The Honorable Howard F. Sachs Public Service Scholarship Endowed Fund

The Honorable Howard F. Sachs Public Service Scholarship Endowed Fund

The Honorable Howard F. Sachs has a long history of public service beginning with his service in the U.S. Navy in World War II. After attending Harvard Law School on the G.I. Bill, Judge Sachs clerked for the Honorable Albert A. Ridge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri from 1950-51, where he witnessed and participated in an early civil rights case and one with lasting significance in Kansas City – the Swope Park Pool case, which was argued by Justice Thurgood Marshall. His contributions to the legal and civic community as a champion for equality, diversity, and inclusion are evidenced throughout his adult life. Judge Sachs continues to be one of the most respected judges on the federal bench and exemplifies dedication to justice, fairness, and due process.

For those reasons and many more, an endowed scholarship has been created in his honor to provide an award to a first-year law student who has demonstrated a commitment to, a talent for, and/or a passion for public and community service with intent to pursue public service while in law school and/or in their law practice after graduation.

You can consider supporting the scholarship with a donation via the direct link below, or in the form of a check made out to the UMKC Law Foundation mailed to the UMKC Law Foundation, 500 E. 52nd Street, Kansas City, MO 64110. Please note the name of the scholarahip on the memo line.

To learn more about The Honorable Howard F. Sachs, please scroll to the bottom of this page.

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The Honorable Howard F. Sachs has a long history of public service beginning with his service in the U.S. Navy in World War II. After attending Harvard Law School on the G.I. Bill, Judge Sachs clerked for the Honorable Albert A. Ridge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri from 1950-51, where he witnessed and participated in an early civil rights case and one with lasting significance in Kansas City – the Swope Park Pool case, which was argued by Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Following his clerkship, he went into private practice with Phineas Rosenberg and then at Spencer Fane Britt & Browne, one of the few large firms in Kansas City to employ Jewish lawyers at the time. After 30 years in private practice, he was nominated as district judge by President Carter in 1979 and was the first native-born Kansas Citian to serve in the Western District of Missouri.

His contributions to the legal and civic community as a champion for equality, diversity, and inclusion are evidenced throughout his adult life. During his private practice as an attorney, Judge Sachs helped integrate the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association. Prior to 1955, the KCMBA was an all-white, all-male organization. After the bar leadership rejected the application of three black attorneys, then attorney-Sachs, along with fifteen other attorneys, advocated for the admission of black lawyers to the bar, and the organization’s constitution was amended to allow all lawyers to join regardless of race or gender.

The next year, as a member of the Kansas City Human Relations Commission, Judge Sachs began encouraging the Kansas City Council to ban discrimination in hotels and restaurants. It took five years to convince the Council, but they adopted Judge Sachs’ discrimination ban, the first city in the state of Missouri to implement a prohibition on public accommodation discrimination. That ordinance eventually ended up in the Missouri Supreme Court and was narrowly upheld as an exercise of local municipal authority.

His involvement continued in the 1960s in the weeks following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., when opponents of Kansas City’s new Fair Housing ordinance began mobilizing a referendum effort in the midst of riots occurring in Kansas City following Dr. King’s assassination. To prevent additional riots and civil discord, Judge Sachs, with a colleague in private practice, worked with the Mayor of Kansas City to allow the City to adopt the Fair Housing ordinance.

Judge Sachs continues to be one of the most respected judges on the federal bench and exemplifies dedication to justice, fairness, and due process.

Biographical information taken from Cultivating Civil Rights in Kansas City and Beyond: A History of Justice in the Western District of Missouri Through the Eyes of Hon. Howard Sachs, Federal Lawyers, May 2018, by Lauren Dollar and Kristin Marshall. A more complete biography is included in that article.