JUDGE D. PRICE MARSHALL: A measured ruling in school case.

  • JUDGE D. PRICE MARSHALL: A measured ruling in school case.

Some legal normalcy is returning to the Pulaski County school desegregation case. First, it was the 8th Circuit’s decision to nullify Judge Brian Miller’s out-of-the-blue order ending state desegregation aid to the three Pulaski County school districts. This issue will require formal hearings.

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Yesterday came a measured ruling from Judge D. Price Marshall, who has inherited the aging legal dinosaur. He has allowed Pulaski charter schools to intervene, on narrow grounds, in the Little Rock School District’s pleading that the state of Arkansas has broken its 1989 desegregation commitment by insufficient attention to segregation caused by creation of open enrollment charter schools in the county. The charters have been particularly damaging to the magnet and interdistrict transfer programs the state agreed to finance and encourage in settling the case in 1989.

Judge Marshall recognized the charters’ obvious relevance. But he’s not going to allow the charter schools to attempt to relitigate the 1989 desegregation settlement 22 years later. He will not allow them to attempt to undo racial enrollment goals established before the Republican-led Supreme Court decided the United States had become color-blind and race no longer was a permissible factor to consider in school assignment. Opening this litigation foray would have added years and years to the case. I’m sure the anti-LRSD crowd would have missed the irony of a huge increase in litigation prompted by people who love to complain about the federal lawsuit.

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Here’s Judge Marshall’s ruling.

As I’ve said before, the Little Rock School District has much merit in its argument, particularly in the early days of charter school approval in Pulaski County. But this issue isn’t all about race and I think a settlement could address money, school boundaries and charter concerns — with some give and take by all parties. Read on if you’re a school wonk:

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