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2002 SESSION

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HJ 169 Supporting accord between U.S. Dept. of Ed. & Office for Civil Rights.

Introduced by: Jerrauld C. Jones | all patrons    ...    notes | add to my profiles

SUMMARY AS PASSED: (all summaries)

Acknowledging and supporting the Accord Between the Commonwealth of Virginia and the United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. Acknowledges and supports the agreement reached and signed by the Governor, Virginia Secretary of Education, and the Office of the Attorney General, on behalf of the Commonwealth, and the U. S. Secretary of Education and other federal officials on November 7, 2001, to conclude the five-year federal compliance review contingent upon Virginia's good faith efforts to comply with the terms of the Accord. The 30-year period of litigation, reviews, and agreements began in 1970 with a class action suit, Adams v. Richardson, 480 F. 2d 1159,1164 (D.C. Cir. 1973) (en banc), that was brought by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund against the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, charging it with non-enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with regard to 17 southern and border states. Virginia and nine other states (i.e., Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Florida, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Maryland) were found to be operating segregated systems of higher education between January 1969 and February 1970, and had to submit plans to desegregate their higher education systems. In 1992, the U. S. Supreme Court held in Ayers v. Fordice, (505 US 717, 112 S.Ct. 2727, 1992) that the state of Mississippi had not met its duty to remedy the effects of past de jure segregation in higher education, prompting the U.S. Department of Education to direct the Office for Civil Rights to review the desegregation efforts of the 10 southern and border states relative to the Court's decision in Fordice. Between 1995 and 2001, an investigatory team of the Office for Civil Rights conducted a federal compliance review of the Commonwealth's higher education system. The agreement, signed on November 7, 2001, requires substantial funding, beginning in the 2002-2004 biennium, to provide parity between Norfolk State University and Virginia State University and the other senior state-supported four-year institutions, and to allow Virginia to comply with other points of the agreement. With the signing of the agreement, the Commonwealth will enter a five-year monitoring and reporting phase required by the U.S. Department of Education to ensure continuous progress towards the goals enumerated in the Accord, whereby failure of the Commonwealth to adhere to the terms of the agreement will result in the loss of federal funds and costly litigation brought by the U. S. Department of Justice. This resolution is a recommendation of the Commission on Access and Diversity in Higher Education.


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