Bar Leaders Work for a More Representative and Accountable Judiciary.

By Katheryn Hayes Tucker

Daily Report

November 9, 2016

As leaders of the state's largest African-American lawyers' groups, Holland & Knight partner Charles Johnson III and AT&T in-house counsel Suzanne Ockleberry have been working for decades to increase diversity in judicial elections and appointments. But a few years ago, they began to see crucial gains being lost. African-American judges in Atlanta and other cities were retiring and being replaced with whites. Some cities had never had an African-American judge.

They started Advocacy for Action in 2013. This year, they've begun to reverse the trend with elections and appointments of diverse judges in different courts around the state.

Johnson, former president of the Gate City Bar Association, and Ockleberry, former president of the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys, brought luminaries from both groups together to take action. Their first step was to talk.

They put their concerns and their case into a letter—four pages single spaced—which the Daily Report published in 2012. They gave it the headline: "Will the last African-American judge please turn out the lights?"

They called it a crisis that fed on silence and apathy. "The idea that the judiciary should reflect the best and brightest legal minds, regardless of race, will be a quaint bygone idea," they wrote. They quoted Frederick Douglass: "Power concedes nothing without a demand."

They issued a call to action. "The question we must ask is what can we do, personally and as a community. The answer is we must speak."

And speak they did—to community groups, continuing legal education events, panel discussions and on social media. They made their research and statistics available on their own website. They began a targeted campaign to make people aware of the importance of electing representative judges. They recorded videos and posted them on YouTube. They encouraged sitting judges to stay in office long enough to open their seats in an election, rather than allowing a governor to appoint a replacement. In some instances, they targeted incumbents with opposition for re-election. They helped fund campaigns through a political action committee and a private corporation that could accept anonymous donations. They learned that plenty of lawyers would gladly give up the tax deduction in exchange for not having to publicly oppose a sitting judge. They recruited qualified minority lawyers to seek judicial office either through election or appointment. And they communicated with decision-makers to ensure that qualified diverse candidates were included in consideration for appointments.

The process has not been easy. Last year, lawyers involved with the group sued Gov. Nathan Deal to block his naming of three white judges to fill three new positions on the Georgia Court of Appeals. They lost. But they made their point nonetheless. This year, the governor named an African-American judge to that court.

Last year, the group successfully lobbied the Cobb County Superior Court for the appointment of an African-American woman as chief magistrate judge. They backed an African-American woman appointed by the governor to fill an open seat in Macon. And in this year's elections, Fulton County Superior Court gained its first new African-American judges in many years.

They measure their success in tiny increments.

"Every once in a while, I think we are heard," said Johnson. "There is some heightened awareness of the importance of voting, and of becoming informed about candidates. There is less of a tendency to ignore these races. We've had something to do with that."

This work is not part of their day jobs, Ockleberry noted. "We do this because we believe in our heart of hearts in the mission of this organization," she said. "A more representative and accountable judiciary is what we're seeking."

2016 Lillian Smith Book Award winners announced

ATHENS, Ga -- A look at segregated public libraries in the Jim Crow South and a biography of a civil rights activist turned elected official are the winners of the 2016 Lillian Smith Books Awards.

Cheryl Knott, a professor in the School of Information, University of Arizona, will be recognized for Not Free, Not for All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow; and Minion KC Morrison, professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration, University of Delaware, for Aaron Henry of Mississippi: Inside Agitator.

The award seeks to honor works focused on race, social justice, civil and human rights, issues championed by Smith in her lifetime. The ceremony, part of the Decatur Book Festival, is Sept. 4 at 2:30 p.m. at the Decatur Library.

“Every year we have to make tough choices among the 40-plus excellent entries.  The two winners this year join the lineup of so many distinguished winners that have been our honor to choose over the years,” said Mary Twining Baird, chair of the board of judges.

Knott’s articles have appeared in scholarly journals, including Library Quarterly, Libraries & Culture, and Library Trends, have focused on the history of public libraries and on information access broadly construed. She holds a doctorate in library and information science from the University of Texas at Austin and master’s degrees in history and in library science from the University of Arizona.

Morrison is a professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Delaware, having served as professor and head of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Mississippi State University, where he was also senior Associate in African-American Studies. He has been on the faculty of the University of Missouri-Columbia, Syracuse University, Hobart & William Smith Colleges and Tougaloo College, and has been involved variously in political science, freshman studies, Third World Studies and African and Afro-American Studies.

The Southern Regional Council established the Lillian Smith award shortly after Smith's death in 1966. Internationally acclaimed as author of the controversial novel, Strange Fruit (1944), Lillian Smith was the most liberal and outspoken of white, mid-20th century Southern writers on issues of social and racial injustice. Smith’s family donated the collection of her letters and manuscripts to the University of Georgia 's Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library and, in 2004, the UGA Libraries joined the SRC as a partner in administering the awards. The property where she lived and worked in Clayton now serves as an educational center and an artist retreat, the Lillian E. Smith Center of Piedmont College. In 2015, the college joined as a partner in presenting the awards. The Georgia Center for the Book is also an award sponsor, joining in 2007.

District Court Rejects Wisconsin Voter Suppression Law: One Wisconsin Institute v Thomsen

By Leland Ware 

Louis L. Redding Chair and 

Professor for the Study of 

Law and Public Policy 

University of Delaware

On July 29, 2016, a federal judge ruled that several provisions of Wisconsin’s voting laws are unconstitutional because they discriminate against African Americans. The circumstances that led to the judge’s decision began when Wisconsin Republicans won legislative majorities in 2011. They immediately enacted several measures that made voting more difficult and manipulated state laws to give themselves a partisan political advantage. This was part and parcel of a massive effort by Republican-dominated state legislatures to suppress the participation of African American, Hispanic, and Asian American voters in the electoral process.

