The US Justice Department is seeking to end more than 50 long-running school desegregation cases dating back to the era of racial segregation under Jim Crow laws.
Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general leading the department’s Civil Rights Division, said the move would end “prolonged federal oversight” of school districts because it “does not reflect the reality of those classrooms today”.
The department described the court agreements as “onerous and outdated”, citing cases in Waterbury, Connecticut, and Flagler, Florida, among its examples. It did not provide a full list of the cases involved.
Consent decrees are legally binding agreements monitored by the courts. A federal judge must approve their dismissal, and it was not immediately clear how many of the cases included in the department’s announcement had formally been closed.
Justice Department begins review of school desegregation cases
The department said it was carrying out a “case-by-case review” of all pending desegregation cases filed during the 1960s and 1970s.
“After concluding that a school district has achieved unitary status, the Department will seek dismissal of the case,” it said. Unitary status refers to a finding that a district has removed the remaining effects of legally enforced racial segregation.
The Justice Department has represented the federal government in school desegregation cases for decades. Some of the consent decrees required districts to alter the way pupils were allocated to schools or change other policies to prevent racial segregation.
Such legal action followed the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v Board of Education, which ruled that racial discrimination in public schools was unlawful and overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine established by the 1896 Plessy v Ferguson ruling.
After Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws had enforced racial separation in public facilities across many states, particularly in the Deep South. Black children were required to attend separate schools that often lacked adequate resources and were difficult to reach by public transport.
The Educational Opportunities Section of the Civil Rights Division brought cases against school districts over the decades that followed Brown. Some of the resulting court orders have remained in force since the 1960s and 1970s.
Since last year, the Justice Department has filed papers seeking to dismiss cases in several districts. Judges have agreed to close cases in some districts in Tennessee, Florida and Mississippi after officials said those systems had achieved unitary status.
Kristen Clarke, a former assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division who is now general counsel at the NAACP, criticised the latest move.
“This administration’s relentless campaign to dismantle work done to end racial segregation in our nation’s public schools is a stain on our democracy,” she said.
Ms Clarke said Brown v Board of Education was “the singularly most important decision ever issued by the Supreme Court” and that continued co-operation between the government and school districts had been needed to keep systems on track.
“Carefully-negotiated consent decrees provide important protections for children today who face discrimination and barriers,” she said. “No doubt, this Justice Department’s actions threaten to fuel resegregation and discrimination in public schools, to the peril of all of our children.”
Regan Rush, director of the Red Line for Civil Rights project at Democracy Forward, said the Civil Rights Division had “walked away from enforcement work it spent decades building”.
Since Ms Dhillon took charge last year, the division has dismissed or declined to pursue several types of race-related discrimination cases that had historically been central to its work. More than 75 per cent of its staff have resigned or taken early retirement, according to previous reporting.
The division has instead pursued investigations into diversity, equity and inclusion policies at universities, legal action concerning transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports, and cases seeking access to unredacted voter registration lists held by states.
