Memo from Hershkoff to Counsel with New York Times Article

    AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION 

MEMORANDUM 

TO:   

FROM: Helen Hershkoff 

DATE: (#]4/4] 

RE: 

  

  

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American Civil Liberties Union, 132 West 43rd St. New York, N.Y. 10036, (212) 944-9800 

   



    

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STUDENTS/SCHOOLS 
  

School Segregation Case 
Too Knotty, Lawyers Say 
  

Lawsuit in Hartford Raises Complex Issues 

By GEORGE JUDSON 
Speciai to The New York Times 

NEW BRITAIN, Conn., Npv. 21 — 
Lawyers for the state argugd today 
that a lawsuit attacking the de facto 
segregation that divides Hartford 
from its suburbs raises questions of 
social policy far too sweeping and 
complex for a single judge to decide. 

Assistant Attorney General John R. 
Whelan also said the state should not 
be held responsible for segregation 
that arises out of residential patterns, 
rather than from intentional govern- 
ment policies like the Jim Crow prac- 
tices of the South before the 1960's. 

He said the complexity of the case, 
and the novel legal theories that a 
team of civil rights lawyers is using 
in its effort to force the integration of 
suburban schools with the city’s, re- 
quire the case to go first to the state 
Supreme Court, to resolve conflicting’ 
interpretations of the law. 

Otherwise, he said, a trial would be 
‘““an expensive and fruitless exercise 
that would be more likely to do harm 
than produce positive resuits.” 

Constitution Violated 

The lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, 
Wesley W. Horton, responded that the 
issue is not the complex social and 
economic conditions that result in 
overwhelmingly minority city 
schools, surrounded by overwhelim- 
ingly white suburban schools. 

The issue, he said, is that Hart- 
ford’s public schools are 91 percent 
black and Hispanic, and that the seg- 
regation violates Connecticut's con- 
stitution by denying those students 
equal educational opportunity with 
suburban children. 

“If a school is 91 percent minority, 
that is intolerable regardless of why 
it occurred,” Mr. Horton said. 

Today was the second time that 
lawyers for the state have tried to 
block the lawsuit, known as Sheff v. 
O'Neill, from proceeding to trial. The 
case is named after Milo Sheff, a 
black Hartford student, and William 

A. O'Neill, who was governor When 
the suit was filed in 1989. . 

In 1990 the Superior Court judge in 
the case, Harry Hammer, rejected- 
similar arguments as the state] 
sought a dismissal: that the state 
government is not to blame for the de 
facto school segregation in Hartford: 
and other cities; that there are no 
clear-cut solutions for a judge to 
adopt, and that the state, in any case, 
has taken some steps to help city 
schools and achieve racial balance. - 

The issues are so sweeping, Mr. 
Whelan said, embracing education,. 
housing, poverty and even public 
health, that they are best handled by. 
the Legislature. 

“What is being suggested is a dra-" 

  

Poverty, housing 
and public health 

are all involved in 

Sheffv. O'Neill. 
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on 

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3 

  

matic expansion of the powers of the 
court,” he said. - 

Mr. Horton and other lawyers in- 
volved in the suit readily admit they 
seek to break new ground by over- 
coming a United States Supreme 
Court barrier, from a 1974 case im 
volving Detroit, to integrating schools. 
by busing students across city lines. 

The Sheff case is based on the: 
Connecticut Constitution. If a judge: 
accepts the lawyers’ arguments that. 
the Constitution bars segregation —., 
de facto, as well as intentional — and 
guarantees equal educational oppor- 
tunity, Mr. Horton and other lawyers. 
say the state has the authority to 
order any remedy necessary, inciud- 
ing the busing of children across the 
Hartford city line. 

The tangled nature of desegrega- 
tion in Connecticut could be seen in 
court as Mr. Whelan acknowledged 
that the state has all the powers it 
needs to order regional school dis- 
tricts as a way to achieve integration.’ 

Mr. Whelan also acknowledged that 
Connecticut has seen fit in the recent 

past to order towns and cities to bal-- 

ance the racial composition of all 

schools within any one district — re-- 

gardless of the reason for an imbals 

ance. 
Just this month, Mr. Whelan suc- 

cessfully argued before another Supe-~ 

rior Court judge a case against Wa-. 

terbury in which the state’s authority 

to enforce its racial balance law was 

upheld in court for the first time. 

Judge Hammer, at times, appeared 

intrigued by Mr. Whelan's dual role, 

arguing in one case for a court order 

forcing the city of Waterbury to re- 

dress the de facto segregation in its 

schools, and arguing here that the 

state should not be similarly ordered 
to end the de facto segregation that 

divides its local school districts. 4 

“I have a brief in the Waterbury 
case that could have been written by 

‘Mr. Horton,” Judge Hammer told the 

assistant attorney general. 

A Meaningless Law? 

Connecticut is one of the few states 

in the nation to have adopted a racial 

balance law, but even this pioneering 

step has been attacked by the Sheff . 

lawyers. 
They say that limiting desegrega- 

tion efforts to individual towns and 

cities makes the law meaningless ir 

‘ cities like Hartford, where there is no 

significant white enrollment, and ° 

‘leads to white flight — and intensified _ 

segregation — in other cities. : 

“When a white parent sees his child - 

will go to a 90 percent minority ° 

school, and sees that neighboring sub- * 

urbs aren’t contributing, he'll just go 

to one of those towns,’ Mr. Horton - 

said. “ 

If Judge Hammer rules against the- 

state after today’s arguments, a trial 

is likely to be scheduled for somé™ 

time in 1992.