Racial Quotas
Challenged in Boston Court
Lynn Public Schools
Use State Money to Discriminate
By Ed Oliver
July 8, 2002
The full power of both
state and local government was used in court last
month to defend the Mass. law which allows the assignment
of children to different schools based solely upon
their race -- and pays a premium to those schools
who do so.
There were eight lawyers
(and even more assistants) in a U.S. District courtroom
in Boston against the embattled Atty. Chester Darling,
his para-legal wife, Daphne Darling, and his associate,
Atty. Michael Williams, who brought the suit because
they believe that such discrimination based upon race
is obviously unconstitutional.
The eight lawyers against Darling and his tiny staff
were two apiece from the City of Lynn, the state Dept.
of Education, the Atty. General's office, and the
national office of the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund.
The trial started on June
3 and ended on June 25. Atty. Darling presented only
one witness, a black, from his eight plaintiffs. The
mother testified that her child was not given a choice
of schools outside of her "district" because
of her race.
The judge is the ultra-liberal
Nancy Gertner (her husband is lead counsel for the
local ACLU) who somehow seems to be appointed to every
case that Darling files even though the judges are
supposed to be assigned at random from the eighteen
who sit on Boston's U.S. District Court. Atty. Darling
had Gertner removed from a similar case involving
the City of Boston last year. The U.S. Court of Appeals
said at that time that Gertner gave "an appearance
of partiality" and should have removed herself
from the case.
Judge Gertner has set Sept.
25 for final argument in this case and will probably
decide the matter within a few months after that.
Atty. Darling expects that the case will end in the
U.S. Supreme Court because Judge Gertner will undoubtedly
hold against him.
Most Plaintiffs
Suddenly Given their Choice in Lynn
It was difficult for Darling
to find plaintiffs for the suit. Every time one was
announced, the City immediately reassigned him to
the school he wished and made the matter moot.
After Darling was on Rivera
Live a few years ago, a limo showed up at a plaintiff's
door to drive her around to the various schools so
that she could choose one for her daughter. These
tactics made it difficult to find plaintiffs.
The eight government lawyers,
plus their vast number of assistants, attempted to
swamp Darling with paperwork. A few weeks before trial,
they served upon him 983 documents which had to be
sifted through before the trial began. Judge Gertner
reproached him for not keeping up with the paperwork
and told him he should have "adequate staff."
But near the end of the trial, she complimented his
staff on their knowledge and control of the documents.
A similar suit was filed
in Boston in June 1999 but two weeks later, the City
stopped classifying children by race and giving assignments
by race. However, they are still bussing the children.
The City has spent over $1 million with Hill &
Barlow and other white-shoe firms to defend their
practices.
State Law Is
Invalid
The state law rewards Lynn
and other school districts with extra money if they
follow the state law.
Under the Lynn plan, a
child who normally would have a choice of schools
is denied his choice if it would upset a racial "balance"
at the sending or receiving school. It does not matter
what race the child is. All are subject to denial
of transfers based on racial quotas.
"Any way you slice
it, it's discrimination by the state against children
because of their color," said Darling.
Asst. Attorney General
Richard Cole defended the policy, warning the court
that if Lynn halts the plan, there would likely be
racial violence in the future.
Judge Gertner said the
case raises issues of national importance.
Currently, Lynn and twenty-one
other Massachusetts school districts are approved
for funding under the Act. Elementary schools are
considered balanced if they are within 15% of the
school district's racial make-up. Middle schools and
high schools are considered balanced if they are within
10%. Racial balance is measured in terms of "minority"
and "non-minority."
The defendants are the
Lynn School Committee, the Mayor and members of the
Massachusetts Board of Education.
The case was originally
filed in 1999. Plaintiffs have been added and withdrawn
over time based on changing family circumstances.
Article 111 of the Massachusetts
Declaration of Rights says: "No student shall
be assigned to or denied admittance to a public school
on the basis of race, color, national origin or creed."
The defendants have already
admitted in pre-trial stipulations that:
The plaintiffs were denied assignments because of
their race.
The Lynn Plan restricts transfers based upon a child's
race.
The Plan was adopted under the Racial Imbalance
Act and the Department of Education helped to draft
the plan.
The plaintiffs are seeking
injunctive relief to end the racial restrictions in
the Lynn Public Schools and to end the Board of Education's
distribution of money as an incentive for schools
to adopt race-based plans.
They also seek a declaration
that:
The Lynn Plan and the "Racial Imbalance Act"
violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, violates Article
111 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights,
and violate Title VI of the Civil rights Act of
1964.
The defendants have conspired to violate the plaintiffs'
civil rights, or alternatively that the defendants
negligently permitted the plaintiffs' rights to
be violated in violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act
of 1871 (by failing to stop the violation of the
plaintiffs' civil rights when they could have done
so).
Attorney Chester Darling
is the head of Citizens for the Preservation of Constitutional
Rights, Inc., a non-profit law firm. (CPCR). http://www.julyfourth.net/help.htm
Sidebar:
Even J.C. Watts Is Wrong
By Ed Oliver
July 8, 2002
The charismatic black Republican
Congressman J.C. Watts is leaving Congress this year
still believing that we must maintain our racial quotas—also
known as "affirmative action." The former
star quarterback uses football as his analogy. He
says that affirmative action is like the NFL draft,
where the weaker teams have first-pick of the players.
The purpose is to level the playing field.
But the NFL draft is nothing
like "affirmative action." The NFL helps
the poorer teams without considering the color of
the players. If we use the NFL model to help poor
children get a fair chance in life, as J.C. wants,
we will pick the children - not by their race but
by the help they need. After all, there are a lot
of very poor and disadvantaged children who are white
and need help desperately. There are a lot of rich
blacks who are already spoiled and pampered. Even
J.C. points to two black Congressmen who were "raised
in privilege," Jesse Jackson Jr. and Harold Ford
Jr. We could all name more. Why should we be looking
solely at a child's race?
If we were to follow J.C.'s
suggestion and use "affirmative action"
in the NFL, most blacks would be gone. As a race,
the blacks are much too highly represented in the
NFL. They would be replaced by whites, Asians, Hispanics,
maybe even women. The use of quotas by race or sex
would wreak havoc in the NFL, just as it has in the
rest of life.
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