Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 5, 1990 TAG: 9006050155
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: By Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The American Civil Liberties Union and a Virginia legislator vowed to keep fighting the practice.
"Obviously we are very disappointed in the Supreme Court decision," said Kent Willis, executive director of the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
"We feel that not only was the system intended to be racially discriminatory, but that it continues to be discriminatory, at least in effect. And that's the important aspect of it. Under the Voting Rights Act, we need to show the effect is discriminatory."
The justices, without comment, let stand rulings that uphold the appointive system even though unlawfully discriminatory motives at times played a role in retaining it.
Seven black Virginia residents and two groups, Citizens for a Better America and the Virginia unit of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, sued state authorities over the appointive system.
The lawsuit alleged that the system unlawfully blunts the political clout of blacks in the state.
Willis said the ACLU remains optimistic about victory in the Virginia General Assembly.
"There has been enormous support on the part of state elected officials for changing the system through the legislature," Willis said.
Del. David Brickley, D-Woodbridge, said he has introduced legislation every year since 1976 to allow localities to hold referendums and decide whether to elect their school boards.
So far, it's failed.
"It's ironic that Virginia is the only state in the nation without some form of elected school boards," Brickley said.
The ruling did not surprise him.
"My main contention is that the citizens of Virginia should be able to have the choice for themselves," he said.
Brickley said numerous polls have shown that Virginians support the right to choose on the issue. "But it still must be passed by the legislature," he said.
This year's proposal tied in the House Privileges and Elections Committee, he said, and thus was carried over to next year's session.
"We never had a tie vote in committee [before]," he said. "We've made progress every year. When I first started, I had three co-patrons. This past year, I had 56."
The state-mandated appointive system dates back to 1870.
U.S. District Judge Richard L. Williams in Richmond found no racially biased motive when the system was adopted. But he said racial discrimination figured prominently in the state's decision at a 1901-02 constitutional convention to retain the system.
The state General Assembly in 1947 passed a law permitting the election of school-board members in some counties, and voters in Arlington County did so.
But when the Arlington County School Board voted in 1956 to racially desegregate its school system, the General Assembly repealed the 1947 law.
Williams found that the legislature's action was "an effort to impede Arlington's ability to comply with court-ordered desegregation."
But the judge, upheld last Nov. 24 by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled that the appointive system's challengers had failed to prove that racially biased motives survive.
"The defendants have proved that the state does not currently maintain the system . . . for discriminatory reasons," the 4th Circuit Court said.
The number of blacks serving on school boards across the state matches their percentage of the state's population - about 18 percent.
But blacks are under-represented on school boards in 20 of the state's 40 school districts, where they comprise more than 30 percent of the population, the court was told for Monday's appeal.
There are no black members on 50 of the 136 local school boards.
"There is continuing overt racial discrimination in the appointment of school boards," the appeal contended.
The seven people who sued are Darius Irby and John S. Neal of Nottoway County, Charles W. White of Buckingham County, the Rev. James S. Wiliams Jr. of Prince Edward County, Cora Tucker of Halifax County, Willie Powell and Milton Richardson in Petersburg.
The case is Irby vs. Virginia State Board of Elections, 89-1612.
by CNB