's highest court to determine if Hillsborough County's schools are truly free of racial discrimination, a move that prolongs one of the longest-running legal cases in Florida. The organization filed an appeal Thursday with the U.S. Supreme Court of a lower court ruling that declared the school system desegregated. While legal scholars called it a long shot, NAACP Legal Defense Fund officials said they had no other option. Defense Fund attorney Warren Dawson said the district has not done all it can to keep schools integrated. He said two dozen schools in the district have a majority of black students despite a 1971 federal court order that began busing for desegregation purposes. "We have little choice but to seek protection of these precious rights in the highest court of our land," a solemn Dawson said at a news conference, flanked by eight other officials. "There simply is no new or compelling reason to abandon the effort in America to avoid educating our children in public schools that are segregated on the basis of race." The Legal Defense Fund represents the original black families who filed a suit in 1958 against the district after they were denied an equal education because of skin color. The appeal argues that the March 16 decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, which ordered the closing of the 43-year-old desegregation case, was faulty. It contends that the three-judge panel wrongly shifted the burden of proving the schools are desegregated from the district to the plaintiffs; failed to require the district to have a plan in place to keep schools desegregated; and ignored the findings of U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Kovachevich, who said the district had not eliminated segregation. Superintendent Earl Lennard said he wasn't surprised that the Legal Defense Fund wanted to exhaust all legal possibilities. But he disagrees with its assertions that the school district has failed in its efforts to keep schools desegregated. The district has assembled an $80-million desegregation plan called "controlled choice," which will end busing beginning in 2004. The plan encourages white and black children to choose schools outside their neighborhoods. "We are moving forward with our choice plan," Lennard said. Officials expect the Supreme Court to decide sometime this fall whether to take up the Hillsborough case. At least four of the justices must vote to hear the case. Harvard University professor Gary Orfield, an expert on desegregation who supports mandatory busing, said he understands why the Legal Defense Fund appeal was filed and agrees the schools are becoming resegregated. "The problem is the Supreme Court hears very few," he said. "The likelihood is very small." The Supreme Court heard three desegregation cases in the 1990s, the latest a Kansas City, Mo., case in 1995. Two of them set the stage for ending of desegregation cases nationwide, leading Orfield to doubt if the conservative court will review the Hillsborough appeal. Andrew Manning, one of the original plaintiffs, said he is elated the Legal Defense Fund has decided to seek a decision from the high court. "We're going to fight it all the way," said Manning, whose name appears first on the original lawsuit. "It's too important of an issue to let it go like that." When asked what would happen if the Supreme Court appeal fails, Dawson said: "I think it is reasonably predictable that there will be another effort. The African-American citizens in this community . . . aren't going to go away. They will come back another day in another way." - Melanie Ave covers education and can be reached at (813) 226-3400.
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