Legal Documents & Reports

Community Inclusion and Economic Development

• Center for Civil Rights Addresses Orange County Commissioners on Environmental Justice Issues and the Pending Decision of Siting a Waste Transfer Station. On Nov. 17, 2009, Senior Attorney Mark Dorosin presented a letter from the Center highlighting the due process and environmental justice issues regarding the potential siting of a solid waste transfer station near the historic African-American Rogers/Eubanks Road community, a neighborhood that has already suffered the impacts of having the county's existing landfill in their midst for over 37 years. Read the Center's letter.
• More Than "Mellifluous but Hollow Rhetoric": Griggs v. Duke Power and the Disparate Impact Theory of Race Discrimination . On June 13, 2009, Senior Attorney Mark Dorosin served as panelist at a conference held by the National Archives in Atlanta entitled "Documented Rights: A Symposium on the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement." Dorosin participated in the panel "Civil Rights and the Courts," and presented a paper on Griggs v. Duke Power, the landmark 1971 employment discrimination case originally brought by the Center's Executive Director Julius Chambers. The paper discusses the history of the Griggs litigation, the theory of disparate impact discrimination, and the potential impact of the pending Ricci v. Destefano case.

• Fair Housing Lawsuit Filed on Behalf of Habitat for Humanity - On May 22, 2009 attorneys from the Center and the Winston-Salem office of Kilpatrick Stockton filed a lawsuit on behalf of Habitat for Humanity of the North Carolina Sandhills alleging violations of federal fair housing laws and interference with contract related to Habitat's purchase of land and proposed affordable housing development in Pinebluff, NC. Pinebluff's mayor, board of commissioners, and town attorney are named as defendants in the complaint, as well as the sellers and purchasers of the property. Habitat claims that the town of Pinebluff, through its Mayor and commissioners, conspired with a group of private citizens to prevent the development of a Habitat community in their town. Read the complaint about the suit.
• Center for Civil Rights Settles Fair House Lawsuit - On May 19, 2009, the U.S. District Court approved the settlement of a fair housing lawsuit brought by the Center and the Moore County law firm Van Camp, Meachem and Newman on behalf of Richard and Nicole Johnson and their minor children. The lawsuit stated claims for race discrimination under the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1981 and § 1982 as well as claims for unfair trade practices, wrongful eviction, breach of the covenant of quiet enjoyment, and trespass to real and personal property. The Johnsons' claims arose from a dispute over a rental agreement for a house located in Whispering Pines, North Carolina. The property owners, real estate agent, and real estate company were all named as defendants. After substantial discovery, the parties engaged in a mandatory mediated settlement conference and were able to reach a confidential settlement of all matters in controversy between them. Read the complaint.
• Brandy Creek Residents Feel Ignored, Want City's Attention
• UNC Center for Civil Rights Helps Preserve 100-Year-Old African-American Family Property
• Comment to USDA Regarding Heirs Property
• Land Loss Brochure (co-authored with the Land Loss Prevention Project)
• Workshops for Excluded Communities. Held in partnership with the Southern Moore Alliance for Excluded Communities - Jackson Hamlet Community Association, Midway Community Association, Waynor Road in Action, and Voices for Justice - and the Legal Aid of North Carolina's Clients Counsel, the grassroots trainings seek to educate and empower communities to use activism to address the effects of municipal underbounding in their communities.
• Invisible Fences: Municipal Underbounding in Moore County, N.C. This report documents five minority communities' experience with a modern-day form of racial segregation known as municipal underbounding, whereby predominantly minority communities are kept separate from their larger, predominantly white municipal counterparts. Such exclusion often results in the denial of basic services such as water, sewer, and police, which are enjoyed by the bordering towns. Residents of excluded communities also are denied the right to vote in municipal elections even though they are subject to a town's extra-territorial regulatory powers. The report includes an appendix documenting the success of the communities' activism to bring improved public infrastructure to their communities.