District objects to agents in suit

Stand told in case on desegregation

The Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District, a party in a long-running Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit, is challenging its potential challengers.

Scott Richardson, an attorney for the school district, told U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. that one of the tentatively selected representatives of Jacksonville’s black students and their families has failed to show up to be interviewed by him to gauge her interest and familiarity with the lawsuit issues.

Another tentatively selected representative of Jacksonville’s class of black students acknowledged only “vague” understanding of the lawsuit, Richardson said, adding that the woman had never read any orders from the case, never heard the term “‘unitary status’” and, similarly, has no knowledge of Plan 2000, which is a court-approved plan that guides some of the operation of schools in the Jacksonville district.

“Her research about the case has consisted of checking informal Facebook groups and a webblog,” Richardson wrote to the judge in objecting to the tentatively named representatives for a new Jacksonville sub-class of the long-standing Joshua

intervenors. The Joshua intervenors, who have in the past represented the class of all black students in Pulaski County, now represents black students in the Pulaski County Special and Jacksonville/North Pulaski systems — the only remaining defendant districts in the case.

The Little Rock and North Little Rock districts, once parties in the 1982 suit, were eventually declared unitary, or desegregated, and are no longer part of the case.

Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock, the lead attorney for the Joshua intervenors, said this week that he will respond to the school district’s objections to the possible representatives by the May 7 deadline set by the judge.

Walker and Richardson agreed in separate interviews that the future of the case is not at stake in the matter of a class representative.

“He is not going to dismiss the case because things have already been decided,” Richardson said about the judge. “The district is under an order. I don’t see it as a way to get rid of the case,” Richardson continued. “It’s really just a way to push the Joshua intervenors to have a real client for the attorney to be responsive to.”

“The rights of children are paramount,” Walker said.

A school district can’t obliterate its obligations to students and its compliance to a desegregation plan by waiting for the plaintiffs or intervenors to be gone, even die.

Walker said a party can’t outwait the plaintiffs as a way to get out of compliance.

Months ago Richardson had raised the issue of a lack of a Jacksonville representative among the intervenors.

The judge in February added Eshe Mustafa and Takeena Wilbon as tentative representatives of a new sub-class of intervenors that would include black children attending Jacksonville/ North Pulaski schools, their parents and other adults. The judge gave the district’s attorney time to examine the qualifications of the tentative representatives of the class and to raise any objections to them becoming full representatives.

Mustafa withdrew and the Joshua intervenors offered Tiffany Ellis the chance to be a class representative along with Wilbon. Ellis was interviewed, or deposed, by Richardson on April 11 but Wilbon did not show up then or on April 13 for a scheduled deposition

“Neither tentative class representative is adequate to represent the interests of the class,” Richardson argued to the judge in the written objection. Previous court decisions have established that an adequate class representative must assure the court that it will vigorously pursue the interests of the class and must have the character and the means to carry out the obligation,

including the ability to examine decisions of lawyers for the protection of the class.

“A class representative cannot be simply lending a name to a suit controlled entirely by the class attorney,” Richardson wrote based on writings on other legal experts.

Richardson said some lawsuits take on a life of their own but should be processed like normal cases because that’s the system that works well to resolve disputes.

“That’s what this is, a lawsuit,” he said. “It operates according to rules. There shouldn’t be special exceptions and there should be real people involved.”