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National civil rights groups speak out on Westchester

The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the Poverty and Race Research Action Council have recently sent a letter to Jim Johnson, the Monitor in the Westchester case, challenging both the rosy view of enforcement efforts peddled to the Court by the U.S. Attorney and the Monitor’s intended method to assess the disparate impact caused by restrictive zoning in Westchester’s towns and villages.

Monitor's Biennial Report a Masterwork of Misdirection

As usual, the important thing is to recognize what isn't being said or done.

Latest fantasy game in Westchester: pretending only seven municipalities are in play

If one bothers to consider all the towns and villages that retain barriers to fair housing choice, the list is much longer.

U.S. Attorney, representing HUD, concocts bizarrely limiting interpretation of key consent decree provision

At court conference on Westchester case, U.S. attorney tries to excuse its failure to hold Westchester to account by suggesting that a defendant can shield itself from having to perform court-ordered tasks by denying the existence of facts staring the defendant in the face.

Further evidence of Monitor downplaying of Westchester exclusionary zoning

The "summary charts of municipal zoning data" further demonstrate how and where the Monitor underplayed the existence of exclusionary zoning. Contrary to his letter, far more seven Westchester municipalities are characterized by that problem.

Monitor's zoning analysis profoundly understates exclusionary zoning

Facts shout "exclusion" but Monitor glosses over them, mangles disparate impact analysis.

HUD's new disparate impact rule: a mixed picture

Adoption of final rule confirms longstanding legal practice, confirms importance of the Fair Housing Act reaching practices that are neutral on their face, and may deter Supreme Court from eviscerating the law. But the final rule remains flawed, and some of HUD's explanatory comments warrant concern.

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ADC supports, participates in "The Civil Rights Act at 50" at the University of Michigan Law School

10/15/2013
Full-day conference brings together more than a dozen nationally recognized scholars to discuss legacy and future of Title VII.

Law firms selected to host ADC summer law student fellows

10/09/2013

New ADC-sponsored fellowships for students completing their second year of law school highlight the opportunity to do public interest work in the private law firm context. Two outstanding firms to participate in first year of program.

Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights Law

10/29/2012

Part 1 of ProPublica's series on the Government's decades-long failure to enforce the "affirmatively furthering fair housing" mandate

Soft on Segregation: How the Feds Failed to Integrate Westchester County

11/02/2012

Part 2 of ProPublica's series on "affirmatively furthering fair housing." This article focuses on the failure of the Government and the Monitor to hold Westchester to its obligations under the historic housing desegregation Consent Decree entered by U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote in August, 2009.

Housing segregation at the core

by
Orlando Patterson
, 07/31/10

Writing in The Nation, Orlando Patterson describes residential segregation as the "crucial source" of the still persisting "exclusion of blacks from the private sphere of American life."  "Nowhere," he writes, "is the paradox of public integration and private exclusion better reflected than in the fact that America's most segregated places are its most liberal metropolitan areas, where blacks play major roles in public life."

Avoiding Structural Change in Westchester: Excuse No. 27

04/13/2010

The argument that the people who will be living in the housing constructed pursuant to the Settlement Order won't have automobiles (and thus development must be narrowly restricted to areas in walking distance of mass transportation) is simply not fact-based.