Attorney General’s Responsibilities, Neighborhood Schools, & Gangs

Robert Kahne

Published in

My Old Kentucky Podcast

6 min readMar 10, 2017

HB 151 — School Bussing

On February 23rd, the Kentucky House passed HB 151, a bill that call for so-called “neighborhood schools”, and would mandate significant changes to JCPS’s Student Assignment Plan.
First, some history:
In 1954, the Supreme Court made the famous “Brown versus Board of Education” decision. But, most school districts didn’t implement significant changes until the 1970s.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act mandated that schools integrate by 1974, or else lose their federal funding. In 1971 a group of social justice groups in Louisville including the KY ACLU, the NAACP, and the KY Commission on Human Rights shows that 90% of the students in “Louisville Public Schools” were black while 95% of the students in “Jefferson County Public Schools” were white. In part because of this, Judge James Gordon mandated that Louisville and Jefferson County Schools have between 15% and 50% black students in 1975.
This forced city and county officials to come up with a plan. The story is very dramatic (as my mother), but in the end, there was one single school district (JCPS) which bused children across the county.
Over time, the plan was altered and improved, and has proven to be quite popular and acclaimed across the country, especially when compared to similar situations faced in Detroit, Oklahoma City, and other cities.
But, student assignment planning has never been easy, and many have raised significant concerns. In 2002, one mother went to court over the fact that her child had to be bused ten miles because her local school was full. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court when they decided Meredith v. JCPS. The SAP was struck down — in JCPS and other places, race could no longer be used as a determining factor in determining school assignment.
JCPS created a new SAP, which clustered geographic areas in such a way that each cluster was pretty diverse. Then, students rank which school within that cluster they want to attend, and are assigned based on an algorithm including choice, siblings, and socioeconomic factors (but not race). Some magnet schools are exempted from this plan.
In 2011, the Civil Rights Project at UCLA did a survey on JCPS’s SAP, and it showed that 69% of parents were satisfied with the assignment for their child (But only 54% approved of how the plan was working and implemented).
Rep. Bratcher’s plan would create changes to the current SAP. The bill would change the way students are assigned to only accommodate distance from the school as a factor.
The bill does carve out magnet and traditional schools
In theory, many of the underlying ideas behind the current SAP could still exist, but distance from school would be an overriding factor.
Louisville’s neighborhoods are deeply segregated.
Louisville’ Democrats all voted against the plan, many members of the JCPS school board went to Frankfort to oppose the bill, Donna Hargens (superintendent of JCPS schools) also went to oppose the bill, and many social justice organizations also voiced concern.
This seems like another “war on Louisville” type bill, where representatives from the rest of the state of Kentucky are making decisions about Louisville that the majority of Louisvillians and their representatives disagree with.

Resources:

HB 464 — An AG’s Duty to Defend

We’ve talked before about an Attorney General’s duty to defend. Specifically, we talked about whether Andy Beshear would defend either of the abortion bills that were passed back in January. We’ve also mentioned situations where private counsel has been hired when an AG will not defend a law
So HB 464 addresses this issue. It was filed on February 21 by Jeff Hoover, the Speaker of the House. It would amend the AG’s duties to include defending the constitutionality of ALL enacted legislation
Hoover says this is not political. He said “For an attorney general, whether it be this attorney general, a previous attorney general or any future attorney general, to be able to pick and choose which laws they want to fully execute is really, in my opinion, it is a slap to the people of Kentucky because that office is chief law enforcement officer. That means they should execute fully implementation of laws that are adopted by the General Assembly and signed by the governor.”
Hoover did not talk to the Attorney General’s office before filing this bill. Beshear’s spokesman said “Beshear does look forward to a conversation with the Speaker where he can discuss the bill’s implications, which would require the office’s involvement in hundreds of private lawsuits ranging from estate disputes to car accidents, and everything in between.”
This raises issues about duty to appeal trial court judgments striking down state law. Do they have to appeal every one of those? To the highest court?
You’d think if you were doing your research before filing a piece of legislation, you would probably talk to the Attorney General.
There would no longer be private counsel defending laws that an AG refused to defend.
AG has taken an oath to defend the Constitution. But now, he will have to defend bills he believes are unconstitutional. There’s a Yale Law Review article about this very issue, and its author suggests that there is no constitutional problem with statutes like the one that has been filed here. Not sure if there have eve been challenges to laws like these. But hey, if there was one, it seems like Andy Beshear would have to defend it!
Apparently before 2008, you didn’t hear about nondefense very often. In 2008, California’s AG refused to defend Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state. Other AGs followed suit, and refused to defend their state’s SSM bans, including Jack Conway. Democrat AGs have also refused to defend gun rights legislation, and Republican AGs have refused to defend things like campaign finance restrictions and gun control legislation.
I hadn’t really heard of a law like this, but I found out that a few states do require that an AG defend all laws. A few make clear that the decision to defend is up to the AG, but some are silent. There’s also an approach in some states where an AG can file suit seeking a judicial pronouncement on the validity of the statute. So this is actually a duty to ATTACK a state law they believe is invalid.

Resources:

HB 315 — The Gang Bill

What it does: Enhance penalties for gang recruitment — specifically for people 18 years or older recruiting someone 15 or younger
Broaden the definition of a gang
Current: an alliance, network or conspiracy of five or more persons involved in a continuing pattern of certain criminal activity
Proposed: three or more persons who: share a name or identifying hand signal/sign, colors or symbols or geographical location or leader; has been identified or prosecuted as a gang within the commonwealth or another state or country; and has two or more members who engage in or have engaged in a pattern of criminal activity.
Increased jail time for gang members who commit misdemeanors
Also makes felonies harsher, could increase from a D to a C, and change the parole eligibility from 20% to 85%.
Also includes a provision about seizing assets, so once an individual is suspected of gang activity, their family’s property may be subject to civil forfeiture
Implications: There’s a lot of research out there that increased penalties aren’t effective in deterring violent crime
What’s a better deterrent? Community resources, Treatment programs, Programming in jails/prisons, Affordable housing-people can’t afford to move out of the neighborhood where gang activity is happening!
It will absolutely have a disproportionate impact on people of color
May increase gang activity
Antagonism towards law enforcement
People join gangs in prison to survive
When they are incarcerated for longer periods of time, people lose contact and community ties, and when they are released, the only people they know may be people they knew from when they were committing crimes or others they met in prison
I think this bill is bad, but I’m also a defense attorney. I am curious to hear what prosecutors and others may think about this. I think broadening this definition could put almost anyone in a gang. I think mandatory minimums that we have are bad enough already, and now we’re increasing penalties. At the same time, the gang statute has never really been used super often, so maybe they won’t charge it frequently. I think this statute is for Louisville, and I’d be curious to know what prosecutors in Louisville think about, because most of them are relatively progressive people.

Resources

QUICK HITS

HB 330, which was a quick hit last week about the Yum! Center (increasing life of TIF district) passed a House committee 22–1

http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/ky-general-assembly/2017/02/21/panel-approves-new-deal-kfc-yum-center/98188350/#_=_

Attorney General’s Responsibilities, Neighborhood Schools, & Gangs

Written by Robert Kahne