Teddy Gordon tells JCPS: End litigation now

This from C-J:

Having twice beaten Jefferson County Public Schools in a court of law, Louisville lawyer Teddy Gordon is calling on the district to accept a new challenge — stop the litigation so children can attend their neighborhoods schools.


“This has been a 13-year battle,” Gordon said Monday, sitting in his law office, its walls covered with framed newspaper clippings detailing his long legal fight against a policy whose aim is to keep schools diverse, but which requires longer bus rides for some.

“It’s time … for the litigation to end,” he said.

Gordon’s remarks came three days after the Kentucky Court of Appeals on a 2-1 vote struck down the Jefferson County’s new assignment plan, finding that state law guarantees students the right to attend their nearest school.

Flanked by Chris Fell, one of the parents who sued Jefferson County because their children were denied admittance into their closest school, Gordon on Monday also called on the district to scrap its current consideration of an overhaul to the new assignment plan that would reduce bus-ride times, saying it would fall far short of the appeals courts ruling.

But JCPS school board Chairman Steve Imhoff said Monday the board has no intention of dropping its proposed overhaul — neither will it abandon its appeal to the Kentucky Supreme Court of a policy he said is in students’ best interests...

Jeff Co School selection letters criticized

This from the Courier-Journal:

Response time too short, Attorney Teddy Gordon says

The lawyer who successfully challenged the Jefferson County Public Schools' student- assignment plan in the U.S. Supreme Court says a letter sent to thousands of elementary school parents last week gives them too little notice to decide if they want to keep their children in their current schools.

The letter said parents have until Dec. 1 to decide whether they want to stay in their current schools or choose another. But Superintendent Sheldon Berman said in an interview ... that the letter sets only the first deadline for making that decision. Berman said parents will be able to make that choice until sometime in January -- probably Jan. 10...

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." ...

Gordon's Rant: JCPS Student Assignment Illusion is 'arrogant' and 'embarrassing'

Teddy B. Gordon, of Louisville, is the plaintiff's attorney in the Jefferson County School desegregation case, (Meredith v Jefferson County Board of Education) which was decided last summer by the U.S. Supreme Court. His Op-Ed (below) ran in this morning's Courier-Journal.

Now, if anybody has a right to be riding high about now, I suppose it's Gordon. Coming off his big win, and big payday, it is expected that Gordon should babysit implementation of the new JCPS student assignment plan. But here Gordon is attempting to personally fill in all of the blank spaces left by the Court in its opinion. It is a bit over the top; and not likely to impress his high school English teacher. But his questioning why it is that black children bare the greatest burden under such plans is appropriate.

It is one thing to imagine a system where every parent can select the school their child will attend. It is quite another to provide it.

In the real world, geography matters; where people can afford to live matters; where a free people choose to live matters; the resources and space limitations of any given school matters. Every district needs a plan that is as fair as possible to all students.

The JCPS effort to provide students with an educational experience that is more 'all-American' and less 'tribal' is admirable. Student assignment plans that attempt to reflect the natural diversity in society are right-headed. But the Court has correctly judged that the current defacto segregation of students in American schools is NOT the result of deliberate government action.

Teddy Gordon need not demogogue the issue. Claims of social engineering are valid on both sides of this murky question.

Attorney faults JCPS 'arrogance'

This latest attempt by Sheldon Berman and the Jefferson County School Board (JCPS) is extremely troubling to me and should be to every parent in this school district. That such a vital public agency that impacts all our children would willfully try to subjugate (sic) the U.S. Supreme Court and thumb their noses at our judicial system. JCPS's arrogance is not just embarrassing, but proves to our nearly 100,000 schoolchildren that their lives mean nothing to this public agency.

The questions we all (parents and guardians, lawyers, school officials, community leaders and the news media) need to be asking of Berman and every JCPS board member, principal and teacher is why.

Why just another shell game with the moving pieces being shuffled are our children, and mostly African-American children) -- all for an illusion of diversity without improved educational outcome.

Why will once again black children (or in JCPS's new classification, "minority") be bused longer, farther and more often than white (or "non-minority") children.

Why will the majority of Black children be bused to the lower performing schools? Will a high performing school like Wilder Elementary have the same percent of minority that Whitney Young does?

If, in fact there are over 3000 children waiting to get into a traditional or magnet school, why aren't more traditional and magnet schools being built in the inner city instead of three new ones in the suburbs?

And why impose a hard percentage of 15/50, and if one of the factors is race along with home location/income and parents' education, does the race card become the determining factor in turning away black children from better performing schools.

