Richard Sobol

Richard Barry Sobol (May 29, 1937 – March 24, 2020) was an American lawyer who specialized in civil rights law. He worked primarily on desegregation cases in Louisiana.

Early life Sobol grew up in New York City on the West Side of Manhattan. He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1954, Union College in Schenectady, New York, in 1958, and Columbia Law School in New York City in 1961. His father, a lawyer with a commercial practice, died during Sobol's first year in college. At Columbia Law School, Sobol ranked third in his graduating class and was Notes and Comments Editor of the Law Review.

Following law school, Sobol clerked for Paul Hays, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and for Philip Elman, at that time a Commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission. He then went to work as an associate at the Washington, D.C. firm of Arnold, Fortas & Porter, where he participated in antitrust and trade regulation cases on behalf of large corporate clients.

Career Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee In 1965, on his summer vacation from Arnold, Fortas & Porter, Sobol went to Louisiana as a volunteer for the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee (LCDC). In the summer of 1966, Sobol took a leave of absence from the D.C. firm, moved with his wife and two young children to New Orleans, and went to work full-time for LCDC. He spent the next three years litigating civil rights cases for LCDC in federal and state courts all over Louisiana.

Duncan v. Louisiana In Duncan v. Louisiana, Sobol took a criminal case arising in state court in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, to the Supreme Court of the United States. In October 1966, Gary Duncan, a 19-year-old black man who worked as a shrimp fisherman, stopped by the roadside when he saw two young relatives, students at the recently desegregated high school, surrounded by four white boys with several white men looking on from across the street. Duncan told his relatives to get in his truck, and then told the white boys to "go on home," touching one of them on the arm. Shortly thereafter, Duncan was arrested and charged with battery. At Duncan's trial in February 1967, the Parish judge denied Sobol's request for a jury. After a trial at which the black and white witnesses gave diametrically different testimony about what happened, the judge convicted Duncan and sentenced him to two months in jail and a $150 fine.

Sobol v. Perez Meanwhile, in February 1967, shortly after Duncan's conviction (as Sobol took steps to seek review in the U.S. Supreme Court), local parish authorities arrested Sobol and charged him with the crime of practicing law without a license. The arrest took place at the direction of Leander Perez, an arch-segregationist who dominated Plaquemines Parish politics. LCDC, the civil rights law organization for which Sobol worked, brought a federal action against Perez seeking to enjoin Sobol's prosecution, focusing on the need for out-of-state lawyers such as Sobol to come to Louisiana to handle civil rights cases. The United States intervened as a plaintiff seeking the same relief. Sobol argued Duncan's case in the U.S. Supreme Court in January 1968, and in February Sobol's case against Perez was tried before a three-judge federal court in New Orleans. The Supreme Court ruled for Duncan on the jury issue in May 1968, and in July, the federal court in New Orleans found that the prosecution of Sobol was brought in bad faith and for purposes of harassment, enjoined the prosecution, and issued an opinion finding that Sobol was at all times acting in compliance with provisions of Louisiana law governing practice by out-of-state counsel.

Duncan v. Perez Following the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Duncan's favor, local Parish authorities threatened again to prosecute him. The Supreme Court's decision in favor of Duncan provided that a charge of battery under Louisiana law was punishable by up to two years in jail and that "a crime punishable by two years in prison is...a serious crime...and entitled to a jury trial." After the Supreme Court decision, the Louisiana legislature reduced the maximum sentence for simple battery from two years to six months. In January 1969, Sobol and LCDC lawyers brought federal suit against Perez to enjoin further prosecution of Duncan. In October 1970, the federal court in New Orleans found that the repeated arrests of Duncan in the course of the litigation and the high bonds that the Parish judge required showed that the prosecution was maintained in bad faith and for harassment in an effort to punish Duncan for his exercise of federally secured rights. "The reprosecution of Duncan would deter and suppress the exercise of federally secured rights by Negroes in Plaquemines Parish. The various stages of the Duncan and Sobol cases have been thoroughly publicized in the New Orleans papers, which the parties have stipulated are the only daily newspapers generally read by residents of Plaquemines Parish. Duncan has waged an unprecedented four-year fight to avoid conviction and incareration on the charges against him." Parish officials then appealed to the federal appellate court, and when they lost there,

Sobol's LCDC cases other than Duncan School desegregation cases In Moses v. Washington Parish School Board, the federal district court required establishment of biracial attendance zones in lieu of the freedom of choice plan previously relied upon as the means of disestablishing a segregated school system.