Desegregation Orders: What They Are and Which Districts Have Them

[This post was updated on May 16, 2014, to reflect information from ProPublica, showing two districts, Guntersville City and Barbour County, had their orders lifted in 2011 and 2013, respectively.]

A desegregation order is a federal court order put in place to enforce school integration requirements first decided upon in the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954).  A desegregation order prescribes a remedy to ensure that schools within a district integrate and remain integrated. A school district under a desegregation order can be found in violation of that order if its board of education takes an action that promotes segregation within its schools.

Desegregation orders have come to the forefront after the passage of the Alabama Accountability Act. Federal desegregation orders trumped the state law that would have allowed students to transfer from a “failing” school to a non-failing school within a district. Here’s an article about Huntsville, one from Jefferson County, and one from Anniston.

In this September 2013 article from The Anniston Star, Senate Majority Leader Del Marsh, R-Anniston, said he is encouraging Attorney General Luther Strange to create a special division to work with the Department of Justice to get Alabama schools released from desegregation orders.

From the article:

“It is my intent, once I confirm with the attorney general that he thinks it’s a path worth going down, to look at allocating dollars specifically to help us get out from under these lawsuits,” Marsh said. The senator said the money should come from education funds. State Sen. Trip Pittman, R-Baldwin, chairs the Senate committee that oversees education funding. He said he believes there would have to be a line item dedicated for such an allocation. Because of that, he said, he doesn’t believe there’s money in the current budget to support fighting Lee v. Macon, a measure he said he supports. Pittman said he was unsure whether education funds could be allocated to fight the consent decrees.”

In this news report from December 2011, Strange confirmed discussions were in the “initial stages”, but did not indicate with whom those discussions were being had. No update has been reported.

Desegregation Litigation in Alabama

The genesis and history of desegregation orders is long and varied, and by no means should this be considered a complete source on desegregation orders. This is only meant to introduce you to the concept of desegregation orders and provide a list of Alabama school districts currently under an order. Here is a more complete and easily understood document on desegregation litigation from the Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives at Tulane University. Helpful reading to gain a deeper perspective.

Remedies that are prescribed in desegregation orders include, among others not named here, busing minority students to majority schools, balancing class assignment to reflect majority-minority percentages, redistributing student populations to reflect majority-minority enrollment across a district, and reassigning existing faculty and staff to schools so that the ratio of minority to majority faculty and staff in each school is the same across a district.

Here is an example of an approved attendance zone plan that resulted from a desegregation order issued as a result of the Stout v. Jefferson County Board of Education (1966) case.

This chart, also from the Cowen Institute, depicts the desegregation litigation process, including how districts obtain “unitary status”, which means that they no longer operate a dual system.

48 46 of Alabama’s 135 school districts under desegregation orders. Nine have never been under an order. 78 80 districts have been released from their desegregation order by obtaining unitary status. (Numbers updated May 16, 2014.)

Alabama schools were slow to integrate after the 1954 Brown decision. As a result, multiple lawsuits were filed against boards of education in Alabama in an attempt to force school boards to comply with the mandate to integrate schools. Lawsuits were being filed against boards of education across the country for the same reason. Many of these suits were combined to allow swifter resolution. One lawsuit, Lee v. Macon County Board of Education, originally filed in 1963, was later expanded to included more than 100 Alabama school districts and the Alabama State Board of Education.

NOTE: When desegregation orders issued under Lee v. Macon for 12 districts were reviewed in 1997 to determine whether unitary status could be granted, it was discovered that African-American students were overrepresented in special education placement. This led to a new path for the litigation and resulted in a consent decree that required school districts in Alabama to follow policies outlined in the decree to determine placement for students in special education. The issue of special education and Lee v. Macon is an entirely separate discussion.

The lawsuits that were filed resulted in desegregation orders mandating certain remedies within school districts. While desegregation orders differ by case, the language in Lee v. Macon indicated that a board could not take any action “which tends to segregate or otherwise discriminate against students by or within school[s] on the basis of race, color, or national origin.”

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is responsible for monitoring and enforcing desegregation orders. Compliance monitoring is a big part of desegregation orders. Typically, school districts with existing desegregation orders must file a plan with the DOJ whenever new schools are built, schools are closed, attendance zones are re-drawn, or whenever some parameter of the desegregation order is impacted by a school district official’s or board of education decision. This can be referred to as “preclearance” or asking permission to carry through with the board’s plans.

NOTE: The desegregation order preclearance requirement was not impacted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Shelby v. Holder decision earlier this year that judged the formula used in Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to be outdated and ended the use of preclearance as it relates to voting.

Litigation and preclearance continues for the Alabama school districts still under desegregation orders. Most recently, the Hoover City Board of Education has engaged in dialogue with the DOJ regarding their decision to eliminate buses for general education students at the start of the next school year.

The information in the table above was compiled from two three sources: “Brown Fades: The End of Court-Ordered School Desegregation and the Resegregation of American Public Schools”, accompanying data provided, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, March 2012,  “Becoming Less Separate? School Desegregation, Justice Department Enforcement and the Pursuit of Unitary Status”, Appendix B, United States Commission on Civil Rights, September 2007 and ProPublica’s list of districts with open desegregation orders, May 2014.

Relevant notes from the tables from each of the sources include:

• “Under Current Order” – “Y” – yes, “N” – no. If “N” is indicated, the district was never under a desegregation order.
• “Year Order Given” indicates the date the original order was given. Dates for a city district that broke away from a county school system after the desegregation order was issued is listed as the date of the original desegregation order for the county school district.
• “Intent to seek unitary status” indicates what the district planned to do as of September 2007 when the data was gathered. Huntsville City and Fort Payne City were updated to reflect recent developments noted above.
  • 1 – Intends to do so, 2 – In progress, 3 – No plans or undecided
  • “No reply” indicates that the district did not reply to the United States Commission on Civil Rights researchers’ question regarding whether the district intended to seek unitary status.
• Mountain Brook City Schools’ attorney claims that Mountain Brook was never subject to a desegregation order.
• Florence City Schools’ attorney claims they were released from the order in 2007, but neither source could confirm through their official records.
• Sheffield City Schools’ attorney claims they were released from the order in 1979, but neither source could confirm through their official records.
• Marshall County, Tuscaloosa County and Tuscumbia City each dispute their status; however, both data sources indicate these districts remain under desegregation orders.
• Shelby County was indicated as disputing their status, but this 2013 al.com article quotes a Shelby County board member acknowledging the desegregation order for Shelby County. Alabaster City Schools broke apart from Shelby County and thus carry Shelby County’s desegregation order with them.
• Chickasaw City, Saraland City, and Satsuma City were not included in the sources listed above. However, since those three systems broke away from Mobile County after Mobile County’s order was removed, they have the status of never having been placed under a desegregation order.

Here are recent updates on three Alabama school districts’ efforts.

Calhoun County is reported to have engaged in an initiative with the DOJ in 2009 to obtain unitary status. Here is an article from 2012 regarding those efforts.

Huntsville City Schools began dialogue with the DOJ in April of 2013 to determine the process for release from their order.

Fort Payne City Schools reached an agreement with the DOJ in 2012 and is expected to obtain unitary status in July 2014.