Philip Edwin Kaplan, who represented Arkansas prisoners, educators and newspapers in civil rights and civil liberties cases; caused a wholesale reform of the state's prison system; and prodigiously supported Little Rock arts and culture, died Friday after a stroke. He was 85.
He was born on Jan. 4, 1938, in Lynn, Mass., north of Boston, the son of Marion and Myer Kaplan, who had emigrated from Eastern Europe. He was raised Orthodox Jewish, and his father was a kosher butcher. He had a brother, Gary, who preceded him in death, along with his parents.
After earning degrees from Harvard College (1959) and the University of Michigan Law School (1962) and passing the Massachusetts bar, Kaplan moved to St. Louis with his wife, Ruthe, whom he married while in graduate school, to work as a field attorney for the National Labor Relations Board. Kaplan's ongoing interest in labor law led him to Little Rock in the late 1960s.
"I think Jews of my generation, so close to the immigrant generation, had social justice as something that motivated them," Kaplan said in a 2014 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette profile. "Jews say a responsibility to 'repair the world,' 'tikkun olam,' is something that you live by. It's in the DNA."
He founded the state's first integrated law firm with partners Richard Mays and John Walker, who later served in the state Legislature. It was the first of several professional affiliations; over the years, Kaplan worked at Kaplan, Brewer, Maxey & Haralson; Williams & Anderson PLC; and Cross, Gunter, Witherspoon & Galchus.
The attorney with an omnipresent bow tie and mustache was at the center of several important federal court cases over the years that affected Arkansas.
He achieved recognition when he represented state prisoners in Holt v. Sarver. Inmates at what are today called the Cummins and Tucker units sued the state corrections commissioner and board, saying that the prisons' inability to protect inmates from assault by other prisoners, housing prisoners in open barracks or isolation cells and not providing rehabilitation programs was a violation of prisoners' rights. The facilities were also racially segregated. The federal district court ordered that the prisons rectify all problems that had been identified; the Supreme Court upheld its ruling in 1978.
Kaplan represented another group of inmates at the same prisons in Finney v. Hutto, in which the court found unconstitutional practices of indeterminate sentencing, punitive isolation and insufficiently feeding the incarcerated population. Kaplan argued before the Supreme Court in 1978 when it considered the remedial orders, finding again that the prisons had unacceptably isolated prisoners for punishment's sake and had also acted in bad faith in fixing the unconstitutional aspects of Arkansas' prison policies. Bill Clinton, then serving as the state's attorney general, hailed the decision.
In 1972, a production of "Hair" opened at Robinson Auditorium in downtown Little Rock, after Kaplan represented the theater company in a lawsuit challenging a city commission's vote to prevent the show. The musical's nudity, countercultural themes and ribald language still shocked Arkansas sensibilities five years after its debut on Broadway. A federal judge ruled against the city, however, and "Hair" staged a six-day run.
Kaplan also represented University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor Grant Cooper III for the American Civil Liberties Union. Cooper had told students in the early 1970s that he was a member of the Marxist-Leninist Progressive Labor Party, and the university did not renew his contract amid public outcry and a lawsuit from 23 state legislators. Kaplan won the case, with the court finding that Cooper talking about his political and philosophical beliefs at work was constitutionally protected free speech that did not disrupt his classes.
Kaplan and the ACLU again worked together in McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, in which a federal court ruled unconstitutional a state law that required creationism be taught equally with evolution in public schools. Teams for the plaintiffs argued against the law on religious and scientific grounds; the judge's ruling concluded that creationism was a religious doctrine and not science.
In February 2002, the University of Arkansas fired men's basketball head coach Nolan Richardson after he said in a post-game news conference that the university could buy him out of his contract for bad impressions of his coaching. Richardson also said the university did not sufficiently recruit Black players and that he himself was treated unfairly because of his race. (Richardson was the Razorbacks' first Black men's basketball coach.) Kaplan represented the university, and the court found that Richardson's dismissal was not racially motivated.
He was a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates, the American College of Trial Lawyers, the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers and The Arkansas Lawyer editorial board. He taught at UALR and continued work into this decade.
Beyond his legal career, Kaplan was a long-standing supporter of Little Rock's public radio and television stations, the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, the Jewish Federation of Arkansas, Temple B'nai Israel and the Arkansas Martin Luther King Jr. Commission, of which he was a member.
"Great man who had a big heart for the underrepresented," said former Gov. Mike Beebe, who appointed Kaplan to chair the reconstituted commission in 2009 after infighting among its members devolved its functioning. "Extremely smart, but his heart was even bigger than his brain."
KUAR listeners may remember his annual "Two Jewish Guys" Hanukkah program, which he hosted with friend Leslie Singer as a fundraiser for the station.
Arkansas Symphony Orchestra Chief Executive Officer Christina Littlejohn said Kaplan constantly supported both the ensemble's members and the institution. He offered legal assistance during the earliest planning stages for a new music center; plans for the $9 million Stella Boyle Smith Music Center were announced last year.
"Phil was invaluable in our new home that we're going to have next year," Littlejohn said. "He loved music, but he used his legal expertise to help us in all these different wonderful ways that benefited both the musicians and the organization as a whole.
"He just loved symphonic music," she said, recalling how Singer said at his Monday memorial service how they would drive around town listening to classical music on KUAR. "He just really loved the music. It spoke to humanity to him," Littlejohn said.
In addition to his wife, Kaplan is survived by two children, Julie and Andrew (Sheryl), and three grandchildren. A public memorial service has been held, as has a private interment.
"The teachings of Judaism motivated him. Jewish history motivated him," said B'nai Israel Rabbi Barry Block. "He saw people being treated as less than fully human, just as his own people had been throughout centuries.
"He wanted the best for Little Rock. He really wanted Little Rock to have the community assets that make it a great place to live."