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Florida to build two public law schools simultaneously

Schools designed to increase minority lawyers

By Raju Chebium
CNN Interactive Correspondent

May 29, 2000
Web posted at: 4:39 p.m. EST (2039 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Al Lawson dreamed of the day his colleagues in the Florida Legislature would grant his wish: to reinstate the law school at his alma mater, the historically black, tax-supported Florida A&M University in the state capital of Tallahassee.

In 1965, the legislature voted to close the law school and open one at Florida State University, a predominantly white institution about a mile from FAMU on the other side of the railroad tracks. The FAMU law school shut down in 1968.

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"I saw people crying up there when they closed the law school," recalled Lawson, a FAMU alumnus. "The state really had wronged FAMU in taking it away."

Since 1982, when Lawson got elected to the Florida House of Representatives, he has introduced a bill every year to reinstate the FAMU College of Law. Until this year, his bills went nowhere.

This year -- 32 years after closing the FAMU law school -- the Florida Legislature gave the go-ahead to reinstate it. The legislature also voted to build a separate law school at Florida International University, a majority Hispanic institution in Miami, to help more of Florida's Latinos become lawyers.

That makes Florida the only state where two new public law schools will be built at the same time, according to the American Bar Association.

The Hispanic connection

Lawson's dream might not have been realized if the legislative black caucus had not joined hands with Hispanic lawmakers in the Florida House and Senate. Black and Hispanic legislators had been at odds for years over who should get the next law school.

Mario Diaz-Balart, a Cuban-American state senator from Miami, and other Hispanic lawmakers made it known as early as 1992 that they wanted to locate the law school at FIU.

"We were both fighting each other to death. As a result, neither of us got it," Diaz-Balart, a co-sponsor of the law school legislation in the Senate, said of the eight years of intransigence on both sides. "We knew that if FAMU got a law school, we would never get it and vice versa."

This year, black and Hispanic lawmakers, perhaps tired of the infighting, jointly filed bills in the House and the Senate seeking preliminary funding for a law school at FAMU and one at FIU.

The measure was hotly debated in the full legislature, but lawmakers gave their approval on May 5, in the last few minutes of the last day of the legislative session.

Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, brother of GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush, has said he will sign the bill. Signing ceremonies are scheduled in June.

The question of diversity

Of the state's approximately 66,000 lawyers, only about 6 percent are Hispanic and 2 percent are black, according to Florida Bar Association spokesman Park Trammell.

Florida has eight law schools, but only two -- the FSU and University of Florida law schools -- are state schools. Private law schools like the University of Miami cost several times more than tax-supported institutions in Florida and elsewhere.

Supporters of the FAMU and FIU law schools say most anyone, not just minorities, will be unable to afford the private schools unless they go deep into debt. But minorities are disproportionately denied access to legal education because whites tend to be better off financially than people of color, supporters say.

Supporters are quick to note, however, that anyone, regardless of color, is welcome to apply to the new schools and will be given equal consideration. Diaz-Balart said the language of the legislation specifies that the schools should not use admission quotas.

"Our intent was never to have quotas or lower the standards or give any minority a break," said Alex Villalobos, a Cuban-American representative from Miami and a co-sponsor of the law school legislation in the House. "It was just a matter of having access."

However, supporters anticipate that the FAMU law school is likely to have a majority black student body and the FIU school a majority Hispanic population. They note that the FAMU school will be built in minority-rich Central Florida and the FIU school in Miami, the center of Florida's Hispanic population.

Searching for space

Both universities are looking for space and expect to begin operations in about three years. The legislature gave each school $2.5 million for the planning process. The universities have not determined precisely how much the law schools will cost, but estimates run upwards of $10 million a year.

They also are looking for sites to build the institutions -- FIU on its Miami campus and FAMU along Interstate 4, which links Tampa-St. Petersburg on the Gulf side in the west and the greater Orlando area on the Atlantic coast to the east.

Both universities say there is a great demand for affordable and high-quality legal education.

President Modesto Maidique has been trying to get a law school for much of his 14-year term at FIU's helm, university spokeswoman Maydel Santana-Bravo said.

"The administration, especially the president, consistently get requests or comments from students and alumni saying, 'When can we look for a law school at FIU?'" she said.

Lawson said Florida has the largest incarceration rates for blacks in the nation, "and they don't have anyone to defend them who looks like them."

Reggie Mitchell, executive assistant to FAMU President Frederick Humphries and the adviser for the university's pre-law students, said minorities "don't see their peers in the jury, they don't see their peers on the bench, and they don't see their peers representing them or prosecuting them."

"There's no sense of true fairness and justice" though that might be just the perception, added Mitchell, a FAMU graduate who said he studied law at the University of Minnesota because FAMU did not have a law school.

The FAMU law school's history

To the FAMU community, getting back the law school was an emotional victory, FAMU spokeswoman Sharon Saunders said.

"It is a fulfillment of a dream. I think it just restores African-Americans' faith in the concept of fair play and politics. I think that many of our alumni passionately fought for that law school. And I believe they think it was the negative influences of race that even led to the opening and the closing of the law school," she said.

The legislature opened a division of law at FAMU in 1949 after Virgil Hawkins, a black student, sued after being denied admission to the UF law school despite meeting the requirements. In 1953, the division of law became a full-fledged college of law with the purpose of educating blacks.

In 1963, three white lawyers and a black doctor sued to close the law school, Saunders said. They argued that because UF was integrated, a separate minority law school was a waste of taxpayer money, Saunders said. The legislature two years later voted to transfer the law school from FAMU to FSU.

In 1968, the FAMU College of Law closed, having graduated 57 students in its 15 years of existence, a number Saunders acknowledged was low.

But Saunders and Mitchell noted that the legislature had appropriated only $100,000 a year for the law school and FAMU was forced to limit its enrollment.

They said FAMU managed to graduate many successful lawyers despite the funding shortage. Graduates included Jesse McCrary, Florida's first black secretary of state. Leander Shaw, a law school faculty member, is now on the Florida Supreme Court.

The opposition to the law schools

The Florida Board of Regents and the Florida Bar Association led the opposition to the new schools, saying the best way to boost the ranks of minority lawyers was to provide scholarships. Indeed, the legislature set aside some 200 full scholarships that minorities could use to attend any law school, public or private.

"The Florida Bar has taken a strong position supporting diversity in the profession. Our position has been … we have to utilize what is already in existence, not build new law schools," Trammell said.

Critics of the scholarship program say the scholarships were insufficient in enhancing diversity.

In 1999, Republicans gained control of the governorship and the legislature for the first time in 127 years -- and Gov. Jeb Bush promptly scrapped affirmative action.

He replaced it with the so-called One Florida plan, essentially a no-quota system that strongly encourages government agencies and tax-supported institutions to voluntarily boost the ranks of minorities.

Diaz-Balart said Bush said he would sign the law school legislation only if the schools would not use admissions and hiring quotas.

FAMU and FIU "have the best record of recruiting minorities in the state and one of the best in nation -- without quotas," Diaz-Balart said.

Lawson took a more cynical view of Bush's support. He said minorities blasted Bush for dismantling affirmative action. To boost his standing with nonwhite voters, the governor decided to support the law school legislation, despite rejecting the idea initially, Lawson said.

Two other factors played a part. A group of influential Miami business leaders urged state politicians to resolve the racially polarizing law school controversy. Second, the legislature this year authorized a $50 million medical school for FSU.

"It would look bad if they said yes to a medical school at FSU, a predominantly white institution, and said no to two minority schools, which would cost much less," Lawson said. "I think the atmosphere really forced the issue."