From The Trussville Tribune staff reports
GARDENDALE — The city of Gardendale will have to fork up close to $850,000 to pay the legal fees of the lawyers that fought the city to prevent it from creating its own school district in what became an argument tinged with racist overtones.
After what had been a six-year journey, U.S. District Court Judge Madeline Haikala said that Gardendale must reimburse the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and attorney U.W. Clemon after they successfully stopped the city’s effort to split with Jefferson County Education.
The court ruled that Gardendale could not branch off because the proposed split was motivated by racial animosity and that the city “acted in bad faith.”
Gardendale residents voted in 2013 for an increased tax that would fund a new school district. The city then formed a school board and hired a superintendent in 2014, which operated without any schools nor students.
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Clemon argued that since Haikala originally had found racial bias involved in the proposed breakaway, federal law stated that the ruling should stand against the split — Haikala originally granted Gardendale a partial break from the county system with supervision by the federal court, but all parties appealed that ruling to the 11th Circuit.
The appeals court then unanimously agreed that Gardendale simply wanted to preserve the city’s white majority, which did not want to become like its neighbor, Center Point. The northern Birmingham city has pivoted from a predominantly white city in 2000 to a now predominantly black city.
“The district court found that the Gardendale Board acted with a discriminatory purpose to exclude black children from the proposed school system and, alternatively, that the secession of the Gardendale Board would impede the efforts of the Jefferson County Board to fulfill its desegregation obligations,” Circuit Judge William Pryor wrote in the opinion.
The appeals court remanded the case back to Haikala, who then fully denied the breakaway. Gardendale contended that the decision was not racially motivated.
Mayor Stan Hogeland argued that the split was in the best interest of the city’s children.
“If we had our school system, with a local superintendent, and a local board that lives in town that you see when you go shopping or at church,” there would be more accountability, Hogeland said.
However, in the court’s ruling, the three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals highlighted social media messages from Gardendale citizens that becried that they did not want to become like Center Point.
The President of the Gardendale City Schools Board of Education, Michael Hogue, stated that “a decision that blames Gardendale for the comments of private citizens on social media, is both contrary to the Constitution and a fundamental miscarriage of justice.”
Haikala also pointed out the city’s decision to include the majority black Birmingham neighborhood of North Smithfield to fulfill county desegregation requirements.
“Gardendale’s lack of candor regarding its appellate argument is another example of the Gardendale Board’s willingness to take any position that serves its interest in the moment,” Haikala ruled. “An award of fees is appropriate to deter others from behaving in a similar fashion.”
Gardendale was ordered to pay the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Clemoon $740,000 along with an added $107,400 for additional expenses.