Minority Issues

Does Our Nation’s Transportation Policy Violate the Civil Rights Act?

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From Flickr by Sonja Shield

“New York is a great city to live in if you can afford to get out of it,” wrote American author William Rossa Cole.

The same thing works the other way around too. The wealthier you are, access to the city becomes easier.

Manhattan (the city’s richest and whitest borough) is abundantly better connected to trains and buses than any of the other boroughs. In fact, when the Metropolitan Transit Association cut its buses and train lines, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens felt it the hardest.

That’s when this becomes a civil rights issue. Minorities and other low income groups, who overwhelmingly live in the outer boroughs, are far more affected by transit cuts and increasing highway spending than their largely white counterparts who live in wealthier neighborhoods.

Title III of the Civil Rights Act prohibits state and municipal governments from denying access to public facilities on grounds of race, religion, gender, or ethnicity, where as Title VI, prevents discrimination by government agencies that receive federal funding. If an agency is found in violation of Title VI, that agency can lose its federal funding.

While the cuts were not made to be discriminatory, in practice they violate both the above titles.

Bet you never thought infrastructure could be racist. Read more on Alt Transport…

Yolanda Young Is Once Again in Covington’s Face

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If you are new to Above the Law, you might not remember Yolanda Young. She’s an African-American woman who used to work as a staff attorney at Covington & Burling. Some time ago, she sued the firm for racial and gender discrimination. You can read all about her claims here.

Regular readers of this site are already thinking: “Wait, didn’t that suit get dismissed?” ATL veterans are working on their obese/race-baiting/marine mammal mad libs as we speak.

But before we get to those fresh horrors, you all should know something: a federal judge has reinstated part of Yolanda Young’s case against Covington…

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Anti-Semitism and the Sun God Ra Afflict New York Area Law Schools

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Ra the Sun God could be seeking revenge on the Hebrews

The new school year is off to a rocky start at Cardozo and NYU Law. One school is dealing with a rash of anti-Semitism, while the other can’t seem to execute basic building maintenance.

If you had to guess which school was dealing with hate speech against Jews, you’d guess Cardozo, right? Since Cardozo is the law school for Yeshiva University, it would be at least logical if anti-Semites focused their energies there. But you’d be wrong; never assume hate-mongers are able to form and execute logical thoughts. This year’s early anti-Semitism is happening at NYU, as the New York Post reports:

The NYPD Hate Crimes task force is investigating an anti-Semitic scrawl at NYU Law.

Cleaning staff found “Damn Orthodox Jews” scrawled in a first-floor men’s room at 40 Washington Square South at 1:45 p.m. Monday.

Cops are poring over surveillance videos.

Forty Washington Square South is the address of the main NYU Law building. It’s probably not the #1 address where Orthodox Jews gather to learn about the law, but expecting a graffiti-scrawling hatemonger to be able to grasp even basic facts is like asking a dog to know not to lick his ass in public.

Meanwhile, the New York City law school most strongly associated with Orthodox Jews is dealing with an altogether different kind of oppression….

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Lawsuit of the Day: White Man Claims BBQ Joint Violates His Civil Rights

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This one is going to get really weird, really quickly. See if you can spot the civil rights violation.

Issue 1: City council of Alexandria, Virginia, approves a permit for a new barbecue restaurant.
Issue 2: The restaurant will have an open-air, gas grille.

Did you see the potential violation? No? Well, you’re just not thinking like a lawyer — or, at the very least, you’re not thinking like an insane person. The Alexandria Gazette Packet reports:

Del Ray Attorney Ed Ablard is challenging the restaurant as a violation of his civil rights. Because the gas-fueled smoker will release particulate matter into the air, his suit charges, his civil rights will be violated.

Is a white man claiming that a barbecue joint is somehow racist towards white people? No, it’s way more crazy than that…

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Let’s Do This: Deferred (Then Rescinded) Would-Be Associate Sues Firm

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This was bound to happen at some point. There have been countless associates who were promised jobs at law firms. They stopped looking for other jobs in reliance on that job offer. Then during the recession they were deferred, or their offers were rescinded. They are the leading citizens of the Lost Generation.

Do they have any legal claims against their would-be employers?

Almost certainly not, but it looks like somebody is ready to try to find out. The ABA Journal reports:

A would-be associate has sued San Francisco law firm Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin for deferring and then rescinding her job offer.

A clean test case on the issue of offer rescission? Not quite. As with most things, there’s a racial angle…

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Minorities and Women and Law Reviews, Oh My!

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Earlier this month, roughly around the time that newly minted law review editors were hearing the good news, we raised the issue of how many minorities and women are being selected for law review.

It’s not a new debate; whether underrepresented minorities (URMs) and women are adequately represented on the nation’s leading law journals has long been a subject of controversy. But in light of the tough legal job market, in which credentials like law review membership are more valuable than ever, it’s certainly a subject worth revisiting.

