Obituary: L. Clifford Davis, Civil Rights Lawyer & Judge, 100

 

Davis was a civil rights lawyer in the 1950s who helped integrate Texas public schools that had resisted the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning the principle of “separate but equal.” He recalled assisting Thurgood Marshall, then the chief of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, with the legal work supporting Brown v. Board of Education, which ended with a unanimous 1954 US Supreme Court decision in which the justices ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional.

After graduating from Howard University School of Law in 1949, Davis practiced civil rights law in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, one of nine Black lawyers in the entire state. Seeing a greater need for his services in Texas, where racial segregation was more prevalent, he moved to Texas. He became licensed in Texas in 1953, and in 1954, moved to Fort Worth, where he was one of only two Black lawyers in the city.

In 1955, Davis was the lead attorney in a lawsuit, Jackson v. Rawdon, seeking the admission of several Black students to public schools in Mansfield, a Fort Worth suburb that was then a farming community. A federal appeals court judge ordered that the schools integrate. Despite that ruling, and despite the US Supreme Court’s earlier decision in Brown, segregationists in the district fiercely opposed the mandate.

As the new school year began in 1956, mobs tried to prevent Black students from entering the local high school. A Black student was hung in effigy from a noose downtown. Other effigies were hung at the school entrance and from a flagpole. Gov. Allan Shivers, a Democrat who had denounced the Brown decision, dispatched the Texas Rangers. At one point, according to an account in the New York Times, an Episcopal minister attempted to quell the mob, remarking that it was difficult to “put the Bible’s ‘love thy neighbor’ together with this crowd.” “This ain’t a ‘love thy neighbor’ crowd!” one of the White resisters yelled back. Davis conceded it was simply too dangerous to send Black students into Mansfield High School. “All we were asking them to do was to just follow the law,” he told the Dallas Morning News in 2003. “That’s all. The appeals court ordered the [trial] judge to follow the law, that’s all. He entered the integration order, but we couldn’t go into the schools. It would have been totally unsafe for us to go.”

In 1959, Davis filed Flax, et al. v. Potts, another federal civil rights suit, which led to the desegregation of the Fort Worth Independent School District. He was lead attorney on many noteworthy cases over his career, including the race discrimination class action suit against General Dynamics, In the 1960s he became one of the first Black lawyers to join the Tarrant County Bar Association and in 1983, he was first appointed and then elected to the Texas Criminal District Court No. 2 district court bench, becoming one of the first Black state district judges in Tarrant County, where he served on the bench until 1988.

Davis received numerous awards from other social organizations. He was recognized by his peers in 1997 when he received the Tarrant County Bar Association's highest award and was inducted into the National Bar Association Hall of Fame. He was also recognized by the NAACP and awarded the “William Robert Ming Award” for his efforts with their legal affairs.

Read the February 21, 2025 Washington Post article.

Read the obituary by the L. Clifford Davis Legal Association.

102-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor is Vogue Germany’s Cover Star

A 102-year-old Holocaust survivor whose family was murdered at Auschwitz is the cover star for the July/August edition of Vogue Germany. Margot Friedländer, née Bendheim, was born in Berlin in 1921. According to a brief bio on the website of Berlin’s Jewish Museum, Friedländer spent the early part of the war with her mother and younger brother Ralph after her parents separated. They had plans to flee the country but in 1943 her brother was arrested by the Gestapo. Their mother confronted the Gestapo, which led to her being deported to Auschwitz with her son, where they were both murdered. But before leaving, she left behind a message for her daughter that read: “Try to make your life.” Friedländer, then just 21 years old, went into hiding but was ultimately betrayed by “catchers” and was sent to Theresienstadt camp in the then-Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia in 1944, according to the museum.

Kerstin Weng, head of editorial content at the magazine, said that the theme of the issue was love, featuring their “favorite pieces, favorite people.” The front of the collector’s issue includes the word “love” written by Friedländer, as well as her signature. The multi-page piece, which includes numerous shots of Friedländer, covers a range of topics, from growing up in Nazi Germany to her commitment as a Holocaust survivor today. The collector's issue of Vogue Germany is available on newsstands from June 22.

Friedländer met her future husband, Adolf, while in the Nazi concentration camp, and married him soon after liberation. The pair emigrated to the US in 1946 and lived in New York for more than six decades. But in 2010, following her husband’s death aged 88, Friedländer moved back to Berlin. Ever since, she has been campaigning as a Holocaust educator. Her tireless efforts have earnt her numerous awards, including the Federal Cross of Merit First Class.

