District official’s intervention bid challenged

Parties in school desegregation lawsuit call for U.S. judge to deny request

Attorneys for black students in a long-running school desegregation lawsuit and for the Pulaski County Special School District on Tuesday urged a federal judge to deny an assistant superintendent’s request to intervene in the case that is on the brink of new proceedings.

Janice Warren, the district’s assistant superintendent for equity and pupil services and a former interim superintendent, had asked Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. earlier this month to allow her to intervene to protect her interests in her separate lawsuit against district leaders.

Warren had applied in 2018 to be the district’s permanent superintendent but was not interviewed for the job. She has argued in a federal lawsuit, set to go to trial in November, that she didn’t get the position because of her sex and race and out of retaliation for her reporting in 2017 about the inequities between the district’s new Mills High and new Robinson Middle schools.

Marshall is the presiding judge in the 37-year-old federal school desegregation lawsuit in which the Pulaski County Special and Jacksonville/North Pulaski school districts are the remaining defendants.

Marshall has scheduled a multi-week hearing to begin July 14 to determine whether the Pulaski County Special district has met its desegregation obligations and is entitled to be declared unitary and released from further federal court supervision. The district’s obligations are to have equal school facilities, as well as equitable student discipline practices, student achievement and self-monitoring of desegregation efforts.

The attorney team for the black students — the McClendon/Ellis intervenors — argued to Marshall that Warren’s motion for intervention was made too close to the summer hearing date and would cause a shift in the focus of a hearing that is already facing a tight schedule.

The McClendon attorneys also argued that “an economic interest in the outcome of the litigation is not itself sufficient to warrant mandatory intervention.”

“To allow the movant to intervene in this cause of action, will cause significant delay. The parties are literally on the eve of trial,” the legal team wrote.

Attorneys for the McClendon intervenors are Austin Porter Jr., Robert Pressman, Lawrence Walker and Shawn Childs.

Attorneys for the Pulaski County Special district argued to the judge that Warren’s claim of an employee interest in the outcome of the desegregation case is not an interest recognized by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, “nor any district court within this jurisdiction.”

Attorneys for the school district also wrote that Warren has failed to meet established criteria for intervention.

“[H]er inclusion in this suit would insert additional issues for this Court to consider, even though those issues will be addressed in her separate employment discrimination suit,” they wrote.

They added: “While [Janice Warren] may wish to become a party to this suit,” the 8th Circuit Court has said, “’The fact remains that a federal case is a limited affair, and not everyone with an opinion is invited to attend.’”

Attorneys for the district are Cody Kees, Jay Bequette, Sam Jones, Devin Bates and Amanda Orcutt.