Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court Historical Society
A photograph snapped in 1991 shows an aging Genevieve Blatt, the first woman to sit on the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court, standing with a young Doris Smith-Ribner, the first Black woman to sit on that court.
Though years—and at least several inches in height—separate them, the two women have a surprising amount in common. Both graduated from Pitt Law. Both helped change the face of the judiciary in Pennsylvania. And, most importantly, both presided over landmark cases that not only defined their careers but also altered the course of the state’s history.
That case for Smith-Ribner began before she had even graduated from college.
In 1970, when she was still an undergraduate at Pitt, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission sued Philadelphia School District to force mandatory busing, sending white students to majority Black schools and Black children to majority white schools.
For nearly two decades, the commission and district officials bickered over this plan, both inside and outside the courtroom, and what began as a fight over busing soon swelled into something much bigger—an opportunity to end segregation, implement fair distribution of resources and close the achievement gap.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the state, Smith-Ribner, having graduated from Pitt Law, was busy building her resume, first in private practice and later on the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas.
The case and the judge finally collided when Smith-Ribner won a seat on the Commonwealth Court and inherited the case. In 1994, she found that the district had failed to provide equal education to minority students. She not only ordered a series of reforms to remedy the disparities; but she also called on the state to pay for it.
Though many of the plans Smith-Ribner put forth were later struck down by the state’s Supreme Court, tangled in bureaucracy or lost to budget cuts, a few meaningful programs and policies survived, including full-day kindergarten. And legal experts agree that her ruling created roadmap for parity in K-12 education.
After retiring from the Commonwealth Court in 2009, Smith-Ribner became a tireless education advocate. In 2014, President Barack Obama appointed her to the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans, where she works to identify educational practices that lead to academic success.
-April Johnston