Blog Archive: May 2012

Another Victory in Pitt County: US DOJ rejects electoral changes to School Board

Last summer, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a bill to reduce the number of district-based seats on the Pitt County School Board from 12 to 6, and to add a new at-large seat. Because of its long history of race discrimination in voting, Pitt County is one of 40 counties in the state subject to Section Five of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 requires covered jurisdictions receive preclearance from the U.S. Department of Justice of any proposed voting changes, to ensure that minority voting rights are not harmed by the change.

On April 30, 2012, the Justice Department rejected Pitt County Schools' preclearance submission, specially citing the retrogressive impact and discriminatory effect of the voting changes.

Center Community Inclusion Fellow Peter Gilbert Receives Prestigious Equal Justice Works Fellowship

Peter with NC NAACP President Rev. William Barber on the NC Poverty Tour

I became a lawyer to help individuals as a public defender and had little hope that lawyering could produce significant systemic change. During law school, I interned at both a public defender office and at the UNC Center for Civil Rights. Although I found my criminal work rewarding, I was captivated by the effectiveness of the Center’s approach to challenging entrenched systemic racism, the legacy of de jure segregation that is the greatest obstacle to progress in the U.S. South.

Brunswick County Planning Board’s Denial of Landfill Permit is Final

ROCCA clients and attorneys in Brunswick County after the March 2012 hearing

At the end of March, and after four days of hearings since October, 2011, Brunswick County’s Planning Board denied Operation Services’ application for a Special Exception Permit to construct a landfill near Supply, NC, in the historic African American community of Royal Oak. The County spent $266,000 on legal services in defense of the permit, which, according to County Manager Marty Lawing, was necessary due to opposition to the permit.

The UNC Center for Civil Rights represented the opposition, a community group called the Royal Oak Concerned Citizens Association (ROCCA).

“We are looking forward to an end to the trucks, the dust, the noise and the negative stigma of living next to the landfill,” said ROCCA president Lewis Dozier.

Fourth Circuit COA Rules in Favor of Pitt County Coalition for Educating Black Children

Plaintiffs and concerned citizens, Center Attorneys, and UNC Law Students outside the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals after January 2012 oral arguments in Everett v. Pitt County Schools

On May 7, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a published opinion in Everett et al. v. Pitt County Board of Education affirming the efforts of African American parents and community members to stop Pitt County Schools from implementing its 2011-12 student reassignment. The UNC Center for Civil Rights represents the Pitt Coalition for Educating Black Children and several individual parents of children attending Pitt County Schools.

“This is a great victory for the people,” said Mark Dorosin, Managing Attorney at the Center. “The court affirmed what decades of desegregation law, from Brown vs. Board of Ed. to the present, require: that a school district which remains under a desegregation order has an affirmative duty to eliminate the vestiges of racial discrimination, and until the court rules that the district has fulfilled that duty, current racial disparities are presumed to be the result of the past unconstitutional conduct.”

Amendment One's Place in History

North Carolina confronts an historic milestone on May 8 with the proposed change to our state constitution: historic, because we have typically amended our constitution to expand and protect, not take away rights. Except when it comes to marriage, and thus the milestone: from 1865 until 1967, Article XIV, Section 8 of our state constitution “forever” prohibited “[a]ll marriages between a white person and a Negro.” It took the courageous love between Richard and Mildred Loving and a United States Supreme Court decision in 1967 to invalidate that law. In Loving v. Virginia, the Court noted that “[t]here is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification,” and ruled such statutes in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The Court’s core holding bears repeating as North Carolina voters head to the polls on May 8:

Marriage is “one of the basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival....To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law.

UNC Law School Hosts Election Protection Hotline to Field Questions, Concerns on May 8 Primaries

Law students and faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, along with community volunteers, will staff the North Carolina Election Protection hotline, a toll-free, nonpartisan resource to answer voter questions during the primary election on Tuesday, May 8. Election Protection is a nationwide voter advocacy and education coalition of more than 100 local, state and national partners, and is coordinated by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Voters anywhere in the state can call 1.866.OUR.VOTE (866.687.8683) or 1.888.VE.Y.VOTA (888.839.8682) between 6:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m., the hours polls are open in North Carolina, with questions about their rights and the voting process. Assistance will be available in English and Spanish.