In a new Letter to the Editor published in The Chronicle of Higher Education Professor John Brittain argues there is persuasive evidence that Maryland preserves an unequal system of higher education through inadequate funding, institutional missions, educational programs, and facilities at the four historically black institutions in Maryland - Morgan, Bowie, and Coppin State Universities, and the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore.
Professor John Brittain serves as co-counsel in a lawsuit seeking $2.1 billion to remedy disparities between Maryland's historically Black colleges and universities and its traditionally White institutions.
The lawsuit, filed in October
2006 by a group of students and alumni of
historically Black colleges known as the Coalition for Equity and
Excellence in Maryland Higher Education Inc., contends that Maryland has
operated a higher education system of "de jure segregation” - racial
segregation imposed by law - in funding for operations and program
duplication that is in violation of the 1954 Brown v. Board of
Education ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court and of Title VI of the U. S.
Civil Rights Act of 1964. It also alleges that, even as
Maryland negotiated with the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S.
Department of Education to dismantle its segregated system, MHEC and
other state education officials instituted policies and programs that
further separated its Black and White schools.
Read the full Letter to the Editor by Prof. John Brittain (UDC-DCSL) and Prof. John Pierre (Southern University Law Center) in The Chronicle of Higher Education, "Maryland Lawsuit Is Hardly 'Unusual'"
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