Republican leaders in Louisiana are pushing to end the last remnants of federally ordered school desegregation in their state, arguing that the era of racial exclusion is in the past and that the U.S. government has forced burdensome requirements on school districts long enough.
They may have found allies in the Trump administration, as it seeks to slash federal bureaucracy and roll back diversity efforts across the country.
It has been 71 years since the Supreme Court made racially segregated schools illegal in its landmark 1954 ruling, Brown v. Board of Education. Louisiana officials say that federal orders forcing school districts to comply with the decision are outdated and no longer needed, and that the country needs to move on.
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Nationally, more than 300 desegregation orders are estimated to still be on the books from the 1960s and 1970s, when school districts resistant to integration were put under the supervision of federal courts. In the decades since, many orders have gone dormant, with little federal enforcement.
In Louisiana, one of several Southern states with the bulk of remaining orders, the attorney general, with the support of the governor, is reviewing orders statewide and has vowed to work with school districts to “officially put the past in the past.”
The Justice Department has already dismissed one order, in a district south of New Orleans, that it said was left open by mistake. Federal officials are open to lifting others.
“I don’t think it serves the interest of justice to have ancient consent decrees out there,” said Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general over civil rights under President Trump, who said her office would consider requests for dismissal on a case-by-case basis.
“It is 2025,” Ms. Dhillon said. “I haven’t heard a recent claim that there is government mandated segregation happening in 2025 in a school district.” She added: “If it’s happening, it’s wrong.”
The Supreme Court has said that school desegregation orders were meant to be temporary, and over the years, many have been lifted, usually after a district showed it had made efforts to desegregate.
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In what Louisiana officials hope will be the first of many dismissals, the Trump administration lifted a desegregation order in Plaquemines Parish, south of New Orleans, last month, addressing what it called a “historical wrong.”
In that case, court records show, a judge ruled that the district had sufficiently desegregated in 1975, but the case remained open.
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The dismissal came as a relief to school officials, who had recently been dealing with reams of federal paperwork on everything from the number of Advanced Placement classes at each school to the racial makeup of athletic clubs, said Shelley Ritz, the superintendent. “It was binders on top of binders,” she said.
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