Friedländer told Vogue Germany that she was “appalled” by the growth of right-wing populism and the rise of antisemitic attacks. When addressing the issue of society becoming more polarized, she said: “Look not toward what separates us. Look towards what bring us together. Be People. Be sensible.” Grateful for the opportunity to pass on her message, she said: “You will carry my story onward. That this never comes to happen again.”

Read the June 20, 2024 CNN.com article.

CFPB Takes Action Against Draper & Kramer Mortgage for Discriminatory Mortgage Lending Practices Including Redlined Neighborhoods in Chicago and Boston

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has taken action against Draper & Kramer Mortgage Corporation (Draper) for discriminatory mortgage lending activities that discouraged homebuyers from applying to Draper for homes in majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the greater Chicago and Boston areas. The CFPB alleges that Draper located all its offices in majority-white neighborhoods, concentrated its marketing in majority-white neighborhoods, and avoided marketing to majority-Black and Hispanic areas. These actions resulted in disproportionately low numbers of mortgage loan applications and mortgage loan originations from majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Chicago and Boston compared to other lenders. If entered by the court, the proposed order announced today would ban Draper from engaging in residential mortgage lending activities for five years, and require Draper to pay a $1.5 million civil money penalty into the CFPB’s victims relief fund.

Draper & Kramer Mortgage Corporation is a non-depository mortgage lender based in Downers Grove, Illinois. Draper received applications and originated mortgage loans across the country, including in Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin.

The CFPB alleges that, from 2019-2021, Draper engaged in redlining majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the greater Chicago and Boston areas, resulting in it significantly underperforming its peers in lending activity to these areas. Draper discouraged mortgage applicants from making or pursuing an application for credit on the basis of race, color, and national origin, violating the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Regulation B.

Specifically, the CFPB alleges that Draper violated the law by:

(1) Intentionally focusing mortgage lending activities in majority-white neighborhoods and excluding Black and Hispanic neighborhoods: Draper had no offices, no loan officers, and virtually no marketing or outreach in majority- or high-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Chicago and Boston. Draper did not assign any loan officers to solicit applications in majority-Black and Hispanic communities and failed to train or incentivize its loan officers to lend in these communities. Draper’s outreach and marketing specifically targeted majority-white neighborhoods and mostly avoided majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

(2) Discouraging mortgage applicants from pursuing properties in majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods: Draper’s business model discouraged borrowers from applying for loans to purchase property located in these neighborhoods. Draper’s peer lenders generated applications for properties in majority-Black and Hispanic areas in the Chicago metro area at over two and-a-half times the rate and in the Boston metro area at three times the rate that Draper generated such applications. Draper also originated disproportionately low amounts of mortgage loans for properties in these neighborhoods, with peers in Chicago and Boston originating two and-a-half times more loans than Draper in majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

Under the Consumer Financial Protection Act, the CFPB has the authority to take action against institutions violating consumer financial laws, including the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and engaging in unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts and practices.

If entered by the court, the order would require Draper to:

• Cease residential mortgage lending activities for five years: For that period, Draper cannot perform any residential mortgage lending activities, nor receive any compensation for any residential mortgage lending.
• Pay a $1.5 million civil penalty to the CFPB’s victims relief fund.

Read today’s proposed order.

Consumers can submit complaints about financial products and services by visiting the CFPB’s website or by calling (855) 411-CFPB (2372).

Employees who believe their company has violated federal consumer financial protection laws are encouraged to send information about what they know to whistleblower@cfpb.gov. To learn more about reporting potential industry misconduct, visit the CFPB’s website.

Read the January 17, 2025 CFPB article.

Civil and Human Rights Organizations Sue Trump Administration Over Executive Orders Banning Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility and Erasing Transgender People

The Legal Defense Fund (LDF) and Lambda Legal have filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the National Urban League, the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), and the AIDS Foundation of Chicago challenging three anti-equity executive orders from President Trump related to diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and transgender people. LDF and Lambda Legal claim these orders will severely limit the organizations’ ability to provide critical social and health services such as HIV treatment, fair housing, equal employment opportunities, affordable credit, civil rights protections, and many others. This would harm countless people across the US, including people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, and people living with HIV. The lawsuit claims that the administration is violating the organizations’ rights to free speech and due process and is engaging in intentional discrimination by issuing and enforcing the anti-equity orders.

The three executive orders being challenged would end equity-related grants and forbid federally-funded entities from engaging in diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs, and from recognizing the existence of transgender people. These orders reverse decades of civil rights progress and pose an existential threat to the organizations that advocate for the civil rights of transgender people, and provide them shelter, services, and support.

