Garrity entered private practice in Boston and Worcester from 1947 to 1948. He was an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts from 1948 to 1950, lecturing in federal jurisdiction and procedure at Boston College Law School from 1950 to 1951. He was in private practice in Boston from 1951 to 1961. He was the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts from 1961 to 1966.[1]
As a federal judge, Garrity was at the center of a contentious battle over desegregation busing in Boston from the 1970s to the 1980s. He found a recurring pattern of racial discrimination in the operation of the Bostonpublic schools in a 1974 ruling.[3] His ruling found the schools were unconstitutionally segregated.[3]
As a remedy, he used a busing plan developed by the Massachusetts State Board of Education to implement the state's Racial Imbalance Law that had been passed by the Massachusetts state legislature a few years earlier, requiring any school with a student enrollment that was more than 50% nonwhite to be balanced according to race. The Boston School Committee consistently disobeyed orders from the state Board of Education. Garrity's ruling, upheld on appeal by conservative judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and by the Supreme Court led by Warren Burger, required school children to be brought to different schools to end segregation and led to the Boston busing crisis of 1974-88. By the final Garrity-decided court case in 1988, Garrity had assumed more control over a school system than any judge in American history.[4]
Opposition to desegregation exploded in some areas, particularly the largely Irish Catholic enclaves of Charlestown and South Boston, and spilled over into racial violence. Garrity became the target of death threats and at least two attempts on his life. He remained under guard 24 hours a day from 1974-78. He was scorned and snubbed by many; his name appeared in profane city graffiti; he was hanged in effigy, and demonstrators came to his home.[2]
Family
Garrity's brother was John T. Garrity, former Managing Director of McKinsey & Company, and his nephew is technology analyst David Garrity.[5]