Justice Department seeks to end over 50 long-standing school desegregation cases

The Justice Department said Thursday it was seeking to end more than 50 long-standing consent decrees dating back decades that sought to curb unlawful racial segregation that was prevalent during the Jim Crow era.

Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said her office was “ending prolonged federal oversight of these school districts” because the effort “does not reflect the reality of those classrooms today.”

Dhillon described the consent decrees as “onerous and outdated.”

A Justice Department spokesperson shared a list of dozens of desegregation cases with local school districts that have been dismissed in recent months, including cases in Tennessee, Florida, Mississippi, Georgia and Connecticut.

In some other cases, the Justice Department has sought dismissal but a judge has not yet ruled, the spokesperson told WTX US News. A federal judge must agree to dismiss a consent decree.

At the end of Reconstruction, many states — particularly in the Deep South — enacted what were known as “Jim Crow” laws that enforced racial segregation at public facilities. These laws were spawned by an 1896 Supreme Court decision known as Plessy v. Ferguson, which created the “separate but equal” doctrine that allowed for racial segregation.

In those states, Black children were forced to attend separate schools that often lacked adequate resources and were not easily accessible by public transportation.

A landmark Supreme Court decision in the 1954 civil rights case of Brown v. Board of Education overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine, making it unlawful for public schools to discriminate on the basis of race.

For decades since that decision, the Educational Opportunities Section of the Civil Rights Division has brought legal actions to protect students from unlawful racial discrimination, often through court-monitored consent decrees with those schools. Some of those consent decrees have remained in effect for decades, dating back to the 1960s and 1970s.

In some cases, the agreements struck by the Justice Department required school districts to change how students are assigned to different schools or modify other policies to prevent students from being segregated by race. 

As of May 2022, the Justice Department still represented the federal government in some 140 school desegregation cases, according to an archived press release.

Since last year, the Justice Department has filed court papers seeking to dismiss desegregation cases in several school districts. Federal officials said the districts had achieved “unitary status,” meaning they had eliminated the vestiges of Jim Crow-era racial desegregation and no longer needed further federal monitoring. 

The Justice Department said on Thursday it is undertaking a “case-by-case review” of all pending desegregation cases that were filed in the 1960s and 1970s. 

“After concluding that a school district has achieved unitary status, the Department will seek dismissal of the case,” the department said.

Kristen Clarke, the former assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division who is now the general counsel at the NAACP, told WTX US News: “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.”

“Brown vs. Board of Education stands as the singularly most important decision ever issued by the Supreme Court and it has taken continued partnership between the government and school districts to keep school systems on track. Carefully-negotiated consent decrees provide important protections for children today who face discrimination and barriers,” Clarke 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, argued the Civil Rights Division “has walked away from enforcement work it spent decades building.”

Dhillon has largely upended the Civil Rights Division since her arrival last year by dismissing or declining to pursue the types of race-related discrimination cases that had historically been its focus. More than 75% of the division’s staff have resigned or retired early, WTX US News has previously reported.

Dhillon has hewed closely to President Trump’s policy directives. Her division has launched investigations into diversity, equity and inclusion policies at universities, filed lawsuits to prohibit transgender athletes from playing on girls’ and women’s sports teams, and litigated against dozens of states in an effort to access unredacted copies of their voter registration lists.