Federal Appeals Court Prohibits Discrimination in Public Services

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in a landmark decision Monday that a local government must provide public services on a racially equitable basis.

Charles M. Haar, professor of Law, and Daniel W. Fessler, acting professor of Law at the University of California-both of whom are members of the Harvard-M.I.T. Joint Center for Urban Studies-filed an amicus curiae brief in the case on behalf of the black plaintiffs.

Magna Carta

"This could be the Magna Carta for reforming inequities in public services, just as the Brown case in 1954 was in the field of education," Haar said yesterday.

"Before this decision," he said, "the burden of proof was on the plaintiffs to show that racial discrimination was the sole motive for a city's failure to serve some of its citizens, Now, however, the burden is on the city to defend its actions."

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi had ruled that the town, Shaw, Miss., did give its black citizens equal protection under the law in spite of the fact that there was an unequal distribution of services.

In their brief. Haar and Fessler asked the court to overturn the previous ruling. They argued that since the plaintiffs had established a prima facie case of racial discrimination, the court had erred in failing to require the city to give evidence of a rationale which would overcome the inference of unconstitutional discrimination.

In accepting this argument, Judge Elbert Tuttle said for the court: "We have thoroughly examined the evidence and conclude that no such compelling state interest could possibly justify the gross disparities in service between black and white areas of town."

The plaintiffs cited a number of disparities in service, including the following facts:

nearly 98 per cent of the homes that front on unpaved streets are occupied by blacks;

nearly 97 per cent of the homes that are not serviced by sanitary sewers are in black neighborhoods;

more than 60 per cent of the town's black population suffers from lack of water due to inadequate pressure.