Hoots

In a major success resulting from the efforts of our lawyers in New York and Washington, D.C., working alongside the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, we obtained an order that required the State of Pennsylvania and the Woodland Hills School District to equalize educational opportunities for minority students in their district before having a desegregation order lifted. The school district and the state had attempted to terminate judicial supervision of the desegregation order on the grounds that the school district had put mechanisms in place that would result in a unitary school system. The Court denied the defendants’ motions with respect to their request for termination of judicial supervision over the implementation of curriculum, student assessment, instruction and staff development. The Court’s historic order recognized that school districts must continue to enforce court-ordered remedies designed to provide equal educational opportunities for all students in their district until the completion of the desegregation process. Having established this legal principle, the Court recently found the district to have achieved unitary status and, accordingly, terminated its judicial supervision. Joseph W. Gelb was the partner responsible for this matter, working with Yoav Griver and Bernadette McCann Ezring (both New York) and Margaret Burns and George Hazel (both Washington, D.C.).

• Civil Rights
• Pro Bono