Wisconsin’s tactics included implementing one of the harshest voter ID laws in the nation, restricting early voting hours, changing laws regarding absentee ballots and changing regulations in a way that injected partisanship into polling places. Other changes included unprecedented partisan redistricting.

The lawmakers reduced the time during which municipalities could offer in-person absentee voting from 30 days to 12 and eliminated “corroboration” as a means of proving residence. The laws required that any “dorm list” that would be used with college IDs had to include a certification that the students were United States citizens. The residency requirement for voting was increased from 10 to 28 days before an election.

Another measure eliminated straight ticket voting. Legislators also eliminated the State’s Government Accountability Board authority to appoint special registration deputies who could register voters. Another law prohibited municipal clerks from faxing or emailing absentee ballots to absentee voters other than overseas and military voters.

A City of Madison ordinance that required landlords to provide voter registration forms to new tenants was overturned. This was intended to suppress the votes of students who attended the University of Wisconsin and other colleges in Madison. Another law required all voters to provide documentary proof of residence when registering to vote.

A lawsuit was filed that challenged the laws under the First, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of U.S. Constitution and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The judge ruled that several provisions of Wisconsin’s voting laws are unconstitutional as they were designed to suppress African American voter turnout.

The state was ordered to issue credentials for voting to anyone trying to obtain a free photo ID for voting, but did not possess the underlying documents needed to obtain one. He called the state's current process for getting free IDs "a wretched failure" because it has left a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic citizens unable to obtain IDs.

The judge also struck down restrictions limiting municipalities to one location for in-person absentee voting and limiting in-person early voting to weekdays. The Court found that weekday limitations intentionally discriminated against Democratic-leaning African Americans in Milwaukee. The judge invalidated the increase in residency requirements, the prohibition on using expired student IDs to vote and a prohibition on distributing absentee ballots by fax or email.

The Court recognized that laws were designed achieve a partisan objective, “but the means of achieving that objective was to suppress the reliably Democratic vote of Milwaukee’s African Americans.” This was deliberate, unconstitutional racial discrimination.

The Republican Party has gone to extreme lengths to suppress turnout of traditional Democratic constituencies. Their tactics are a throwback to an earlier and uglier era. Disenfranchisement during Reconstruction was based on laws, new constitutions, and practices that were used to prevent African American from voting.

Those measures were enacted by the former Confederates who gained control of state legislatures after federal troops were withdrawn from the South. Their sordid tactics were used to return political control to White Democrats and to impose a regime of racial segregation and White supremacy. The difference this time involves Republican-dominated legislatures that are engaging in massive voter suppression. A different political party is leading the current effort but the racist objectives are the same.

Appeals Court Rejects North Carolia Voter Suppression Law: North Carolina NAACP v. McCrory

By Leland Ware  

Louis L. Redding Chair and 

Professor for the Study of 

Law and Public Policy 

University of Delaware 

On July 29, 2016, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down North Carolina’s blatant efforts to suppress African American votes. The case began in 2013, after the Supreme Court issued the decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which overturned key provisions of the Voting Rights Act. On the day after Shelby was decided, North Carolina’s Republican-dominated the legislature announced an intention to enact “omnibus” election law. Before proceeding, however, the legislature obtained detailed data that examined, by race, a number of voting practices.

Relying on this data, the General Assembly enacted legislation restricting voting options favored by African Americans. The laws shortened an early voting period by a full week, eliminated same-day registration, prohibited the counting of ballots cast out of precinct, eliminated a preregistration program for 16-and 17-year olds, and implemented a strict photo ID requirement. Many observers called the legislation “the worst voter suppression law in the nation.”

A number of organizations filed suit contending that the legislation was motivated by a discriminatory intent in violation of § 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. They also contended that the laws had a discriminatory effect in violation of § 2 of the Voting Rights Act and burdened the right to vote in contravention of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Despite the mountain of evidence of discrimination that was presented, the trial court rejected the claims finding that the plaintiffs had “failed to show that such disparities will have materially adverse effects on the ability of minority voters to cast a ballot and effectively exercise the electoral franchise.”

The Fourth Circuit reversed. It concluded that the General Assembly enacted the “most restrictive voting law North Carolina has seen since the era of Jim Crow.”  The record showed that the laws were not, as the state contended, the product of the back-and-forth of routine partisan struggle. In fact, the General Assembly enacted the changes in the immediate aftermath of unprecedented African American voter participation in a state with a troubled racial history and racially polarized voting. The Court stated:

In response to claims that intentional racial discrimination animated its action, the State offered only meager justifications. Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assuredly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist. Thus the asserted justifications cannot and do not conceal the State’s true motivation.

The Court found that the totality of the circumstances compelled a finding of intentional discrimination. These circumstances included North Carolina’s history of voting discrimination, the dramatic upswing in African American voting, the legislature’s knowledge that African Americans’ voting translated into support for democratic candidates. Additional considerations were the elimination of tools African Americans used to vote and the imposition of new barriers to voting. This evidence showed that the General Assembly used the new voting laws to preserve the Republican majority and did so by targeting black voters.

North Carolina NAACP v. McCrory is a significant win for Civil Rights advocates. It will have an impact on the 2016 presidential election. The radical right wing has developed an array of subtle and overt methods to suppress voter registration and turnout. Voter suppression today is achieved through regulatory, legislative and administrative means, resulting in modern day equivalents to poll taxes and literacy tests that kept Black voters from the ballot box in the Jim Crow era. The laws struck down in North Carolina NAACP v. McCrory are examples of the flagrant institutional racism that continues to haunt us.