Judge rejects request to abolish racial quota by “shortcut”

A federal judge on Wednesday reprimanded the American Alliance for Equal Rights for its request to declare a racial quota unconstitutional without a trial.

The organization sued the state on behalf of its member Laura Clark, arguing that a legal requirement that two racial minorities be represented on the Alabama Real Estate Appraisers Board resulted in Clark being unfairly discriminated against in the allocation of a seat.

“Whatever Ms. Clark and the Alliance’s motivation for this action – to remedy a genuine constitutional injury or to achieve a political goal – they sought to reap their unusual reward too soon, with nothing more than a flimsy, if plausible, complaint and a few pages of briefing,” U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker Jr. wrote in his ruling. “It takes far more sweat and diligence to have a properly enacted statutory clause declared void on its face; a clause, the attorney speculated, that appears in more than two dozen other Alabama public appointment laws.”

Clark is interim president of the Alabama Center for Law and Liberty, a conservative political law firm that originally grew out of the Alabama Policy Institute.

The state does not dispute the claim that the two-minority requirement is unconstitutional, but says the lawsuit is moot because Governor Kay Ivey and Attorney General Steve Marshall have said the provision will not be enforced.

The parties sought a settlement until the Alabama Association of Real Estate Brokers intervened. The AAREB is an association of African-American real estate brokers in the state. The association is represented in the case by the nonprofit national law firm Democracy Forward.

“The court rightly rejected plaintiff’s attempt to overturn an important law without giving the defense an opportunity to examine plaintiff’s factual allegations and present evidence,” said Brooke Menschel, senior counsel at Democracy Forward. “On behalf of the Alabama Association of Real Estate Brokers, we stand ready to demonstrate the critical role this law plays in combating the ongoing impact of discrimination in appraisals, lending and housing.”

Huffaker wrote that motions for summary judgment are “peculiar creatures.”

“They bypass the normal course of trial — they bypass discovery, motions for summary judgment, a trial, post-trial motions — and jump to final judgment based on the complaint, the answer(s) and all the supporting documentation,” Huffaker wrote. “It is a procedural tool that is rarely invoked and rarely granted; probably because it is not too difficult for a party who did not make the motion to defend against the attack.”

According to Huffaker, this technical move was responsible for the rejection.

“If Allianz had relied on a stronger claim and provided appropriate evidence, the case might have been
was decided on the merits today,” Huffaker wrote. “But the court takes the claims as it finds them, so the governor and the Realtors Association now have the opportunity to do their best to get a summary judgment or a trial.”

The defendants will now have the opportunity to obtain evidence with the involvement of experts.