NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- In a city where power-sharing between blacks and whites is still a work in progress, New Orleans' first black district attorney has been hauled into court by 44 whites who say they were illegally fired en masse and replaced with blacks when he took office.
The racial discrimination trial opened in federal court this week, with the white former employees seeking back pay and unspecified damages for emotional distress in a lawsuit against Eddie Jordan, the flashy New Orleans prosecutor who in 2000 put Edwin Edwards, Louisiana's high-rolling former governor, behind bars.
"While it may be OK for a new district attorney or sheriff to come up and clean house, you can't clean house with all of one race," Clement Donelon, a lawyer for the fired whites, said Tuesday. "You can't fire all the white people to hire your friends, and other black people."
Jordan has said that he had the right to choose his staff and that the firings were done for reasons of racial balance.
"This is not discrimination; this is a political effort to create diversity," his lawyer Philip Schuler told the jury of eight whites and two blacks. The lawyer noted that in New Orleans the workforce is overwhelmingly black - nearly 70 percent - and that Jordan merely wanted "a workforce more reflective of the community."
Now, is it just me, or did the defense attorney just admit to being guilty of racial discrimination? What does Mr. Schuler think the city is...a university.
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