Federal judge rules HUD, not Baltimore, liable for failure to

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Jan 7, 2005 by Lawrence Hurley

After more than a year of deliberation, a federal judge ruled yesterday the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is liable for the failure to desegregate public housing in Baltimore City.

However, U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis, ruling from the bench in a packed courtroom at the federal court in Baltimore, found that the city itself, and its housing authority, were not liable.

The case will now move to the remedy phase, in which Garbis and the three parties will decide what the repercussions of his decision will be.

A HUD spokesman said yesterday the federal agency has not decided whether to appeal.

What is certain is, if Garbis' decision stands, the surrounding counties of Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Howard and Harford will all have a role to play.

This is because Garbis' reason for finding fault with HUD was its failure to implement a regional solution to housing segregation in Baltimore City.

The city, which has around 14,000 public housing residents, is 64 percent black, while the surrounding counties are 15 percent black, according to Garbis' figures.

HUD officials were effectively wearing blinkers that limited their vision of Baltimore City when making decisions about public housing in Baltimore from 1989 to 1995, the period covered by the litigation, Garbis said in court.

It's no longer appropriate for HUD to limit its consideration to ways to rearrange the population of Baltimore's poor African- Americans within Baltimore City, he added.

HUD's failure to take a regional approach meant it had violated the Fair Housing Act, Garbis wrote in his 322-pages opinion.

The demographics of the city - which have changed drastically since the 1940s, when it was 19 percent black - make it impossible to effect a meaningful degree of segregation of public housing - within the city limits, Garbis wrote.

He did not rule on HUD's intent, although that will be determined in the remedy phase, when the court will also determine whether HUD violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

Despite the drama of Garbis reading a summary of his decision from the bench, lawyers for both the city and the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the named plaintiffs, six black public housing tenants, were quietly pleased with the ruling, saying it was a practical solution.

Lawyers for HUD left the courtroom without comment.

Plaintiffs' attorney Andrew D. Freeman, a partner at Brown, Goldstein & Levy, described Garbis' decision as pragmatic and sensible.

He stressed the surrounding counties need not worry about a flood of public housing residents moving in, claiming there would only be a few thousand people affected, and they would be spread throughout the different jurisdictions.

No one is talking about building high-rises in the counties, Freeman added. It's a big region.

Officials from the counties that would be affected were largely caught off-guard by the decision, even if they were aware of the case.

Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens, a Democrat, was quick to condemn the decision as judicial activism at its most active.

There is already an extensive waiting list for the limited public housing available in the county, she noted.

Meanwhile, Jolene Sullivan, director of citizen services in Carroll County, said there could be problems if public housing tenants moved there from the city simply because of the lack of rental properties.

Carroll County has no public housing stock of its own and has a 1,000-long waiting list for its Section 8 program, she said.

We have a lot of talking and planning to do, Sullivan added.

William F. Ryan Jr., a partner at Baltimore firm Whiteford, Taylor, & Preston, who represented the city at trial, agreed with Garbis that the issue has to be resolved on a regional basis.

We all know that every particular jurisdiction has tremendous financial constraints, Ryan said. Without a regional approach on a host of issues it's hard to effectively get things done.

Baltimore City Solicitor Ralph S. Tyler, having taken the time to read Garbis' lengthy opinion, said yesterday afternoon it was premature to discuss the implications of the decision.

But he stressed what the city has been doing, and is doing - has been vindicated.

A long time coming

It was a decade ago that Isaac Neal and five other black public housing tenants filed a class action suit against the city, the Housing Authority of Baltimore City and the HUD.

Backed by the ACLU, the plaintiffs alleged discriminatory housing practices had continued years after segregation was banned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education.

A partial consent decree, concerning the city's then-crumbling, now-demolished high-rises, was reached in 1996, but the legal battle over the rest of the city's housing stock continued, finally going to trial in December 2003.

The month-long bench trial saw the entire history of local and federal housing policies in Baltimore put under the microscope as plaintiffs' lawyers attempted to prove serious civil rights violations had taken place.