Legal Documents and Reports

Educational Advancement and Fair Opportunity

Securing Racial and Economic Diversity in K-12 Schools

The UNC Center for Civil Rights is engaged in efforts to combat public school resegregation in the South.

In August 2002, at its first annual conference, the Center for Civil Rights and the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University convened more than 500 scholars, attorneys, educators and advocates for a conference entitled The Resegregation of Southern Schools? A Crucial Moment in the History (and the Future) of Public Schooling in America. In 2005, the University of North Carolina Press released School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back?, a book of 15 essays drawn from the 2002 conference and edited by John Charles Boger and Gary Orfield. Visit www.uncpress.unc.edu for more information on the book or to order copies.

In May 2005, the Center hosted a by-invitation only convening of state leaders in government, law, public education and higher education to have an open and probing discussion about the problem of school resegregation and possible ways to address it.

In October 2006, the Center for Civil Rights, with co-sponsors the North Carolina Law Review, the UNC Center for Poverty, Work and Opportunity, and the UNC School of Education, sponsored its second national conference on public school education, entitled High Poverty Schooling in America: Lessons on Second Class Citizenship. Essays from this conference subsequently were published in the June 2007 Symposium Edition of the North Carolina Law Review, 85 N.C.L. Rev. 1279 (2007).

In late summer 2007, the Center and MDC, Inc. co-published Important Message: Court Leaves School Diversity Options Open, a primer interpreting the United States Supreme Court's school integration decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1 (PICS). Outlining diversity approaches still available to school districts after PICS, this primer has been distributed to more than 1,200 people, including individual school board members, superintendents, county commissioners and state legislators in North Carolina, as well as to branch presidents of 111 local NAACP branches. To see the primer, as well as other Center publications about school resegregation in the South, please click on the following links.

Everett, et. al. v. Pitt County Board of Education

In addition to its scholarship, the Center engages in litigation to stem the tide of public school resegregation. In 2006, a group of predominantly white parents in Pitt County, N.C. filed a racial discrimination complaint with the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education. These parents claimed that the Pitt County School Board's 2006-07 student assignment plan and its 2007 student attendance area policy were inconsistent with federal court 1970 desegregation orders and challenged the ongoing applicability of those orders. To resolve the OCR complaint, the School Board sought clarification from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of N.C. on the applicability of desegregation court orders that had not been disturbed since the 1970s. In addition, the School Board sought approval of its 2006-07 redistricting plan and its 2007 attendance policy, arguing that the plan and policy were authorized by law and that they were consistent with ongoing desegregation orders governing student assignment in Pitt County. After the School Board filed these pleadings, the federal district court invited all interested parties to appear in court to respond to the Board's motions. The Center for Civil Rights appeared on behalf of four individual families in support of the School Board's actions. To read our brief and the press release issued by the Center's co-counsel, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, please click on the following links.

At the July 9, 2008 hearing, the district court concluded that discovery and additional evidence was necessary for it to rule on the Board's motions. Just prior to the hearing, the parents' association filed a motion requesting a unitary status determination. Because the plaintiffs in the original 1965 and 1969 desegregation actions had aged out of the system, the Center for Civil Rights identified new plaintiffs and successfully moved to substitute these plaintiffs in the current action. Read our motion and brief.

In August 2008, the parents' association filed a motion for declaratory judgment, injunctive relief against future race conscious reassignment plans, and a motion to stay discovery. The Center, on behalf of our clients, filed a response oppposing these motions. On October 6, 2008 the Court denied the parents' motions. To read our response and the Court's order, click on the following links.

Thereafter, the Center, on behalf of its clients, engaged in discovery, a period of time when the parties to litigation collect evidence to prove their claims in court. The Center began collecting evidence on the question of unitary status. After several months of discovery and mediation, the parties reached an agreement.  A consent decree is pending before the district court.

Securing Adequate School Funding and Resources

The Center also is committed to securing concrete, tailored educational services for at-risk N.C. children. Our work on this issue includes advocating with State leaders, pursuing ongoing Leandro v. State of North Carolina litigation, and informing parents statewide about the constitutional potential of Leandro for their children's educations. Leandro is the North Carolina Supreme Court decision that, in 1997, established that every student has a constitutional right to a "sound basic education."

