A civil-rights attorney who sued the San Juan County School District 19 years ago was back in court Friday, pursuing allegations that the district continues to discriminate against American Indians.
Arguing that the school district has not complied with a court-approved settlement, attorney Eric Swenson, of Monticello, has re-opened a federal lawsuit he filed in 1974 that accused the district of numerous racially discriminatory practices.Swenson has asked U.S. District Judge Aldon Anderson to fine the school district for failing to comply with the agreement and that the court appoint someone to oversee the district's compliance. Swenson is also asking that the school district be ordered to build a high school facility near Navajo Mountain, a remote area in extreme southwestern San Juan County where 40 high-school-age Indians are without sufficient educational opportunity.
But Brinton Burbidge, representing the school district, argued Friday that many of Swenson's complaints should be stricken because they are irrelevant.
"These items are not appropriately before the court," Burbidge told Anderson.
For example, the request for the high school was never addressed in the 1975 agreement. And religion was never an issue in the 1975 agreement.
The judge, who seemed irritated that Swenson has brought the case back to court so many years after it was apparently settled, took the matter under advisement. He strongly suggested that Swenson bring the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs into the litigation.
Burbidge's motion for the judge to dismiss Swenson's motions altogether will be argued at a later date - a signal that the complicated issues may take months to sort out.
And if the court doesn't allow Swenson to revisit the old lawsuit, Swenson may file a completely new one. His backing includes a Salt Lake-based citizens group called the San Juan Project, which has already raised $10,000 for the legal fight.
The case has a long history, stemming from allegations that the district favors the northern county, which is predominately white, over the southern part, which is predominately Navajo and Piute.
In 1975, a year after Swenson filed his original lawsuit, the district entered into a settlement, agreeing, among other things, to spend more money on students in the southern portion of the county, which has a higher population of Navajo and Piute children than the predominately white northern portion of the county.
Although the district built some secondary facilities, it has "willfully and deliberately" refused to comply with the agreement and has violated the Constitution and several federal civil-rights laws, according to recent motions filed by Swenson.
According to the documents, the district:
- Failed to build a badly needed elementary school in the Navajo Mountain and Monument Valley areas. Children there currently attend a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school, which does not provide adequate education. "The district provides no resources to assure that Navajo Mountain elementary school age children receive an education comparable to that received by children in (other) district schools."
- Failed to implement bilingual, bicultural and cultural awareness programs. The district's efforts to do so to date have been a "ruse and sham."
- Failed to allocate school expenditures on an equal basis.
- Supported a "course of conduct in which Navajo culture and lifestyle . . . are denigrated and defamed and in which Navajo students . . . continue to be subject to verbal and other forms of racial and religious abuse."
- Refused to disclose records pertaining to compliance issues.
Swenson says that as a result of the school district's failures, Indian students have low test scores, seriously deficient language and learning skills, and suffer emotional and behavioral problems.
To substantiate the claims, Swenson cites data researched by Donna Deyhle, an associate professor at the University of Utah, who has studied the San Juan School District for the past nine years.
Deyhle has found that the dropout rate for Navajo students between 1984 and 1989 to be about 34 percent, significantly higher than the nationwide average of about 21 percent.
In pleadings filed in response to Swenson's motions, the district denies any racial discrimination and that "total per-pupil expenditures in the southern portion of the district . . . have exceeded those in the northern portion by 19 percent in the past five years."