“Fair housing is a national policy of the U.S. Our nation’s fair housing principles are embedded in the Constitution and civil rights statutes secured by the blood, sweat, tears, and lives of millions of people who fought to make our Declaration of Independence and Constitution real for everyone in this country. The Constitution and our civil rights laws are centered on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. The President cannot undo the Constitution or take away our rights by affixing a signature to an executive order,” said Lisa Rice, President and CEO of the National Fair Housing Alliance. “The administration’s Executive Orders and OMB funding freeze memorandum have caused chaos, fear, insecurity, dysfunction, and loss of rights. The Administration’s illegal actions put all people in harm’s way, driving up the cost of housing and leaving millions exposed to discrimination, harassment, and retaliation with no structure for protection. ‘Out of Many, One’ is our national motto -– any effort to divide, stoke fear and treat people unfairly is not in line with our nation’s founding principles. America is best when united and relentlessly pursuing a country where everyone, regardless of their background, has a fair chance at reaching the American Dream.”

“Beyond spreading inaccurate, dehumanizing, and divisive rhetoric, President Trump’s executive orders seek to tie the hands of organizations, like our clients, providing critical services to people who need them most,” said Janai Nelson, President and Director-Counsel of LDF. “The three orders we are challenging today perpetuate false and longstanding stereotypes that Black people and other underrepresented groups lack skills, talent, and merit - willfully ignoring the discriminatory barriers that prevent a true meritocracy from flourishing. We proudly stand with our clients and Lambda Legal against these unconstitutional orders and hope the court will act quickly so the arduous work of advancing and sustaining our multiracial democracy can continue without unlawful interference from the Trump administration.”

“These policies drip with contempt for transgender people, and pose a significant threat to critical health and HIV services that support marginalized communities, putting lives at risk,” said Jose Abrigo, Lambda Legal’s HIV Project Director. “These orders pose an existential threat to transgender people and the organizations that provide them with shelter and support. The orders defund organizations providing critical health and HIV services, and punish organizations for striving to improve the lives of Black people, people of color, and members of other marginalized communities. They are patently unconstitutional. Lambda Legal and LDF teamed up because the fights to end racism, the HIV epidemic, and anti-transgender bias are inseparable. For organizations like our plaintiffs providing these services, addressing these compounding barriers is essential to HIV prevention and care, and this policy would impede the work to eradicate and address the HIV epidemic.”

The lawsuit, National Urban League v. Trump, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claims that the executive orders violate the plaintiffs’ First Amendment right to free speech by censoring and chilling their views on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. The plaintiffs also claim that the executive orders are so vague that the organizations do not know what is and is not prohibited, in violation of their Fifth Amendment due process rights. Also, the executive orders discriminate against people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ people, with particular animus towards Black people and transgender individuals, in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.

You can read the full complaint here.

Read the February 19, 2025 NFHA article.

Book Review: "Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights" by Dylan C. Penningroth

 

In Before the Movement, acclaimed historian Dylan C. Penningroth revises the conventional story. Drawing on long-forgotten sources found in the basements of county courthouses across the nation, Penningroth shows that African Americans, far from being ignorant about law until the middle of the twentieth century, have thought about, talked about, and used it going as far back as even the era of slavery. They dealt constantly with the laws of property, contract, inheritance, marriage and divorce, of associations (like churches and businesses and activist groups), and more. By exercising these “rights of everyday use,” they made Black rights usual. And in innumerable subtle ways, they helped shape the law itself.

Free Black people participated extensively in credit, debt and contracts in the decades before the Civil War. According to Penningroth, by 1860, there were over 16,000 free Black property owners in the South who held property worth nearly $8.8 billion in today’s dollars. Freedom meant that they could ask local judges to protect their rights, and they went to court in cases involving farms, cows and myriad other types of property. Black homeownership rose from 43,000 families in 1870 to over 500,000 families in 1910 (about 1 in 4 Black families nationwide). Black farmers owned more than 15 million acres and $208 billion in farm property (in today’s dollars). Lynchings also rose sharply in these years, and not coincidentally. 

"Penningroth's conclusions emerge from an epic research agenda.... Before the Movement presents an original and provocative account of how civil law was experienced by Black citizens and how their 'legal lives' changed over time . . . [an] ambitious, stimulating, and provocative book." - Eric Foner, New York Review of Books.

The author is a professor of law and history at the University of California, Berkeley. The book, which stretches from the last decades of slavery to the 1970s, partly traces the history of the author's own family. Before the Movement is an account of Black legal lives that looks beyond the Constitution and the criminal justice system to recover a rich, broader vision of Black life.

Read the September 26, 2023 Washington Post article.