Why weren't there public forums to hear what parents and guardians want for their children before any plan was implemented. And will any upcoming public forum really change the proposed student assignment plan or are these forums and surveys just another illusion that the JCPS wants to create.

Why if JCPS has known about this since 2000, have they not come up with a better plan that improves education for every child, no matter what the color of his or her skin is.

It is these answers that will determine if this new student assignment plan passes constitutional -- and community -- mustard (sic) -- or if this JCPS plan once again infringes on the rights of minorities and punishes them for their (sic) color of their skin. These answers determine whether Berman and JCPS are truly interested in doing what is best for all our children.

JCPS insists on turning our children into social experiment (sic) that is not only out-dated, but worse failing our children.

Instead of concentrating their efforts and resources (especially in a time of reduced federal and state budgets) on improving education for every child, this gathering of old outdated school board members and administrators along with self-designated titled of so-called experts force upon a plan (sic) that never has or will improve the education of our children.

The most important question every parent and guardian should ask when their child is being bused to a school they do not like is "Why." Why is my child being bused to a school that I do not approve of?

And demand a satisfactory answer from the principal of the school and of JCPS. Your child, every child, deserves an equal educational opportunity.

When parental choice becomes the only factor in deciding where children go to school, then all of God's children will truly be judged by the content of their character and education, not by the color of their skin.

Schools' interim desegregation plan challenged

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race

is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,"

US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.

That was the zinger that encapsulated the Court's decision in Meredith v Jefferson County Board of Education. But that is not the whole case.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy did not join all of the majority opinion - only the result. That left a gap of uncertainty as to the meaning of the Court's 5-4 decision; a gap the Jefferson County Board of Education is trying to squeeze into.

Kennedy suggested in his separate opinion that the Robert's opinion, in part, "is at least open to the interpretation that the Constitution requires school districts to ignore the problem of de facto resegregation in schooling. I cannot endorse that conclusion," he wrote.

The Jefferson County Board of Education responded with a new temporary student assignment plan that looks like the old plan.

So it wasn't too hard to predict what would happen next. This from the Courier-Journal:

The Louisville lawyer who successfully challenged Jefferson County's school desegregation policy is now challenging the district's interim plan, saying it illegally uses race to assign students.

Attorney Ted Gordon filed a motion yesterday in U.S. District Court in Louisville, asking Judge John Heyburn II to review the temporary plan adopted last week for the 2008-09 school year.

Gordon said he wants Heyburn to determine whether Jefferson County Public Schools has revived "a quota system" and is "assigning kindergartners and first-graders to elementary schools based upon racial classifications."

"They are still using race as a way to assign children and they cannot do that," Gordon said in an interview yesterday. "I am shocked the school board did not ask (Heyburn) for approval before they approved this plan."

Byron Leet, an attorney who represents the county Board of Education, said yesterday that Gordon's motion has no merit.

"He is trying to reopen a case that has already been closed," Leet said...

Education Week's School Law Blog lists several resources for those thying to divine the Court's real meaning.

...[T]he NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund recently published a manual for parents, educators, and advocates on what steps are still legally available to maintain racially diverse schools. The 95-page manual, Still Looking to the Future: Voluntary K-12 School Integration, is available in PDF form online or can be ordered from the organization. "While altering the landscape of school integration, the Seattle/Louisville decision did not provide a clear set of rules and principles for school districts to follow, and created some confusion about what school districts and communities can do to promote integration in their schools," the manual states.

There are some other helpful documents out there for educators as they grapple with the Seattle/Jefferson County decision.

The National School Boards Association teamed up with the College Board last year to publish "Not Black and White," a guide to the Supreme Court's decision.

And earlier, the NSBA had released "An Educated Guess: Initial Guidance on Diversity in Public Schools After PICS v. Seattle School District."

And the Hogan & Hartson law firm, which works with many school districts on diversity issues, put out its own guidance last year. The firm issued this document shortly after the decision last summer, and this updated guidance last September. (Thanks to Maree Sneed of Hogan & Hartson for the documents.)

Finally, for those who want more to chew on, the Harvard Law Review devoted several articles to analyzing the Seattle/Jefferson County race decisions in its November issue.

Temporary Jefferson Plan 'not much different,' Looks at Race,Income and Geography

Temporary desegregation plan approved

School makeup geography-based

Deciding it couldn't afford to wait, the Jefferson County school board has pushed through a temporary desegregation plan for next school year that uses geography instead of race.

This fall, officials will assign students so that elementary schools have at least 15 percent and no more than 50 percent of their enrollment from school residential areas with minority populations of at least 45 percent.

The plan would apply to children entering first grade, students new to the district or who have moved, and those requesting transfers.


