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 Louisiana officials say that federal orders forcing school districts to comply with the decision are outdated and no longer needed, and that the country needs to move on.
Civil rights advocates see the effort as part of a broader attack on Black students and civil rights under the Trump administration, at a time when U.S. schools are only growing more segregated.
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.”
