Tangi desegregation case lawyer wants out

• By DAVID J. MITCHELL
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: May 14, 2009 - Page: 2B

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One of three plaintiffs’ attorneys in the Tangipahoa Parish public school desegregation case is seeking to withdraw from the case, citing “irreconcilable issues,” court records say.

Gideon T. Carter III, a Baton Rouge lawyer, has asked U.S. District Judge Ivan L.R. Lemelle to withdraw him from the case.

He was enrolled in it June 29, 2007, records say.

Filed Tuesday, Carter’s motion does not describe what those issues are but he wrote that they have created a conflict with his continued representation of the plaintiffs. He did not return a message left at his office Wednesday.

The move comes as the Tangipahoa Parish School Board submitted a proposed school desegregation plan that calls for $187.4 million in school construction and improvement and about $12 million a year in operational spending on a series of new magnet schools.

Lemelle has given the plaintiff’s attorneys in Joyce Marie Moore, et al., v. Tangipahoa Parish School Board, et al., until May 18 to respond to the plan.

Lead attorney Nelson Taylor said Wednesday that Carter was brought in to try to negotiate something with the School Board and that has come to an impasse.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys have to litigate the board plan, which will call on other types of expertise, Taylor said.

He also said plaintiffs’ attorneys have not been paid yet, and Carter has a large private practice to maintain.

The lawyers are having to litigate because the board has proposed “a desegregation plan that does not desegregate the schools” and has taken a “hardline position” on some matters, Taylor said.

In a motion filed last week, school attorneys argued court precedent does not mandate that all schools be desegregated.

On an aggregate basis, a little more than 56 percent of the 39 schools that would exist in the parish after the multimillion-dollar desegregation plan is in place would remain segregated. The system has 36 schools.

But school attorneys noted in court records that 17 schools would be desegregated, 11 more than are currently, and additional schools would be very close.