NEW ORLEANS — In a city where power-sharing between blacks and whites is still a work in progress, New Orleans' first black district attorney has been hauled into court by 44 whites who say they were illegally fired en masse and replaced with blacks when he took office.

The racial-discrimination trial opened in federal court this week, with the white former employees seeking back pay and unspecified damages in a lawsuit against Eddie Jordan.

"While it may be OK for a new district attorney or sheriff to come up and clean house, you can't clean house with all of one race," Clement Donelon, a lawyer for the fired whites, said Tuesday. "You can't fire all the white people to hire your friends, and other black people."

Jordan has said that he had the right to choose his staff and that the firings were done for reasons of racial balance.

"This is not discrimination; this is a political effort to create diversity," his lawyer, Philip Schuler, told the jury of eight whites and two blacks. Schuler noted that in New Orleans the workforce is overwhelmingly black — nearly 70 percent — and that Jordan merely wanted "a work force more reflective of the community."

As the U.S. attorney here in the 1990s, Jordan was the man in the trademark homburg who matched wits with former Gov. Edwin Edwards, who dominated Louisiana politics for nearly three decades before being sent to prison for graft.

Jordan then got elected district attorney, succeeding a retiring Harry Connick, another colorful New Orleans politico and the father of jazz musician Harry Connick Jr.

The black prosecutor won office in a city where blacks have slowly gained the top jobs over the past quarter-century. The mayor is black, and so is the sheriff. But voting still breaks down along racial lines, with most blacks shunning candidates supported by whites, who constitute around 30 percent of the population.

Eight days after taking office in 2003, Jordan fired 56 Connick holdovers — all were non-lawyers, such as investigators, clerks and administrative employees, and all but three were white. Over the next six months, Jordan hired 69 people, 64 of them black. Among the non-lawyers, the number of blacks nearly tripled, while the number of whites in the office declined by about two-thirds. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in a preliminary determination, found evidence of racial bias.

Veterans with years of experience in law enforcement were replaced by younger blacks, some of whom had never done police work.

One white man fired by Jordan testified that he was one of the few fingerprint and ballistics experts in the district attorney's office. The résumé of the man who replaced him showed he had little experience other than being a lifeguard and doing some office work at a law firm.

Arthur Perrot, a fired white investigator, had a perfect 24-of-24 score when interviewed by Jordan's transition team, but was fired, while a black investigator who scored 16 out of 24 was retained.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002202600_bias10.html