Landmark Civil Rights Cases Opened Door for SPLC Official's Law Enforcement Career

Glenda Deese was working at the Dallas County Courthouse in Alabama when she asked a state trooper how she could join the force. "He politely told me I shouldn't worry about it because I couldn't become a trooper anyway," she recalls.

The response wasn't unusual at the time. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, even after the gains of the civil rights movement, the Alabama State Troopers remained a bastion of white men and a symbol of official state resistance to equal rights. She, on the other hand, was an African-American woman.

But she didn't give up.

She wasn't aware at the time, but two civil rights lawsuits filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center in the 1970s would forever change the face of Alabama law enforcement, particularly the state troopers. One of those cases was decided 34 years ago this week in a U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down weight and height requirements that effectively kept many women out of law enforcement jobs in Alabama. The other case required the state troopers to hire and promote qualified African-American candidates.

Because of these cases, Deese got an opportunity. She didn't waste it: She rose to be the second-highest ranking official in the Alabama Department of Public Safety. Now, after retiring from law enforcement, she's a top security official at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Deese said that while she didn't know, at the time, of all the legal issues that allowed her to become Alabama's first black female trooper cadet in 1980, her goal was clear.

"I just focused on working hard and being the best I could be," she said of her 26-year career in law enforcement. "All I needed was an opportunity to prove myself."

Landmark Cases
The opportunity for minorities and women to pursue careers in law enforcement was at the heart of the two landmark SPLC cases. One of those, Dothard v. Rawlinson, was filed in 1976 after 22-year-old Dianne Kimberly Rawlinson applied to become a counselor with the Alabama prison system. Her education credentials were impressive, but she weighed only 110 pounds – not enough to meet the minimum weight requirement of 120 pounds.

She filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging sex discrimination. Ultimately, the SPLC filed a lawsuit on behalf of Rawlinson and another woman, Brenda Mieth, who had been refused a position as a state trooper. Mieth did not meet the minimum height and weight requirements for a state trooper, which were 5-foot-9 and 160 pounds.

At trial, the SPLC argued that the height and weight requirements had no actual relationship to the job duties. In fact, 33 percent of women would be excluded from employment as prison guards and state troopers by the statutory height requirements. Twenty-two percent of women would be excluded by the minimum weight requirements.

The trial court ruled in favor of Mieth and Rawlinson, but Rawlinson's part of the case was appealed. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ruling on June 27, 1977. The high court agreed that the height and weight requirements discriminated against women and bore no relationship to the job. It was a landmark decision for women with a dream of pursuing a law enforcement career.

Even earlier, the SPLC sought to integrate the all-white Alabama State Troopers with the 1972 case Paradise v. Allen. Alabama was ordered to hire one qualified African-American trooper for every white trooper hired, until the force was 25 percent black.

State officials resisted, even imposing a virtual ban on hiring. In 1987, the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the SPLC's affirmative action remedy. The case also created a promotion system based on merit rather than favoritism.

A Distinguished Career
For Deese, the cases provided her with a career path that otherwise would have been off-limits. At 120 pounds and just over 5-foot-5, she wouldn't have come close to the old trooper requirements.

She proved the irrelevance of those old requirements throughout her distinguished career. In 1999, she became the first woman to achieve the rank of major. In 2003, she became the assistant director of the Department of Public Safety, the first woman to ever be appointed to the position by the Alabama governor. The position placed her second in command over the state troopers.

Later, Deese developed the concept for the state's new police academy, which replaced a deteriorating former military base that had been used to train fledgling troopers. It was a project that allowed the woman who was once told she couldn't become a state trooper to influence the training of the future law enforcement officers for decades.

She even made an unlikely friend – the trooper who told her to forget about joining the force. Early in her career, he was her highway patrol training officer. A friendship developed, and the two stayed in touch over the years.

Giving Thanks
Shortly after Deese joined the SPLC staff in April, she had the chance to meet someone who helped open the door to her law enforcement career. During the SPLC's 40th anniversary celebration in April, she was part of a panel discussion about gender equality. Also on the panel was Pam Horowitz, the former SPLC attorney who worked on Dothard v. Rawlinson.

"I thanked her," Deese said. "I couldn't let the opportunity pass. That case gave me and many other women an opportunity we would have otherwise never had."