Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Challenge to Louisville school assignments filed too soon

This from the Herald-Leader:

LOUISVILLE, Ky. --A federal judge turned away a challenge to Louisville's student assignment plan for the coming school year, saying it was brought too soon because no one has been affected by it yet.

U.S. District Judge John Heyburn said on Tuesday that without having anyone affected by the plan, there's no way to know whether it violates the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling last summer barring race in assigning individual students to schools.

"We're much better off deciding this case not as a hypothetical," Heyburn said.

Heyburn's decision came after attorney Teddy Gordon challenged Jefferson County's interim assignment plan. Gordon, who brought the case that resulted in the Supreme Court decision, said the interim plan illegally uses race to draw district lines for several schools, to the detriment of about 340 students...

And this from C-J:

...Heyburn told Gordon yesterday that would be difficult to determine whether someone's rights would be violated by the temporary plan without actual plaintiffs who say the plan harmed them.
"You may well have some valid points, but I don't know," the judge said.
Heyburn told Gordon to find a plaintiff and file a lawsuit if he wants to further challenge the plan.
"If someone tomorrow is denied choice of admission under circumstances that you think are problematic, the court will address that as a new case, if that is what it would take," he said, promising to handle it "very quickly, well before the start of the school year." ...

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