By APRIL CASTRO, Associated Press Writer

AUSTIN, Texas — U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice, whose rulings shattered old Texas by changing the way the state educated children, treated prisoners and housed its poorest and most vulnerable citizens, has died. He was 89.

His law clerk, Kelly Davis, said the judge died Tuesday in Austin.

The soft-spoken jurist spent three often tumultuous decades on the bench following his appointment by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968. To some, Justice was a judicial renegade who disregarded the public's will by imposing his own concepts on a conservative state.

But his decisions are widely credited for creating a modern Texas. They forced the state to dramatically expand and improve its prison and juvenile justice systems, and to dismantle racial barriers in public housing and education. He opened public schools to the children of illegal immigrants and provided bilingual education in rulings that were later used as the foundation of national policy.

"I'm basically a very shy, retiring person, but fate has put me in a situation where I've been in the midst of controversy," he wrote in his 1991 book, "William Wayne Justice, A Judicial Biography."

After only two years on the bench, he ordered the state in 1970 to eliminate racial segregation in public schools after many districts ignored desegregation federal policies. That ruling, U.S. v. Texas, affected more than 1,000 school districts and 2 million students statewide.

Justice ordered Texas to provide free public education for illegal immigrants and their children following a class action lawsuit filed in September 1977. The suit accused East Texas' Smith County of excluding children of Mexican decent from public schools because they couldn't show legal U.S. residency. Appeals led to a landmark 1982 Supreme Court ruling that extended the right nationwide.

Justice took control of the Texas prison system after a 1972 lawsuit filed by inmate David Ruiz alleged overcrowding and inhumane conditions. After a nearly year-long trial in 1980, Justice issued a sweeping 188-page ruling that said Texas prisons were overcrowded, understaffed and offered inadequate medical care. Justice also found that prison officials tolerated rampant violence among inmates, guards and inmates who worked as guards under a generations-old system known as building tenders.

He ordered changes and appointed a special master to make sure they were implemented. Justice found the state in contempt in 1987. Voters later that year approved a half-billion dollars in bond for prison construction, the first step in an unprecedented building program that today includes more than 100 prisons housing some 154,000 inmates.

Justice ended federal oversight of the system in 2002.

That same year, Justice rebuked the administration of then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush for failing to provide health care to children who already qualified for Medicaid.

Justice paid a personal price for his rulings.

He became a social pariah to much of the community in Tyler where he was based in northeast Texas and considered too controversial for a seat on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Some believed that Justice threw the law books away and disregarded the state's conservative leanings.

"From time to time, the majority is simply wrong," Justice once said.

Justice has denied that personal ideologies determined his rulings.

"I don't have time to evolve a philosophy. I react to the evidence and facts before me," he said in a 1983 interview.

In 2007, as state leaders attempted to hammer out a settlement in a children's Medicaid lawsuit to avoid going before Justice, then serving as a senior judge.

"We don't feel very comfortable relying on Judge Justice to give us any slack," Republican Rep. Warren Chisum said during negotiations.

Ultimately, Justice approved a sweeping settlement aimed at improving access to medical care for more than 2 million poor children in Texas.

In February 1998, Justice stepped down as Eastern District judge in Tyler to take senior status. Although Justice's family had been in East Texas since 1866, when his Confederate veteran grandfather moved there, he and his wife moved to Austin to be closer to their grown daughter. He also took over the Del Rio federal court docket for the Western District of Texas.

His father, William D. Justice, was an outspoken and flamboyant Athens, Texas, attorney with a reputation for populist politics, a willingness to take on unpopular cases and a refusal to reject clients for inability to pay.

On one occasion, a white man shot a black murder defendant in a crowded courtroom. Will Justice cradled the dying man in his arms as he shamed bystanders into providing aid, Justice said of his father.

"I'm just a pale reflection of my father," Justice said in 1998. "Now there was a man."

The elder Justice was determined that his son go into law and renamed his law firm "W.D. Justice and Son" when his son turned 7. The younger Justice graduated from the University of Texas School of Law in 1942, followed by World War II service in the Army. He returned to Athens in 1946 to join his father's firm. He was active in the Democratic Party as a youth, though never sought elected office.

A service will be held Monday at St. David's Episcopal Church in Austin.

___

Associated Press writers Kelley Shannon in Austin and Diana Heidgerd in Dallas contributed to this report.

___

On the Net:

http:http://www.stdave.org

http://www.txed.uscourts.gov

http://www.utexas.edu/law/academics/centers/publicinterest