 DECEMBER 31 • 2020 | 13

pleted his undergraduate degree in pre-med 
at the University of Michigan, but then made 
a big change. 
“My father had been forced to leave med-
ical school due to the Great Depression,
” 
Rosenbaum said. “I was supposed to pick 
up the mantle and become a doctor, but it 
wasn’t my passion. I heard a radical lawyer 
talk about what it meant to be a lawyer 
during the ’60s, the rule of law and how to 
represent activists for civil rights, and that 
had a profound impact on me.
”
Instead of medical school, he attended 
Harvard Law School. When Rosenbaum 
arrived, he was “flabbergasted that every law 
student wasn’t studying to become a civil 
rights lawyer.
” He didn’t even realize that 
there were other types of law. But he knew 
that he was meant to fight for civil rights. 
After graduating from Harvard, 
Rosenbaum’s law career began by taking on 
antiwar and Vietnam War cases, which took 
him to Los Angeles. He worked for 40 years 
with the ACLU in L.A., and for more than 20 
years was also teaching at U-M’s law school. 
Frequently commuting from L.A. to 
Ann Arbor was a drain, but the nature of 
Rosenbaum’s work allowed him to make 
connections with the ACLU of Detroit. 
Eventually, that would lead him to the “right 
to read” lawsuit.
Although he says he’s drifted away from 
the formal aspects of Judaism, he was always 
aware of social justice and cultural traditions.

“I wouldn’t say my religious upbringing 
formally had a huge impact on me, but I 
was schooled and aware of Jews playing 
an important role in advancing social jus-
tice. And that was life-changing for me,
” 
Rosenbaum said.
He currently works for the pro-bono legal 
firm Public Counsel, where he is directing 
attorney for the firm’s Opportunity Under 
Law project, which focuses on economic 
injustice.
To Rosenbaum, returning to Michigan 
was significant because “being in Michigan 
was transformative for my life and made me 
a better person. I was born in Cincinnati, but 
my real home is Michigan.
”

A DIVE INTO THE LAWSUIT
Rosenbaum has been involved with many 
educational equality cases, such as Williams 
v. California, a lawsuit where he secured over 
$1 billion for underserved schools to buy 
textbooks, hire qualified teachers and pro-
vide safe and sanitary school facilities. But 
nothing could have prepared him for what 
he’
d find in Detroit.
Rosenbaum was informed by communi-
ty and teacher groups that he’
d previously 
worked with about the obstacles that DPS 
students had been facing. These firsthand 
accounts of what was happening inside DPS 
contributed to his decision to pursue this 
case.
Some students did not have a teacher in 

their classroom; temperatures in the schools 
ranged from below freezing to 90 degrees 
due to lack of proper heating/cooling equip-
ment; and some students and teachers had 
even passed out because of the heat. 
What Rosenbaum saw lined up with what 
Hill experienced as a Detroit public schools’ 
student. 
On a typical day in class, “we’re all watch-
ing a movie because there’s not a teacher 
available to teach us,
” Hill said. “It’s sad 
because it’s more so like a daycare than a 
school and we’re learning at a third- and 
fourth-grade level comprehension instead of 
high school work.
” 
It was evident to Rosenbaum that stu-
dents were not being given age-appropriate 
instruction and were often graduating from 
school without knowledge of even basic 
reading.
In 2019, the National Assessment of 
Educational Progress rated Detroit lowest in 
average reading scores compared to 26 other 
urban school districts. That year, only 6% of 
students in Detroit public schools performed 
at or above the NAEP’s “Proficient” level in 
reading. 
And if students don’t learn literacy in 
school, they often never will. A 2011 report 
found that 47% of adults in Detroit were 
functionally illiterate. 
“I never met a student who had a book 
to take home. The books that they had in 
a classroom were older than they were, 
and most had been obtained by teachers 
at garage sales or through donor websites,
” 
Rosenbaum said, contrasting the conditions 
at DPS with those of the school districts in 
nearby, wealthier communities. “For any of 
us to be aware of those sorts of injustices 
while children in Bloomfield Hills and Ann 
Arbor are on campuses that could double for 
college campuses is not right.
” 
Rosenbaum decided to take on the issue 
and truly find the root of the problem.
He met with DPS teachers and had them 
speak to some of the students and par-
ents about joining his lawsuit. He also had 
reached out to organizations in the commu-
nity that worked with the same kids. 
“I think the families wanted to make 
sure that their children did better than they 
did. I don’t think for those of us who are 
privileged, that we really understand what 
strength it takes to say, ‘I can’t read,
’ or ‘I can’t 
do basic math,
’” Rosenbaum said. 
“I had one young man that was a senior 

continued on page 14

Members of the Detroit Literacy Group outside of Osborn High School: Andrea Jackson, counselor and 

parent; Jamarria Hill, Osborn graduate; Mark Rosenbaum, director of the Public Counsel law firm’s 

Opportunity Under Law project; Michael Kelley, law partner at Sidley Austin LLP.

DETROIT LITERACY GROUP

DETROIT LITERACY GROUP