Superintendent Sheldon Berman said yesterday in an interview it won't affect current assignments, and he believes that "93 percent" of parents will get their first school choice.
"This is not much different than the way we have operated in the past," Berman said. "We are just using the geographic area of a school's 'resides area' and not a student's race."

But Teddy Gordon, the lawyer who fought to throw out the district's old desegregation policy, said he does not believe the interim policy is constitutional. He called on the district to have the temporary plan reviewed by a federal judge, threatening to sue if the district refuses.

"This is an absolute farce," he said, after hearing yesterday of Monday's unexpected vote. "The way they are doing this, they are thumbing their nose at the U.S. Supreme Court."

The justices ruled 5-4 in June that Jefferson County could not look at individual students' race when assigning them to schools.

The ruling prompted the county to stop considering the race of individual students when assigning them to schools. Since then, officials said, about a dozen schools have slipped outside the district's guideline of 15 percent to 50 percent black enrollment at most schools.

Berman said the temporary plan, which the school board unanimously passed at the end of Monday's work session, is a stop-gap measure designed "to prevent slippage" of diversity at elementary schools until the district can adopt a permanent policy beginning with the 2009-10 school year.

The district's long-term proposal to keep its schools desegregated would use race, income and education equally in assigning students...


This from the Courier-Journal. Video.

Lawyer awarded $210,000 in school assignment suit

Gordon sought $750,000 in historic Jefferson case

Louisville attorney Ted Gordon will receive $210,000 for leading the five-year legal fight to overturn Jefferson County Public Schools' racial integration policy -- less than a third of what he requested.

Gordon sustained the case "more upon a conviction than skill," U.S. District Judge John Heyburn wrote [last week]in his ruling awarding the money for fees, expenses and a bonus, but "the undeniable truth is that counsel pursued an epic case against considerable odds and vehement opposition to an astonishing success."

Crystal Meredith, the Louisville woman whose son was at the center of the case, won't receive any money, Heyburn ruled.

The judge ruled that the school district should pay Gordon $112,500 for nearly 500 hours of work at $225 an hour in the legal case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Gordon asked for $400 an hour and a bonus for a total of $750,000.

In addition to $10,138 in expenses, Heyburn granted Gordon an $88,000 bonus for his tenacity in pursuing the civil-rights case despite adverse precedent, public criticism and risk of failure....

This from the Courier-Journal.

Law Blog criticizes C-Js Political Cartoon on Teddy Gordon and the Meredith case

First, C-J ran this Political Cartoon by Scott Coffman, titled: "Teddy Gordon waits for his $1 gamble to pay off."

Then, Michael Stevens, over at the Kentucky law Review blog, ripped the ticket in two.

Louisville: Courier-Journal Cartoon

on Attorney Fees in School Case

- Not a "Pulitzer" moment

I seriously considered NOT posting a link to the "political" cartoon in the Courier-Journal by Scott Coffman "Teddy Gordon Waits for his $1 Gamble to Pay off".

However, our judges and courts speak through their decisions, and someone has to come to their defense when inappropriate liberties are taken to attack either. This is one of those times.
Mr. Coffman's comparing the filing of a lawsuit to the purchase of a lottery ticket in any legal scenario is not factually inaccurate. Even worse, it is an insult to the reputation of the courts and breeds unnecessary disrespect for the judicial system. All for the sake of a questionable chuckle.

A picture of a lottery ticket with the names of each of the justices of the United States Supreme Court with check marks by those who voted with the majority in the Meredith v. Jefferson Public Schools case implies the law and the facts were ignored by all concerned.

Attacking the person and not the issues is a weak argument. Adlai Stevenson once said "He who slings mud generally loses ground."

This "lottery" ticket did not cost a dollar, and if as Lincoln said that a lawyer's time is his stock and trade, then a lot of time and hours over the years was expended on behalf of Gordon's client; much more than a token sum.

By looking at the lawyer and not the litigant, the cartoon took the path of least resistance and continues to play on the passions of the people rather than move forward. Whether or not you agree with the outcome is not the point! The point is that this is a nation of laws. The rule of law is important, and not just when the law agrees with you. The courts are open to those who believe they have been wronged and seek redress. A decision has been made; move on.

As Atticus Finch stated in his closing in To Kill a Mockingbird - "Now, gentlemen, in this country our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system. That's no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality!

Although I may not agree with each decision from our higher courts, and often point out the lack of justice and logic in those decisions, I am disturbed by those who compare any judge or justice to a numbered ping pong ball or reduce the justice system to nothing more than the tipping points in a bet.

Lawyer files court motion to obtain Jeff Co school enrollment data

A Louisville lawyer filed a motion yesterday in federal court seeking to compel Jefferson County Public Schools to provide data on enrollment and the capacities of a handful of schools.

