Judge hears case over Maryland funding of black schools

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A civil rights lawyer battled an attorney for the state in federal court on Tuesday over whether Maryland is still shortchanging its historically black colleges and universities in funding, programs and student recruitment, despite promises the University System of Maryland made to the federal government more than a decade ago.

Michael D. Jones, representing current and former students at historically black institutions, said Maryland “has not eradicated the vestiges” of past racially discriminatory policies and practices that had kept HBI’s behind other schools in the quality of their programs, laboratories, libraries and dormitories.

“This is a desegregation case about Maryland’s failure to desegregate its institutions of higher education,” Jones added in his opening statement of a trial expected to last at least several weeks in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. “Maryland refuses to expand the role of HBIs.”

But Craig A. Thompson, representing the state, called it “simply untrue” that Maryland remains entrenched in the era of segregation de jure, when the law tolerated racially separate facilities that were never truly equal. Rather, Maryland’s historically black institutions are now culturally diverse and offer world-class graduate and doctoral programs, Thompson said in his opening statement.

“There is no current policy or practice that is rooted in the de jure era,” he added.

Jones and Thompson squared off before Judge Catherine C. Blake, who will decide the case without a jury. Blake must decide whether Maryland has complied with its 2000 agreement with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

The agreement, which required the state to end its segregated system of higher education, was based in large part on the Supreme Court’s 1992 ruling in U.S. v. Fordice.

In Fordice, the justices held that proof of a state’s intent to discriminate is not required if the plaintiffs show that a current policy or procedure can be traced to past segregation and continues to have a “segregative effect” in the state’s institutions of higher education.

Jones, in his opening statement, berated Maryland for what he called its ongoing underfunding of HBIs, as well as its practice of discouraging student enrollment at the schools by permitting their once-unique programs to be duplicated at traditionally white institutions.

For instance, the Maryland Higher Education Commission in 2005 approved a Master of Business Administration program offered jointly at Towson University and the University of Baltimore, though it duplicated an MBA program in place at the historically black Morgan State University, according to the lawsuit filed in 2006.

Lower student enrollment results in less money for the schools, as state funding is tied to enrollment, said Jones, who is pressing the case of the Coalition for Equity and Excellence in Maryland Higher Education Inc. as well as nine current or former students at HBIs.

“Maryland has not eradicated the vestiges of discrimination from the de jure era,” added Jones, of Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Washington, D.C.

But Thompson, of Venable LLP in Baltimore, said the state’s policies are designed to ensure degree programs are based on a “sound educational justification” and not on a desire to encourage or dissuade student enrollment at a given university.

Thompson also assailed Jones’ enrollment-based discrimination argument, saying it is based on “outdated methodology” that considers only white and black students without regard for the increasingly “multiethnic” character of both HBIs and traditionally white institutions in the state.

Thompson quoted from the websites of Maryland’s major HBIs — Morgan State University, Bowie State University, Coppin State University and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore —all of which trumpet the diversity of their student bodies.

Maryland has “a strong, diverse array of vibrant and capable institutions,” said Thompson. “No state actions are restricting or limiting student choice.”

The 2000 agreement between Maryland and the Office of Civil Rights followed a decades-long history of the state’s noncompliance with federal desegregation mandates in its colleges and universities. The office alerted Maryland in 1969 that it was one of 10 states that still had an illegal system and again in 1982 that it was one of only two noncompliant states.

The other state was Mississippi, whose college system met with the Supreme Court’s disapproval in Fordice.

Testimony begins

The plaintiffs called two witnesses later Tuesday, a doctoral student at Morgan State University and the school’s president, Dr. David Wilson. Wilson said 3 percent of Morgan State’s students are white and that many of the white students attend Morgan State’s architecture school, which he said provides a degree in demand by students statewide. However, he said the university’s maintenance budget is “woefully inadequate” and millions of dollars in equipment are needed campus-wide.

Blake ruled last year that the coalition failed to show inequity in the state’s capital funding formula and discrimination against a particular school.

Blake also ordered both sides to try to settle the case. The trial was scheduled after a final attempt at mediation in November.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.