Currently, the Center represents a class of students confined to high-poverty, racially-isolated high schools in a Leandro action brought against the Charlotte Mecklenburg School Board and the State for depriving the students their state constitutional right to a "sound basic education."

To learn more about the Leandro decisions and find school finance information for each of North Carolina's 115 local school districts, please visit the following links.

Additional Amici Work

In early June 2009, the Center joined with attorneys from the UNC School of Law Juvenile Justice Clinic, the Office of the Juvenile Defender, Advocates for Children's Services, and Legal Aid of North Carolina to file an amici brief before the North Carolina Supreme Court in support of the juvenile-appellant In the Mattter of J.D.B. The amici brief focuses on ensuring that the constitutional and statutory rights of children are fully protected and requests that the Court clarify the appropriate standard for determining when a juvenile is in custody and therefore entitled to Miranda warnings as well as state statutory protections. The case is scheduled for oral argument in September 2009. Read the amici brief.

In late August 2007, the Center filed a Brief of Amici Curiae in the North Carolina Court of Appeals on behalf of the co-presidents of the Coalition of Concerned Parents for African American Children, to oppose a suburban-led legal challenge against Wake County's student assignment policies. The brief is available for reading here. Read more about this issue from the following articles:

In February 2003, the UNC School of Law filed an amicus curiae brief in the University of Michigan School of Law affirmative action case, Grutter v. Bollinger, making the argument that North Carolina's flagship public law school must be allowed to use its best judgment in selecting a diverse group of future leaders for the state. The brief pointed out that the validity of the state's legal and governmental systems depends upon this leadership development--a line of reasoning that was central to the Supreme Court's opinion.

Increasing Access to and Diversity in Higher Education

At a time when the future of integrated public schooling in America is very much in doubt, the Center also seeks to leverage the authority and capacity of the higher education community to challenge increasing racial and economic isolation in K-12 schooling. Elite colleges and universities are in a unique position to influence parental decisions about their children's public education. If colleges and universities began to grant students who have developed the ability to compete, cooperate, and achieve in an inclusive high school setting, an advantage in their own admissions decisions, parents might have an incentive to seek out diverse secondary schools and urge school boards to promote assignment policies that support diversity. With support from the Fulfilling the Dream Fund, the Center has convened discussions of this initiative with leading admissions officials and university attorneys. Moreover, in April 2008, UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser led a discussion of this idea at a meeting of our nation's largest research universities.

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 November 17, 2009, Senior Attorney Mark Dorosin presented a letter from the Center highlighting the due process and envrionmental 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 here.
  • 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 and an article 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
  • Center for Civil Rights Senior Attorney Mark Dorosin Comments on North Carolina's Annexation Laws
  • UNC Center for Civil Rights Helps Preserve 100-Year-Old African-American Family Property
  • Center for Civil Rights Attorneys Respond to Zanesville, Ohio Municipal Exclusion Ruling
  • 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 Southen 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. For photos and materials from the workshops, visit http://www.voicesforjusticenc.org.
  • 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.

Voting Rights

The Center, in partnership with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, engaged in non-partisan election assistance and monitoring on November 4, 2008. Specifically, on Election Day, the Center hosted a hotline for N.C. voters to call to report violations of their voting rights. Prior to Election Day, Center staff trained UNC School of Law pro bono students on problems voters might encounter on November 4, 2008 and the federal and state laws relevant to assuage those problems. Read more about the Center's election day work.

The Center's past voting rights work sought to expand access to voting by non-white citizens in N.C. and to protect single member electoral districts from legal attacks seeking the restoration of at-large voting. For example, in 2006, the Center assisted the Fayetteville, N.C., chapter of the NAACP in its ultimately successful opposition to a change in the method of electing the city council that would have made it more difficult for minority voters to elect their candidates of choice.

Below are other publications on voting rights issues to which the Center has contributed.