WASHINGTON — The Trump administration and Louisiana officials have lifted another decades-old school desegregation order, part of a campaign to end court mandates they describe as outdated.
A federal judge on Monday approved a joint motion from Louisiana and the U.S. Justice Department to dismiss a 1967 lawsuit in DeSoto Parish schools, a district of about 5,000 students in the state's northwest. It's the second such dismissal since the Justice Department began working to overturn desegregation cases it once championed.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill thanked President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday for “helping us to finally end some of these cases.”
“DeSoto Parish has its school system back,” Murrill said in a statement. “For the last 10 years, there have been no disputes among the parties, yet the consent decree remained.”
The case dates to 1967, when the Justice Department sued DeSoto Parish to end its racially segregated school system. The case resulted in a 1970 court order requiring the district to eliminate segregation and provide regular progress reports. The order was modified several times over the decades but there had been little activity in recent years.
In the motion for dismissal, Louisiana and Trump officials said the order was no longer needed.
“While this case has been pending for over a half-century, there has been no dispute among the parties since 2014,” they wrote in a Dec. 30 court filing. “The parties thus are no longer adverse, and there is no case or controversy.”
Their motion was approved by U.S. District Judge S. Maurice Hicks Jr., who was appointed by former President George W. Bush.
State officials say the court orders place an unfair burden on school districts. Districts under such orders usually have to get approval from the court to build new schools, change attendance boundaries or make policy changes touching on court orders.
Civil rights groups say the orders are needed to fight the enduring impact of racial discrimination.
DeSoto went to the court for numerous changes over the years, including new attendance zones in 2014 that remain in place today. The district also files status reports showing the racial breakdown of students and teachers, along with data on student transfers. The district’s last report was filed in October.
Louisiana Republicans see the decades-old desegregation orders as a challenge to local control and have worked to get them lifted in recent years. Working alongside Trump’s justice officials, they successfully dismissed a 1966 order in the Plaquemines Parish.
In the Plaquemines case, the lawsuit had been idle for decades after the judge overseeing it died in the 1970s.
An effort to overturn a 1960s order in Concordia Parish schools has faced pushback from a federal court. A judge in that case rejected a motion to dismiss the suit, saying Concordia must first demonstrate it has fully ended segregation. State and federal officials are appealing the decision.
The Concordia case was originally brought by Black families who demanded access to the town’s all-white schools.
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