The Opportunity Agenda joined AARP, ACLU, The Lawyers’ Committee For Civil Rights Under Law and the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund in filing briefs with the court. (The Equal Justice Society signed on to the Opportunity Agenda brief.) Twelve state attorneys general also filed briefs in favor of fair housing law enforcement.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in this case on February 29.

What’s at stake in Magner is the obligation of cities and towns to protect equal opportunity in housing. That responsibility includes avoiding unnecessary policies that discriminate in practice, as well as those that are intentionally discriminatory.

For more than 40 years, our courts have said that the Fair Housing Act prohibits both old school bigotry in housing, and policies that have the unnecessary effect of excluding qualified people based on their race, disability, or other factors. In Magner, the Supreme Court will be deciding whether that longstanding, commonsense interpretation will continue, or whether only intentional discrimination can ever violate the Fair Housing Act.

The plaintiffs in the case are building owners in St. Paul, Minn., who rent their properties to working class people, including many African Americans. They say that the city is trying to push them and other rental owners out of town, in favor of owner-occupied housing, with the practical effect of excluding many African Americans from any housing in the city. According to the property owners, the city is using excessive and often false code enforcement against these owners, but leaving alone owners who live in their homes.

The plaintiffs challenged the City of St. Paul’s policy in federal court under the Fair Housing Act. The Act, part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of dwellings, based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status and disability.

Passage of the Fair Housing Act was not easy. From 1966 to 1967, Congress was unable to garner a strong enough majority for its passage. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was closely associated with the fair housing legislation since the 1966 open housing marches in Chicago. When Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, President Johnson urged Congress to pass the fair housing act as a tribute to Dr. King.

During this same time period, the deaths of our soldiers in Vietnam fell heaviest upon young, poor African Americans and Hispanics. The families of these soldiers could not purchase or rent homes in certain residential developments on account of their race or national origin. Senators Edward Brooke and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts argued strongly for the passage of this legislation. In particular, Senator Brooke, the first African American ever to be elected to the Senate by popular vote, spoke personally of his return from World War II and his inability to provide a home of his choice for his new family because of his race.

Despite the progress we’ve made as a nation more than four decades after passage of the Fair Housing Act, significant obstacles to equal opportunity still exist, particularly when it comes to housing and homeownership. There are still some real estate agents, landlords, and others who practice intentional discrimination against people of color, families with children, people with disabilities, and other Americans.

But more often these days, local governments and real estate corporations engage in unjustified and unnecessary practices with the practical effect of discriminating against well-qualified Americans. Some cities and towns, for example, prohibit the building of smaller homes or apartments that working people could afford, which in many places excludes most people of color. That means certain Americans are unfairly and unnecessarily cut off from opportunities like quality schools, jobs, and business possibilities.

That’s bad for all of us, and the Supreme Court should reaffirm that the law forbids it by ruling in favor of the plaintiffs in Magner.

Sources: The Opportunity Agenda, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

A recent decision handed down by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals raises this important question: Can victims of contemporary forms of discrimination and disparity find justice in our courts?

The court ruling came in the case of Sylvia Darensburg, an African-American mother of three who lives in East Oakland. Every day, along with tens of thousands of low-income African-American, Asian and Latino bus riders in the Bay Area, Sylvia experiences the reality of transit inequality.

According to the case, Darensburg v. Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Sylvia relies on the AC Transit bus system as her primary means of transportation to her job during the day and to college classes at night. She endures long waits for the two buses she needs to take, with each trip taking an hour or more each way. On her way home at night, she has to walk 12 blocks from the nearest bus stop in her neighborhood.

Sylvia is not alone in making such an arduous journey—almost 80 percent of AC Transit riders are people of color, and over 70 percent have incomes below $30,000. Nearly 60 percent are entirely dependent on public transit. Click here to read the article.