Attorney Teddy Gordon said that some parents whose children were denied transfers are trying to make sure that they weren't turned down because of race.

Gordon recently won a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that forced the district to drop its racial integration plan.

The motion seeks grade-level capacity figures at seven schools, including Middletown and Hite elementary schools and Pleasure Ridge Park High.

District data provided to The Courier-Journal shows all but one, Farmer Elementary, were full or overenrolled as of Tuesday. The figures were not broken down by grade...

This from the Courier-Journal.

Schools' course since race ruling OK'd

Fall assignments won't change

This from Chris Kenning at The Courier-Journal:

Jefferson County Public Schools' decision to stop using race for new student assignments and transfers is "entirely consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision," a federal judge said yesterday.

In a court hearing, Chief U.S. District Judge John Heyburn said the high court's recent 5-4 decision allows the district to adopt any plan it wants by any date -- as long as it doesn't use race to assign individual students to schools.

School board Chairman Joe Hardesty said yesterday's hearing means that "there's no reason we can't proceed on the timetable we've established" for instituting a new student-assignment plan by the 2009-10 school year.

Attorney Teddy Gordon, who represented parent Crystal Meredith in the lawsuit that led to the Supreme Court ruling and requested the hearing, did not object to the timeline...

...Heyburn brushed aside Gordon's implication that the district might still be applying race but using the lack of space as an excuse, saying Gordon offered no credible evidence.

"If anyone is denied a transfer in violation of the Supreme Court decision, I'll take it up on a case

Lawyer in schools case seeks fees, wants immediate hearing on student assignment

Jefferson parents' attorney asks judge to set payment

A Louisville lawyer who successfully challenged Jefferson County Public Schools' racial-integration policy wants the district to pay his legal fees, plus a bonus, according to a motion filed yesterday.

At least one legal expert says the final figure could reach hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.

Attorney Teddy Gordon, who represented parents in a lawsuit decided by the U.S. Supreme Court last month, isn't saying exactly how much he thinks the district should pay him, but he wants more than $200 an hour, and a bonus to reflect the case's impact on schools nationwide.
"I have spent thousands of my own money on expenses and court costs," he said in a statement, while declining to say how much he thinks he deserves. "Because I am a sole practitioner who has worked hundreds of hours on these cases, I was not able to take on other clients."

Gordon's filing leaves it up to U.S. District Judge John Heyburn to determine how much he should be paid. School district lawyers declined to comment on his request...

This from the Courier-Journal.

And...

Lawyer wants hearing on student assignments

A Louisville lawyer is seeking an immediate hearing to discuss whether Jefferson County Public Schools should reassign students for the coming school year in the wake of June’s U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the district’s integration policy.

Attorney Teddy Gordon filed a motion today in U.S. District Court — three days after Judge John Heyburn rejected as “outrageous” Gordon's motion calling for school leaders to be jailed unless they could prove they weren’t in contempt for failing to change race-based assignments made before last month’s ruling.

Gordon has estimated that about 2,800 students were denied choices strictly because of race during assignments for the 2007-08 school year, which begins Aug. 13. He wants those students to be allowed to change schools if they want and if there is space elsewhere.

This from the Courier-Journal.

Judge tosses contempt request against JCPS

A federal judge yesterday abruptly dismissed a Louisville lawyer's demand that Jefferson County Public Schools leaders be held in contempt and jailed unless they could prove students weren't still being denied a school choice because of race.

In a sharply worded ruling, Chief U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn II chastised attorney Teddy Gordon, who successfully challenged Jefferson County's student-assignment policy.

"Defendants need not respond to such an outrageous motion, couched in such unprofessional language," Heyburn wrote in a ruling that was issued before school district lawyers even had a chance to respond.

This week, Gordon filed a motion asking that an estimated 2,800 Jefferson County students assigned for the 2007-08 school year be given the option to attend different schools because they had been denied their school choice because of race.

Gordon argued that failing to do so violated the Supreme Court ruling, and he asked that school board members and administrators be held in contempt.

Heyburn ruled yesterday that Gordon and his client, Louisville parent Crystal Meredith, may disagree with the district's stance that it has taken steps to comply with the ruling -- dropping the use of race in assigning new and transfer students, but not making changes for students who were assigned before the ruling.

But he said they need to file an appropriate motion to make their case.

"Calling for contempt citations and incarceration of individual school board members and administrators will not advance the resolution of any legitimate concerns," Heyburn ruled, adding that the court would "gladly set an immediate hearing to discuss any future valid motions that require attention." ...

This from the Courier-Journal.