Judge says Ardmore redistricting suit can proceed

Saying the two sides had equally compelling arguments, a federal judge Monday refused to throw out a racial bias case filed by nine Ardmore parents against the Lower Merion school system over its redistricting plan.

In response to a motion to end the case filed by the school district's attorney Judith E. Harris, the judge opted to push on to a verdict in the seven-day-old trial, being heard in Philadelphia.

U.S. District Judge Michael M. Baylson boiled down the issues to compelling testimony from one side and powerful circumstantial evidence from the other.

"You've got testimony from school board members that race was not involved [in redistricting] vs. circumstantial evidence from the plaintiffs that it was," he said. "That's what makes this a very close case."

The pronouncement followed the judge's report that the sides could not reach a settlement, as he had requested in open court April 16.

The plaintiffs alleged in a lawsuit filed last May that by its vote on Jan. 12, 2009, the board singled out the predominantly African American community in which they live for busing to Harriton High School.

The families consider Lower Merion High their neighborhood high school and want their children to go there, but the redistricting mandates that they be bused five miles to Harriton.

The district, through testimony from its officials, has said its thinking was driven by bus travel time, proximity to Harriton, and the need to equalize enrollment in the two new high school buildings.

Monday's ruling against the district was the second defeat for the defendants since Feb. 24, when Baylson rejected a district motion for summary judgment.

In that ruling, Baylson framed his opinion within the U.S. Supreme Court's 2007 decision in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. That opinion struck down student reassignment plans based on racial classifications.

But on Monday, Baylson referred to Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Corp., a 1977 case that found constitutional a zoning ordinance that while not on its face discriminatory had the effect of barring certain socioeconomic and ethnic groups from a Chicago neighborhood.

"In the Arlington Heights case, the Supreme Court said that circumstantial evidence has to play a role in the adjudication of this dispute," Baylson said.

Baylson had warned April 16 that the case law to which he would look in deliberating was "confusing - and I am not the only judge who thinks so."

He had warned that "if I rule for the plaintiffs," the district could look forward to a judge - not educators - setting attendance boundaries. He described that as something to avoid.

In testimony Monday, school board members said they took into account factors other than race as they considered redistricting.

Those included educational continuity as children progressed through school, distance for walkers, access to special programs, and the need to keep classmates together.

Testimony resumes Tuesday.