I don’t know if this has gotten much national attention, but it’s an interesting story. New Orleans D.A. Eddie Jordan has resigned, the impetus for his resignation being a racial bias suit. Basically, Jordan was a creation of the Clinton administration. He was promoted (some say over-promoted) to U.S. Attorney in 1994 in what was widely regarded as a racial choice — Clinton wanted a black U.S. Attorney, and Jordan is black.

Later, Jordan ran for D.A. and won. One of his first actions upon entering office was to fire 44 white employees from the office staff, retaining 96% of blacks on the office staff while firing over two-thirds of the whites. These employees were replaced almost entirely with blacks (98% of them, I believe).

Obviously, Jordan was immediately sued for racial discrimination and lost. He and his supporters later began arguing that the jury was wrong, and that there was no evidence of racial bias — he was only clearing out old employees to replace them with political supporters, who were overwhelmingly black. His corrupt political ally, William Jefferson, recently argued thusly:

As the first African American District Attorney, Mr. Jordan was overwhelmingly supported by the African American community. The staff of the out-going D.A. was overwhelmingly white. Mr. Jordan’s effort to hire qualified people whom he knew or who were supportive of his campaign naturally meant that the pool of such applicants would overwhelmingly be African Americans.

Every D.A. has been accorded the right to let go the prior D.A.’s personnel and hire his own. It is unfortunate that in this case Mr. Jordan’s effort to follow this well-established practice ended with the appearance that he was discriminating against a segment of the population. I did not believe then, and I do not believe now that this was ever his intention.”

The problem is that Jordan’s own attorney argued that he had a racial motive — that it was more than just patronage. Yes friends, he relied on the “diversity” rationale:

“This is not discrimination, this is a political effort to create diversity,” [Jordan's] lawyer Philip Schuler told the jury of eight whites and two blacks. “This case is about politics, not about race discrimination.”

In New Orleans, the workforce is overwhelmingly black, the lawyer noted - nearly 70 percent. Jordan merely wanted to “have a workforce more reflective of the community,” he said. “If Eddie Jordan is racist, how is it that Eddie Jordan retained 57 white assistant district attorneys,” Schuler asked. “These were his key positions.”

Jordan didn’t fire the white ADA’s because he couldn’t replace them. However, racism was irrelevant anyway. The point is that while you can *hire* people based upon race thanks to affirmative action, you cannot *fire* people based upon race, even if your motives don’t arise from racial animus but rather out of an affinity for racial diversity. Everybody has a right not to be fired because of the color of their skin.

In any case, the bill recently came due and the D.A.’s office faced a shutdown if it attempted to pay the now $3.7 million verdict (it was originally $1.9 million, but legal interest has now almost doubled it). Accordingly, Mayor Nagin and others worked behind the scenes to reach an agreement whereby if Jordan would resign, the city would handle the judgment.

Not the best outcome, eh?