Susan Goering, former head of ACLU of Maryland, dies

Susan Goering, whose civil rights work at the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland led to billions in school funding and better housing opportunities for thousands of Black families, died last month. She was 73.

As the first staff lawyer for the ACLU‘s state affiliate in the late 1980s, Goering emphasized racial justice litigation from the beginning of her tenure. Multiple people who worked with her said she had a vision for systemic reform that hadn’t previously been a focus for the civil liberties organization, which was known primarily for representing individuals in First Amendment cases.

Anthony Romero, executive director of the national ACLU, said in an emailed statement that Goering was an “early champion for racial justice at the ACLU decades before it would become a top priority for the organization.”

As legal director and working with the national ACLU, she brought cases to reform prison conditions on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Then, in 1990, she hired Deborah Jeon, who had previously worked in the Deep South — in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Montgomery, Alabama — as the second staff lawyer for the ACLU of Maryland, focused on the shore.

The area, Jeon said, was largely “untouched by the Civil Rights Movement.”

“Moving to the Eastern Shore, even for me, was like stepping back in time,” Jeon, now the legal director for the ACLU of Maryland, said.

The two-lawyer team brought cases under the Voting Rights Act, successfully arguing that Black residents were disenfranchised by the structure of local governments. Many county councils comprised only at-large seats. With no districts and only county-wide elections, there was no way for voters in the Black minority to elect their preferred candidates.

When Jeon decided to move to Baltimore, Goering helped her find a house — across the street from hers. Jeon and her boss were neighbors in Baltimore’s Hunting Ridge neighborhood for 13 years.

“Susan was more like a beloved friend than a boss,” she said. “You just wanted to be able to say ‘yes.’”

Three cases filed in the 1990s defined Goering’s career.

The U.S. Supreme Court banned school segregation in 1954, but deep economic and racial inequality persisted for decades in American schools. On behalf of students in Baltimore, Goering sued the state, arguing it wasn’t meeting the Maryland Constitution’s guarantee of a “thorough and efficient System of Free Public Schools.”

The case, Bradford v. Maryland State Board of Education, led to a consent decree and a new funding formula that brought $2 billion to Baltimore schools.

“Her impact is enormous. It’s incredible really,” said Bebe Verdery, the ACLU of Maryland’s former education reform director, who was hired to oversee the implementation of the consent decree.

She also led a fair-housing lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on behalf of thousands of Black families in public housing. The case led to the Baltimore Housing Mobility Program, which has allowed many people to move out of high-poverty neighborhoods.

“Susan was the architect of the case,” said Barbara Samuels, the former fair-housing director at the ACLU of Maryland. “It was harder than it should have been to argue the obvious — that Baltimore had never disestablished segregation in housing.”

In 1992, Goering represented Robert Wilkins in what became known as the first “driving while Black” lawsuit, challenging discriminatory police stops.

At a 2018 ceremony celebrating Goering’s retirement, Wilkins described her as a “big sister,” according to a video provided by Jeon. He’s now a federal appellate judge.

“I think that she should be remembered as someone who really lived and worked according to the principle that everyone deserves equal justice under law,” Wilkins told The Daily Record in an interview Friday. “She was someone who breathed life into the phrase, ‘all men are created equal.’ Words don’t mean much without action to make them real.”

Between equitable school funding, housing segregation and discriminatory policing, Samuels said, “You are talking about probably the three core issues in Baltimore.”

Goering died June 21 of cancer.

She grew up in rural Kansas, north of Wichita. Her only child, Austin Goering, 31, said the foundation for her racial justice ambition was laid by her anti-war Mennonite parents and by listening to Martin Luther King Jr. on the radio.

He said he sees her legacy in the thousands of people who received a better education or were able to move to a high-opportunity neighborhood because of her work.

“They’ll never know who she was, but it’s cool to see that what she was able to do with her time in this world is going to continue impacting people for generations to come,” he said. “I don’t think she did anything for the recognition. She just wanted to help as many people as she could.”

This story has been updated with a quote from Robert Wilkins.