Josh Civin, NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, Washington D.C.

With support from a Liman Fellowship, I worked as an assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) — an organization that for over 50 years has used litigation, advocacy, and outreach to promote the full social, economic, and cultural integration of African Americans and, ultimately, all Americans in our society. My project sought to build upon the Supreme Court’s seminal decisions in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, which cleared a path for colleges and universities to pursue race-conscious strategies to ensure that “the path to leadership [is] visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.” Grutter, 539 U.S. 306, 332 (2003).

During Spring 2005, I was heavily involved in researching and writing a report, which LDF released on June 23, 2005 to mark the second anniversary of these landmark decisions. Closing the Gap: Moving from Rhetoric to Reality in Opening Doors to Higher Education for African-American Students (available at http://www.naacpldf.org) begins by documenting the depth and persistence of the racial gaps in educational opportunity and achievement. Among the startling evidence cited is the following statistic: more African Americans lack a high school diploma than have a college degree, whereas whites are nearly three times more likely to have a college degree than to be without a high school diploma. The report proceeds to highlight the tension between, on the one hand, the broad-based consensus that closing these gaps should be a national priority and, on the other, the relentless assault mounted by a small band of critics who seek to undermine precisely those programs best designed to increase opportunity and achievement among African Americans and other students of color. The report draws parallels between this anti-affirmative action campaign in the wake of Gratz and Grutter, and the massive resistance by segregationists in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education. Finally, the report highlights scholarship confirming that race-neutral approaches, alone, will not close these gaps. Because race has been and remains a key factor in the perpetuation of educational equality; race-conscious strategies must be permissible tools for promoting opportunity and equality.

In addition to preparing this report, my LDF colleagues and I continued to provide strategic advice to a range of educational institutions that are pursuing innovative scholarship, financial aid, and other programs designed to close the racial gaps described in LDF’s report. LDF is helping to ensure that these programs are well positioned to withstand legal challenges from the anti-affirmative action groups. Besides my work on affirmative action in higher education, I took advantage of an opportunity to address persistent racial gaps in another context: affordable housing. In the spring, LDF joined the ACLU of Maryland as co-counsel in Thompson v. HUD, a lawsuit filed in 1995 on behalf of a class of approximately 14,000 African-American tenants and former tenants of Baltimore City public housing developments, which are concentrated in high-poverty, predominantly minority areas. In January 2005, a federal district court found that HUD violated the Fair Housing Act by failing to take affirmative steps to develop effective region-wide strategies to dismantle segregation in Baltimore: “This Court finds it no longer appropriate for HUD, as an institution with national jurisdiction, essentially to limit its consideration of desegregative programs for the Baltimore Region to methods of rearranging Baltimore's public housing residents within the Baltimore City limits.” 348 F.Supp.2d 398, 409 (2005).

In the next phase of the lawsuit, the primary objective will be determining what policies and programs should be required to most effectively remedy HUD’s systemic failures. Drawing on its vast experience in desegregation litigation, LDF joined the Thompson litigation team in order to ensure equitable housing throughout the Baltimore region and, hopefully, provide a model for other American cities with similar racial gaps in access to opportunity-rich neighborhoods. As part of LDF’s Thompson team, I played a significant role in drafting motions and briefs and in identifying the veteran housing policy experts who are now designing cutting-edge regional desegregation strategies that will be presented at the remedial trial currently scheduled for early in 2006.

Throughout the year, I have been truly privileged to be a part of an inspirational and committed team of litigators at LDF. Following my yearlong clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I plan to continue building the career in civil rights law and policy that the Liman Fellowship helped launch.