BALTIMORE (AP) - A federal judge says she will appoint a special official to craft a plan to increase diversity at Maryland's historically black colleges.
U.S. District Judge Catherine Blake this week rejected proposals by a civil rights group and state higher education officials. She wrote in a ruling Wednesday that neither party's proposals were "practicable, educationally sound, and sufficient to address segregative harms of program duplication."
Blake also wrote that she would not require traditionally white schools to end academic programs and transfer them to historically black colleges.
The case is more than a decade old. A coalition representing the state's four historically black colleges contends the state has underfunded the institutions while developing programs at traditionally white schools that directly compete with and drain prospective students away from the African-American schools.
