Law & Linguistics

Please click on the title to read the full paper.

1. Law Review paper. I wrote this paper as part of a membership requirement of Law Review. Though the paper must be in publishable form, it was not published.

After Parents Involved: Looking Past a Person’s Skin to the Qualities Within

INTRODUCTION

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character”  is coming true. Forty years after King’s famous declaration of his dream, the United States Supreme Court held that colleges and universities could not use race as the only admission criterion.  However, perhaps realizing that race still plays an important role in a person’s identity and life experiences, the Court allowed colleges and universities to con-sider race as one component among many qualities that contribute to diversity.  In 2007, when faced with a similar issue regarding the use of race in public school assignments, the Court unsurprisingly extended the concept of diversity previously applied to higher education to public schools.  In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, the Court reviewed two consolidated cases regarding race conscious student assignment plans: a high school enrollment plan in Seattle, Washington from Parents Involved, and an elementary school enrollment or transfer plan between schools in Jefferson County, Kentucky, from Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education.  These school districts did not establish their respective plans pursuant to a court order to remedy past discrimination and segregation. Instead, these school districts designed their plans voluntarily to achieve racial balance in their schools.  The Court held that using “racial classifica-tions” violated the white plaintiffs’ Equal Protection right under the Fourteenth Amendment  because under both plans the districts denied students admission to the school of their choice because of their race.  

The Court’s decision to strike down the assignment plans was a fractured one—with no full majority opinion and with five justices con-tributing opinions in this case. The fractured decision demonstrates that the issue of how race can play in school assignment plans is not resolved in our nation highest court. Nevertheless, the Court’s decision reflects the current diverse nature of our society. The Court rejected the school districts’ plans as not “narrowly tailored” to achieve diversity because they simply classified students as either white or not white and either black or not black.  Thus, the Court held that even for public school as-signments, diversity must include “a far broader array of qualifications and characteristics” rather than race alone. 

The Court’s decision marks the end of Brown v. Board of Education and finishes the desegregation journey. The Court has been marching toward this end since the beginning of this millennium by dis-approving the sole use of race in higher education admission processes. Even though the Court’s extension of this holding for higher education to primary and secondary education was merely an incremental change, the decision received many criticisms. One such criticism is that “school districts across the countries are left with fewer options to tackle an in-creasingly salient problem,”  the problem of racially imbalanced schools. The goal of this casenote is to show that despite the criticisms, the Court’s decision was necessary because by combining all minorities into one homogenized group of “nonwhite” or “nonblack,” the school districts have violated the Constitution. In addition, such broad grouping makes it difficult for school districts to understand the problems correlated with racial imbalance and to find solutions tailored to fix such problems. 

2. Judicial Opinion. I wrote this judicial opinion as an assignment for Advanced Legal Writing. The assignment was given while the case was pending in the Court of Appeals of Idaho. The Court of Appeals came to my school for oral argument, and I attended the oral argument for this case before writing the opinion. However, I wrote the opinion and turned it in before the Court of Appeals published its opinion. The Court of Appeals opinion can be found at State v. DeWitt, 145 Idaho 709, 184 P.3d 215 (2008). 

State v. DeWitt Judicial Opinion

The case involves a driver who was charged with driving under the influence, and the police obtained his blood without his consent and while he was unconscious. The driver argued that the blood draw was unconstitutional and that the police exceeded his authority to obtain the blood draw. For educational purposes, this opinion addresses all of the driver’s arguments. However, I understand that judges have the discretion not to address an argument or an issue if the case can be determined on other grounds.

3. Appellate Brief. I wrote t his paper for my research and writing class and submitted it to the Idaho Trial Lawyers Association Best Brief Competition. I was one of the finalist. 

Robbins v. Techmark Appellate Brief

SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT

The district court should have denied Techmark’s motion for summary judgment on Mr. Robbins’s ADA claim because Mr. Robbins is disabled under the ADA.  First, the district court should have recognized that interacting with others is a major life activity because it is of central importance to daily life and an essential part of an individual’s participation in today’s interactive society.  In addition, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) has adopted interacting with others as a major life activity in its Compliance Manual and Enforcement Guidance on the ADA and Psychiatric Disorder.  Interacting with others is a major life activity because it is analogous to other life activities that the EEOC and courts have recognized as major.  Furthermore, the Rehabilitation Act and the Fair Housing Act also recognize that interacting with others constitute a major life activity.  Therefore, failing to hold that interacting with others is a major life activity undermines the intent of Congress. 

Second, Mr. Robbins has provided sufficient evidence for the jury to find that he is substantially limited in interacting with others.  He has shown that his chronic depression severely limits his ability to interact with everyone else around him including his family, his friends, and his coworkers.  His depression also causes him to withdraw from public places and inhibits his participation in social activities such as going to church or attending Bible studies. His inability to interact with others exists in a wide range of situations, whether it is at home, at work, or at a store.  In addition, he has shown that his condition is chronic and long term because it has already lasted over a year and according to his psychologist, Dr. Sarason, it could last indefinitely.  Furthermore, whether an individual is substantially limited in interacting with others has to be determined on a case-by-case basis.  Therefore, the trial court should have denied Techmark’s motion for summary judgment and let the case proceed to trial.