Perhaps in fuTure years, New York schoolchildren’s history books will recount how Sutherland Asbill & Brennan and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett rewrote the story of Reconstruction and the carpetbaggers.
The new story of North and South began in 1993, when a coalition of educators and parents called the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) sued New York state, claiming that it had failed to provide the “sound, basic education” required by the state constitution. Five years later and roughly a year before trial in state court, the New York attorney general’s office brought in Sutherland to assist. The Atlanta-based firm is handling a similar case in Minnesota and had won a case for the state of Connecticut that was later overturned on appeal.
