[T]he lead lawyer in a key Vermont education funding court case, who later helped secure the release of a Guantanamo prisoner, has died. Robert Gensburg passed away last week at his home in Lyndon. He was 78 and died of leukemia.
Gensburg argued for the plaintiffs in Brigham v. State of Vermont, in which the Vermont Supreme Court in 1997 declared the state’s way of funding education was inequitable and unconstitutional. In response, lawmakers later that year passed Act 60, which included a statewide property tax and mechanisms to attempt to equalize local education tax burdens.
The St. Johnsbury attorney also represented Abdul Zahir, an Afghan detainee at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, who was released this year after 14 years in captivity in a case of mistaken identity. During that case, Gensburg said his phones were tapped and emails intercepted by the government. Zahir now lives in Oman.
Gensburg also served as a special prosecutor in 1974 when Gov. Tom Salmon appointed him to investigate a police officer, Paul Lawrence, who was planting drugs on suspects. Lawrence was convicted, and more than 200 people he arrested were pardoned.
Colleagues recalled Gensburg’s brilliance and dedication to the principles of the U.S. Constitution. He carried a copy of the Bill of Rights in his wallet.
“The guy was a tax lawyer in his Clark Kent clothes, but what motivated him more than anything was his devotion to the principles of the Constitution, to due process and liberty and justice for all,” said David Sleigh, a St. Johnsbury criminal defense attorney who also represented clients held at Guantanamo Bay, where the United States has a military prison for terrorist suspects.
“He was dogged in his pursuit” of those ideals, Sleigh said.
Allen Gilbert, former executive director for the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, worked on the Brigham case with Gensburg as a member of the Worcester School Board and later on education funding at the ACLU. He said he had lost a good friend and respected colleague.
“I can’t imagine having gone through life without knowing Bob Gensburg,” Gilbert said. “I never encountered anyone with a stronger, deep-in-the-bones, core belief in equal treatment under the law than him. I remain overwhelmed by the enormity of what he and those working with him on the Brigham legal team achieved in 1997 – the firm, public acceptance by the Vermont Supreme Court that we’re all in this democratic enterprise together, and everyone counts.”
Former state Rep. Paul Cillo, one of the architects of Act 60, described Gensburg as inspiring, brilliant and “with an unshakable commitment to justice.”
“Justice was a matter of personal responsibility to Bob,” Cillo said.
Cillo said Gensburg grasped the complexities of school funding immediately. After the Supreme Court ruled in February 1997, lawmakers packed a Statehouse room to hear Gensburg explain what the ruling meant.
“And Bob did what he always did. He cut through the noise about the case and focused on the facts. He was the go-to person on that issue for the rest of this life,” said Cillo, who runs the Public Assets Institute, a think tank. “When legislative leaders wanted to know whether a proposal before them was constitutional, they contacted Bob for his opinion because his was the opinion that mattered.”
Sleigh said he and Gensburg worked one floor apart in St. Johnsbury but were unaware they were both “early recruits” to the effort to free Guantanamo detainees until they ran into each other and compared notes.
Gensburg treated his passion for the Constitution like a religion, Sleigh said: “It was stitched into his DNA.” But he also had a less intense side. The two shared a trip to Cuba, where Sleigh recalled Gensburg rented a pontoon boat and they and other lawyers enjoyed an afternoon on the water.
The Vermont Legislature honored Gensburg in 2000 shortly after he was diagnosed with leukemia, but he recovered, Sleigh said. About five years ago the cancer returned, but Sleigh said Gensburg worked almost until the end.
Sleigh described Gensburg as modest.
“He was just who he was, a very humble man,” Sleigh said.
Gensburg was a Red Sox fan, and he and his wife, Leslie, raised beef cattle for 35 years.
The couple moved to Vermont in 1967 after he graduated from Albany Law School. He also went to the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to law school, he worked for the National Security Agency for two years as a cryptographer.