Justice Department Finds that Idaho Violates Federal Civil Rights Law by Unnecessarily Segregating People with Physical Disabilities

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced its finding that Idaho unnecessarily segregates adults with physical disabilities in nursing facilities, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the US Supreme Court’s decision in Olmstead v. L.C. DOJ’s findings, detailed in a letter to Idaho Governor Brad Little, follow a thorough investigation into the state’s service system for people with physical disabilities.

The ADA and the Olmstead decision require state and local governments to ensure the services they provide to people with disabilities are available in the most integrated setting appropriate to individuals’ needs. Community-based services can include assistance with daily activities, like showering or transferring from bed to wheelchair. Without community-based services, Idahoans with physical disabilities have little choice but to enter nursing facilities. Many will remain in those nursing facilities for years or decades, when they would prefer to live in the community. And each year of nursing facility care costs Idaho, on average per person, much more than what Idaho spends serving adults with physical disabilities at home.

According to the DOJ’s findings, 65% of Idahoans in nursing facilities have expressed a desire to live in the community, but 82% did not have an active discharge plan as of October 2024. In Idaho, about 19% of nursing home residents are younger than 65, and about 14% have low care needs.

DOJ’s investigation found that most Idaho Medicaid-funded nursing facility residents could live successfully at home with services Idaho offers. But Idaho limits access to services to transition out of nursing facilities and to live in the community. As a result, very few Idahoans with physical disabilities can access Idaho’s services to leave nursing facilities and remain at home. 

In-home nursing services can help people with disabilities with medication management, bathing, housekeeping, and more intensive care like managing medical devices. The DOJ letter says Idaho could remedy the ADA violations by expanding community-based services and allocating more resources to existing programs. By doing so, the state could not only improve outcomes for individuals with disabilities, but also save money on Medicaid expenditures, the report says.

The Civil Rights Division’s Disability Rights Section investigated this case with assistance from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Idaho.

For more information on the ADA, please call the department’s toll-free ADA Information Line at 1-800-514-0301 (TDD 800-514-0383) or visit www.ada.gov/topics/community-integration/.

Read the January 16, 2025 DOJ press release.

Read the January 19, 2025 Idaho Capital Sun article.

Justice Department Agreement with DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Orlando at SeaWorld Resolves Allegations of Discriminatory Policy Against Hosting Arabs

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has reached an agreement with AWH Orlando Property LLC, the owner of the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Orlando at SeaWorld in Florida (DoubleTree), to resolve allegations that the DoubleTree discriminated against people of Arab descent in violation of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title II). Title II prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin in places of public accommodation, including hotels.

The owner, AWH Orlando Property, denied the allegations and did not admit liability. Attorneys for the owner said that both parties reached the agreement to avoid a prolonged legal process.

The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida alleges that the DoubleTree adopted and implemented a discriminatory policy against hosting guests of Arab descent by unilaterally canceling a conference that was to be held by the Arab America Foundation, a non-profit educational and cultural organization, in November 2023, a week before the conference was scheduled to begin and almost a month after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

The lawsuit alleges that the DoubleTree’s decision to cancel the Arab America Foundation’s conference was not because of any legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons. Although the hotel claimed that the cancelation was because of security concerns, the hotel faced no security threats or risks associated with the conference. As alleged in DOJ’s complaint, contrary to what the DoubleTree told to the Arab America Foundation, it had not received any calls or other communications raising a safety or security threat to the conference or to the hotel. Rather, the decision to cancel was based on the national origin of the Arab America Foundation’s members and the conference attendees. The complaint therefore alleges that the DoubleTree discriminated on the basis of national origin and denied people of Arab descent the full and equal enjoyment of access to the services, accommodations, and privileges at the hotel.

The settlement, a consent decree that must still be approved by the court, requires the DoubleTree to:

• Issue a statement to the Arab America Foundation that all guests and groups are welcome to the hotel, including Arab and Arab American guests and groups;
• Retain a qualified compliance officer to oversee compliance with the consent decree for two years;
• Notify employees and executives of the DoubleTree’s obligations under Title II and the consent decree, including its commitment to ensuring equal access to the hotel, regardless of race, color, religion, or national origin;
• Establish a written anti-discrimination policy, which includes a system of accepting, investigating, and responding to guest complaints of discrimination;
• Conduct outreach to Arab or Arab American groups to share promotional materials about the hotel and indicate that it is open to all members of the public;
• Provide training to employees and executives on Title II and the company's obligations under the consent decree; and
• Make regular reports to DOJ to demonstrate its compliance with the consent decree.

Under Title II, DOJ’s Civil Rights Division can obtain injunctive relief that changes policies and practices to remedy the discriminatory conduct. Title II does not authorize the division to obtain monetary damages for customers who are victims of discrimination.

Read the January 16, 2025 DOJ release.

Read the January 17, 2025 CBS News article.