Judge grants pretrial order extension in U-46 suit

A federal judge has granted Elgin Area School District U-46 extra time to prepare pretial paperwork for a racial bias lawsuit, after its lawyers claimed they were overwhelmed with the number of documents submitted by the families suing.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert W. Gettleman granted both sides a 40-day extension in preparing a joint pretrial order, now due August 30.

Before the granting the extension, however, Gettleman ordered the parties to meet face-to-face, keeping the former July 28 pretrial conference in place.

Gettleman's ruling comes several weeks after U-46 requested the extension on the basis of "the extreme volume of the plaintiffs' exhibit list, witness list, and proposed findings."

Last month, lawyers representing the district received a copy of the pretrial order prepared by the Elgin families suing, so the two parties together could prepare a joint draft to send to the court. According to a June 15 court filing, the order identified a whopping 1,662 separate exhibits, along with 163 witnesses and 67 separate issues.

"Given the enormous volume of proposed exhibits, witnesses, issues and facts, the district needs additional time to adequately review plaintiffs' proposed exhibits and their witness list, to respond to plaintiffs' draft order and to meet and confer with plaintiffs in an effort to narrow the scope of evidentiary and substantive issues that must be resolved by the court," U-46 lawyer Patricia Whitten wrote.

In a June 25 filing, lawyers representing the Elgin families objected to the delay because, they said, it "reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the process at hand" and ignores the "collaborative process" the court requested in preparing the pretrial order.

Sparked by 2004 boundary changes, the five-year-old class-action suit charges that U-46 violated the rights of black and Latino students by placing them in older, more crowded schools; forcing them to ride buses farther and more often than their white peers; and giving them inferior educational opportunities.

The suit, which so far has cost U-46 more than $8.7 million in legal fees, could go to trial this fall.