By Leland Ware, Louis L. Redding Professor of Law & Public Policy,
University of Delaware. This case is discussed in more detail in professor
Ware’s book, A
Century of Segregation: Race,
Class, and Disadvantage.
The Maryland Senate gave
bipartisan support to the landmark settlement in Coalition for
Equity & Excellence in Maryland Higher Education v. Maryland Higher Education
Commission. Four historically black colleges and
universities (HBCUs) in Maryland can expect to increase their budgets by a
total of $577 million dollars.
In the late 19th century
Maryland established a dual, racially segregated system of public education. The “colored” institutions were Morgan, the University of Maryland Eastern
Shore, Coppin and Bowie. Under a series of Supreme Court decisions including U.S. v. Fordice, the adoption of
race-neutral admission policies is not enough to satisfy desegregation
obligations. States that maintained racially segregated colleges and
universities have a legal duty to eliminate all vestiges of the segregated
system.
In 1975, the Department
of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) informed Maryland that it was
seeking the termination of federal funding based on its failure to eliminate
the vestiges of segregation in its colleges and universities. In 2000, Maryland
and OCR entered into a settlement agreement which set forth commitments that
the State made that would result in full compliance under federal laws.
During the 1960s and
1970s, Maryland’s HBCUs began offering unique, high-demand programs to attract
significant numbers of white students. Rather than building on that progress,
however, Maryland made large investments in two traditionally white
institutions (TWI) that undermined the desegregation progress. These
investments included the duplication of programs at HBCUs. Responding to the
proposal, an assistant Attorney General warned:
Please
be advised that the Secretary’s decision [to approve an MBA program at an HWI],
while within his discretion to act, was made contrary to advice and counsel
rendered to him by the Office of the Attorney General. . . There is little
question that the proposed MBA program, if approved, would constitute
“unnecessary program duplication” as that term of art is defined and
articulated in federal law.
The State ignored this
advice. In 2006, a nonprofit group, the Coalition for Equity
and Excellence in Maryland Higher Education, filed a lawsuit alleging the state
deliberately duplicated innovative educational programs created at black
universities, luring would-be students to their white counterparts. After a
trial, the Court found that Maryland’s HBIs were still racially identifiable
institutions. White students made up only 5% of the population of Maryland’s
HBCUs in the fall 2009. Black students were 91% of the populations at those
schools.
A federal court held in
2013 that the state had not eliminated vestiges of its segregated educational
system. The Court concluded that in view
of the number of regionally proximate institutions in Maryland, the expert
analysis of program duplications throughout Maryland, and the recognition of
several State officials of the historic problem of program duplication, the
Coalition proved that the unnecessary program duplication was traceable to
policies and practices established during the de jure era and continued into the present. These conditions
violated Maryland’s duty to eliminate the vestiges of de jure system that perpetuated racial segregation.
The Court ordered
that parties to negotiate a settlement on the remedy. There were four failed mediations under two governors since 2013. The half billion-dollar agreement
settles the question of damages. Funding would be distributed proportionally to
enrollment at each of the four HBCU’s. The bill now goes to the desk of the
Republican governor, Larry Hogan.
