URGENT UPDATES:
Appeal Hearing for lawsuit against Prop 209 (ban on affirmative action in California) scheduled at 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco February 13, 2012
En Banc Hearing for lawsuit against Prop 2 (ban on affirmative action in Michigan) scheduled at 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati on March 7, 2012
UEAALDF was founded to uphold the gains and further the goals of the civil rights movement through litigation, education and research. We seek to support the expansion of affirmative action, integration and other measures to combat discrimination and promote equality in our society. We believe that civil rights litigation is most effective when coupled with direct action in the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Our legal work is therefore always fully integrated with education and organizing. Court hearings provide an opportunity to educate the nation, set the terms of public debate on civil rights issues, and act as a focal point to draw new forces into civil rights organizing.
In the Courtroom
In Grutter v. Bollinger, where UEAALDF represented 41 student intervenor-defendants, UEAALDF presented the most aggressive, comprehensive and in-depth case for affirmative action ever presented in a U.S. courtroom. We moved the discussion on affirmative action from one about “racial preferences” to one about equality and integration – from the arguments in Bakke to those of Brown. Many of America’s pre-eminent experts in their fields testified pro bono for the Grutter intervenors, including Harvard Professor Gary Orfield, Columbia Professor Eric Foner, Duke Professor John Hope Franklin, Howard Professor Frank Wu, UC Berkeley Professor Eugene Garcia and UCLA Professor Walter Allen.
When the anti-affirmative action forces lost at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003, they launched a campaign to pass referendums amending state constitutions to ban the use of affirmative action in Michigan, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arizona, Colorado and Nebraska. UEAALDF filed Voting Rights Act claims against the systematic use of fraud by the anti-affirmative action coalitions to obtain the petition signatures required to place the referendums on the ballot. Through this strategy, we were successful in keeping the initiatives off the ballot in Oklahoma, Missouri and Arizona.
In Michigan, where we were unable to keep the initiative off the ballot despite overwhelming evidence of voter fraud, UEAALDF filed a lawsuit challenging the new law’s constitutionality under the 14th Amendment. In July of 2011, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in our favor. The case is now pending en banc review and is likely to go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 2010, we filed a similar constitutional challenge to Prop 209, the ban on affirmative action in California.
In the intervening years, UEAALDF successfully defended the desegregation plans of both the Los Angeles and Berkeley Unified School Districts against legal challenges by Ward Connerly and other right-wing legal think tanks.
When the assault on public education first began, poor, predominantly minority districts faced attacks upon their right to maintain local control over their school systems. UEAALDF joined with others organizations to challenge the state take-over of Detroit Public Schools. A few years later, we filed a conflict-of-interest lawsuit when Robert Bobb was appointed Emergency Financial Manager of DPS, while receiving a significant portion of his salary from the private, pro-charter Broad Foundation. In 2007 and again in 2010, we filed lawsuits on behalf of students and parents to halt the massive number of school closures in Detroit, which have caused tremendous displacement of students, overcrowding and increased violence in the schools that remain, as well as an expansion of charters.
Educating the Nation
UEAALDF’s Director, Shanta Driver, is frequently invited to speak on the contemporary challenges to civil rights and specifically on the challenges to affirmative action and K-12 integration. She has addressed scores of civil rights, professional, religious, political and governmental organizations, including the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation; The National Alliance of Black School Educators; the U.S. Department of Transportation; the Missouri Department of Natural Resources; the A. Phillip Randolph Institute; Rainbow/PUSH Coalition; NAACP National Convention; Tavis Smiley Foundation Youth2Leaders Conference; National Bar Association; American Sociological Association; Americans for Democratic Action; the Progressive National Baptist Convention; the National Organization for Women; and the Society of American Law Teachers.
She has also been a guest speaker on affirmative action at hundreds of colleges and universities, including Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Howard, NYU Law School, Stanford, UC Berkley School of Law, UCLA, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California and Yale, to name a few.