On March 29, the Court will conduct a limited review of the Ninth Circuit’s order upholding class certification in this case, which alleges sex discrimination in Wal-Mart’s pay, promotions, and other employment practices. At issue in Dukes is whether hundreds of thousands of female Wal-Mart employees can collectively seek an injunction and lost pay against the store. Four lower courts, including the Ninth Circuit sitting en banc, have upheld plaintiffs’ class certification, finding that they presented sufficient evidence of gender discrimination, and that Wal-Mart has failed to address this discrimination, despite being well aware of its presence. Now, the Supreme Court will decide whether plaintiffs can finally have their day in court.

The brief takes issue with Wal-Mart’s asserted legal standard, which would require the Court to establish a new and highly restrictive standard for certifying claims involving subjective or discretionary employment practices, such as those at issue in this case. Applying a heightened legal standard to cases that involve subjective decision-making is at odds with core Title VII enforcement principles, and would restrict employees’ ability to seek redress for valid claims involving discriminatory employment policies. Moreover, such a standard would reduce employer incentives to adopt practices that counteract or minimize bias in pay, promotion and other employment decisions. The brief underscores the reality that to deny plaintiffs their day in court would have far-reaching, negative consequences for future victims of systemic and structural race- or gender-based discrimination. Read the PDF of the brief.

The Greenlining report analyzes official enrollment data from the University of California Office of the President, which shows the number of applicants, accepted students, and enrollees at each of the five UC medical school campuses of each race, from 2001-2007.

To access the report online, follow http://greenlining.org/documents/view/217.

One of the most interesting findings is that the representation of each race studied remains very similar from the pool of students who apply to each school, to the proportion that gets accepted into the programs, to the proportion that enrolls.  For example, 9.6% of the students who applied to the class of 2007 at the five UC medical school campuses were Latino, and 14% of those who were accepted and enrolled in a UC medical school were also Latino.  Four percent of the applicants were African American, and 4.6% of the enrollees were African American.  For Native Americans, the percentages were 0.2% and 0.3% for applicants and enrollees, respectively.  The report says that this is an indication that more needs to be done to increase the number of minority students who apply to medical school.

While underrepresented minority enrollment has been increasing steadily since 2001, the researchers caution that while this is good news, the issue of the representation gap still persists.  The disparity between the representation of African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans in the UC medical student body and their representation at UC medical schools is growing, because their rate of increase in the population outstrips their increase in medical school enrollment.  For example, for every 1 African American who enrolls at a UC medical school each year, 777 African Americans are added to California’s population.  For every 1 Latino medical student, there are 3,276 Latinos added to the population.  In contrast, for every 1 Asian American student, 457 Asian Americans are added to California’s population.

Among the recommendations in the report is that UC medical schools should support more programs that help students from disadvantaged backgrounds to gain the necessary academic preparation to enter medical school, as well as conduct more outreach to schools in poorer districts.

The report shows that underrepresented minority enrollment at the UC medical schools reached its peak around 1992, then plummeted to 40% of the peak in the wake of Proposition 209.   Increased outreach and support from the UC for high school and college enrichment programs helped turn around the numbers after 2001.  After the steep declines of the 1990s, African American enrollment is now up 20% from 2001 to 2007 and Latino enrollment is up 72.5% in the same period.  Native American enrollment, however, continues to decline.  Before Proposition 209 passed in 1996, the UC medical schools collectively matriculated only 4 Native American students out of a total student body of over 600.  After 1996, the UC averaged only 2 Native American students per year.

The Greenlining Institute references studies that show that minority doctors are much more likely to practice in underserved communities, and that the quality of medical care is improved when both doctor and patient speak the same language and share cultural ties.  The report also provides statistics that show that poor minority groups are more likely to require health services, thereby creating an urgent need for quality, culturally competent health care.

Greenlining and minority community leaders are looking forward to working with the University of California to ensure that they are working to increase the diversity of their student body.

This analysis, based on Law School Admission Council data, is now available on the website “A Disturbing Trend in Law School Diversity,” created by Columbia Law School’s Lawyering for the Digital Age Clinic in collaboration with SALT. The site was created by SALT member, and former SALT board member, Conrad Johnson, Clinical Professor of Law at Columbia Law School who is recognized nationally as a leader in innovative legal education, access to justice and technology.

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