From al.com
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- U.S. District Judge Lynwood Smith Friday rejected arguments that Alabama's property tax system unconstitutionally discriminates against black and poor schoolchildren in Alabama.
Smith's 854-page opinion in the Lynch v. State of Alabama case, comes six months after a four-week trial that spanned Alabama's history with extended testimony about Reconstruction, the 1901 Alabama Constitution, former Gov. George Wallace, busing and the power of the Alabama Farm Bureau.
The lawsuit was brought by schoolchildren and their parents in Lawrence and Sumter counties who cited substandard facilities, limited programs and not enough textbooks. The plaintiffs asked the court to order Alabama to rewrite its property tax laws.
Judge Smith rails against Alabama Education system before he ruled for the Alabama Education system.
The judge found that the plaintiffs did not provide sufficient evidence that Alabama's public school funding disproportionately affected black schoolchildren.
In the opinion, Smith said he is bound "to follow orders" laid out in earlier Supreme Court cases on education.
"Like it or not, Supreme Court precedent compels a conclusion that the property tax scheme embedded in Alabama's 1901 Constitution and subsequent amendments does not offend the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause," Smith wrote.
But he also offered a scorching denunciation of the racist origins of the 1901 Alabama Constitution and the present state of education. Smith wrote that state power brokers see little interest in a quality statewide education system, since the children of their most powerful constituents "are generally enrolled in exclusive suburban school systems, with large local tax bases, or in private schools.
"The children of the rural poor, whether black or white, are left to struggle as best as they can in underfunded, dilapidated schools," Smith wrote. "Their resulting lack of an adequate education not only deprives those students of a fair opportunity to prepare themselves to compete in a global economy, but also deprives the state of fully participating, well-educated adult citizens."
RedEye's translation~I know what I'm doing is going to deprive poor students of an equal access to an equal public education but I have to live, go the church, (snark) and to the Country Club with the power brokers so I'm not going to rock the boat. Heck I pi$$ed them off enough when I halted the ban on payroll deductions for AEA.
Nope. There will be no profiles in courage award for Judge Smith. Too bad he doesn't have the courage and conviction of Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, who despite his past membership in the Klu Klux Klan (to boost is career), in the end used his powers to eradicate and remedy the sins in the Constitution of the United States of America, when he could have hidden behind it.
As a senator, Black filibustered an anti-lynching bill.[62] But during his tenure on the bench, Black established a record more sympathetic to the civil rights movement. He joined the majority in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), which invalidated the judicial enforcement of racially restrictive covenants. Similarly, he was part of the unanimous Brown v. Board of Education (1954) Court that struck down racial segregation in public schools. Black remained determined to desegregate the South and would call for the Supreme Court to adopt a position of "immediate desegregation" in 1969's Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education.
Thanks to Judge Smith, the Lynching of Public Education in Alabama continues. Sigh
I'm convinced the status quo republicans in the state of Alabama want to destroy public education in Alabama. After all we just inaugurated a governor who doesn't believe every child has the right to go to college, and elected a red, republican state legislature whose first order of business was to destroy the Alabama Education Association.
Now comes the Lynch v State of Alabama school funding lawsuit where civil rights attorney's claim the states method of funding schools purposefully discriminates based on race.
I have a dream that one day the citizens of Alabama will care more about the future of it's children than they do maintaining their property values.~RedEye
2 comments:
At this point, if you want decent public education, you find it outside of Alabama, if not the south.
If you are black, brown and\or poor you can forget having access to a quality public education any where in America.
Remember the mother in Ohio who was arrested and convicted for sending her daughter to school she was not zoned for?
If black\brown and or poor children get a decent education its in spite of the education system not because of it.
Until every child has access to a quality education regardless of race or their parents circumstance they will continue to be left behind. And that is what is so sad about Smith's ruLing.
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