New Orleans race bias case goes to jury

Received by Newsfinder from APMar 28, 2005 13:21 Eastern Time * Editors Note Will be LED. Note 10-person jury is CQ. By ADAM NOSSITERAssociated Press WriterNEW ORLEANS (AP) _ With a federal race discrimination lawsuit against New Orleans’ first black district attorney headed toward the jury, his lawyer conceded Monday that the case brought by fired white employees had put the city’s top prosecutor in a difficult position. But the lawyer insisted that it was wrong to accuse District Attorney Eddie Jordan of racism for having dismissed whites wholesale shortly after taking office in January 2003. “It is terribly disturbing to him to find himself, he believes, unfairly subjected to it in this trial,” lawyer Philip Schuler told the jury in his closing argument. The numbers in this lengthy case are not at issue: eight days into his term, Jordan fired 53 of 77 white workers who were not lawyers _ investigators, clerks, child-support enforcement workers _ and replaced them with blacks. Some seven out of 10 whites were fired, to be replaced by blacks. Months later, 44 of the whites sued him, and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission later made a preliminary finding that Jordan had been racially biased. “The statistical evidence establishes an unbelievably strong inference in regard to racial discrimination,” the whites’ lawyer, Clement Donelon, told the jury of eight whites and two blacks. Jordan’s lawyer countered that the district attorney had a right to hire and fire whomever he wanted, adding that his desire to make his office reflect more nearly the racial breakdown of the majority black city was “innocuous.” He derided what he called the “good old boy” hiring practices of Jordan’s predecessor, Harry Connick Sr., which resulted in an office that was overwhelmingly white. The whites’ lawyers have concentrated on showing that many of those who were fired had far more experience and scored higher in job interviews than blacks who were either hired anew or kept on. The whites themselves have all have painted a similar picture in courtroom testimony: suddenly jobless, in late middle age, after years of working in law enforcement agencies. Jordan and a top deputy who testified have admitted that experience wasn’t necessarily their top consideration. Instead, they have made it plain they were looking to populate the office with loyalists. And Jordan, in particular, portrayed himself as more focused on the legal staff than the support staff.