Funeral arrangements are yet to be announced for Judge Damon Keith, a giant figure in the civil rights movement who as a federal judge was sued by President Nixon over a ruling against warrantless wiretaps, died Sunday. He was 96.
Keith died at his home in Detroit.
He was appointed in 1967 to the U.S. District Court by President Johnson.
Keith declared the Pontiac schools to be racially segregated, touching off the Pontiac school busing battle. In 1971, Keith ruled that President Nixon and U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell violated the U.S. Constitution by wiretapping student radicals in Ann Arbor without a court order.
In Detroit Free Press versus Ashcroft, years later, Keith ruled that deportation hearings held in private were unconstitutional.
Those rulings were upheld.
Keith served more than 50 years in the federal courts, and before his death still heard cases about four times a year at the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.