We kicked off the discussion with this tip:

You may want to investigate proportions of URMs [underrepresented minorities] and women at some top 5 law reviews. I hear that [one school] took 29 1Ls, but only 7 women and no African-Americans. [Another school] took 45 first-year editors, about even male/female, but only 2 URMs in the bunch.

Which law journals are being referred to here? And how are URMs and women doing at other law reviews — perhaps yours is mentioned — around the country?

UPDATE: Please note that a few updates and corrections have been added since this post was originally published. Check them out after the jump.

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Congratulations, New Law Review Editors!
(And a question about minorities on law review.)

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It’s early August. Law students are getting ready to go back to school. And some students — lucky or unlucky, you be the judge — are going back earlier than others, to work on their schools’ law reviews.

Over the summer, rising 2Ls around the country received the rather important news: whether they made it on to their school’s law review. Serving on the school’s official law review can involve a lot of work. But it’s generally regarded as worth it, in terms of the prestige / résumé boost, intrinsic value of the experience, and networking opportunities with current and former editors. If you’ve been selected, congratulations!

New editors of the Harvard Law Review — former home of President Obama and still the nation’s most prestigious law journal, despite various incidents of ridiculousness over the past few years (scroll through our past coverage) — were notified last month, around the week of July 19. The good news was delivered primarily by phone.

The Yale Law Journal also welcomed its new editors last month, after selecting them through a Bluebook and editing competition. At a mixer I attended here in New York, for YLJ alumni and newly accepted editors, one joyous new recruit told me that he celebrated his acceptance by going out to Hugo Boss and buying shiny silver pants dress shoes. (“I went to Prada at first, but they did not treat me the way I should be treated!”)

Silver pants New shoes from Hugo Boss? Making law review is clearly a big deal.

But is the prize of law journal membership being distributed fairly? This year, at certain law journals, controversy appears to be brewing about the new editors….

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(And a question about minorities on law review.)“

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A New Legal Violation: Jogging While Black?

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We’ve all heard of the crime of Driving While Black. It’s when black people drive around in nice cars — which some cops interpret as probable cause for a stop and search. It’s happened to me (shout-out to Kokomo, Indiana). After my experience I learned how to respect the law (of not ending up in Kokomo, Indiana).

But the ABA Journal now tells us of a whole new crime African-Americans can commit: jogging.

Even after police apparently recognized him as a downtown defense lawyer, they went ahead and arrested him for no good reason while he was jogging in his longtime neighborhood in West Las Vegas, contends David Lee Phillips.

A lawsuit filed over the incident by Phillips, 58, who is black and a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, is ongoing. In it, he contends that police threatened and harassed him before knocking him to the ground…

Man. A brother can’t even avoid getting hassled in Las Vegas…

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Shirley Sherrod Is Coming After Andrew Breitbart

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If you thought this whole Shirley Sherrod thing was just going to blow over, well, you’re not thinking like a lawyer interested in generating fees. Burned by Andrew Breitbart’s editing skills, Sherrod says she intends to sue. The New York Daily News reports:

“I will definitely do it,” Sherrod said at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in San Diego.

Sherrod said Andrew Breitbart knew what he was doing when he posted a doctored video that made it appear she was boasting about mistreating a white farmer.

“I knew it was racism, and no one had to tell me that,” she said. “Right will win the end.”

Oh Jesus Christ, please don’t tell me I’m going to have to defend Andrew Breitbart…

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Lawyer of the Day: Prosecutor-To-Be Mouths Off to Officer — and Loses Job

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When I worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, I’d sometimes hear colleagues joke about handing over their Justice Department credentials along with their driver’s license if pulled over for a moving violation. It was a joke because it was generally understood that trying to get out of a speeding ticket by flaunting one’s status as law enforcement was a bad idea (setting aside the ethical issues). The police officer might give you a free pass, or he might get ticked off at your attempt to take advantage of your position. You could end up with a scandal on your hands — the kind of scandal that could derail career ambitions.

This is a lesson that Iowa attorney Lisa Jones-Hall learned the hard way. The Cedar Rapids Gazette reports:

A woman on track to become a Linn County prosecutor lost that chance after police pulled her over in Marion last month for having tinted windows. New dash cam video police released today shows Lisa Jones-Hall called the officer names and tried to use her new job to get out of the ticket. The officer asked Jones-Hall to sign a ticket because he said her windows were illegally tinted. But, she initially refused to sign it, called the officer names and then brought up the job she was supposed to start the following week.

“Ok. I want you to arrest me for having tinted windows. I start with the Linn County Prosecutor’s Office next Tuesday. I want you to arrest me for not signing this,” Jones-Hall told the officer.

After hearing about this incident, the Linn County Prosecutor’s Office decided not to hire Jones-Hall.

Ouch. Jones-Hall should have read our earlier post about how lawyers should handle traffic stops (which also involved the offense of overly tinted windows).

The police video is actually quite mortifying — the article doesn’t do it justice….

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