Court orders mandating that schools follow desegregation policies that are generations older than the students attending them are being wiped away by the Justice Department.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said more than 50 cases are being dismissed, many of which had been in effect for over 50 years, according to a Justice Department news release.
“In this administration, we are ending prolonged federal oversight of these school districts because the effort does not reflect the reality of those classrooms today,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said.
“In some cases, school districts have been under federal control for more than 60 years. Now these local school districts can redirect taxpayer dollars back to benefitting students, instead of funding onerous and outdated consent decrees,” she said.
It’s back-to-school season, & the @CivilRights Division proudly announces the dismissal of 50+ desegregation cases originally filed in the 1960s & ’70s! Ending outdated consent decrees means these school districts can finally redirect taxpayer dollars back to students. A+
https://t.co/gwiZR7hprD— AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) September 24, 2026
“These cases across the country cost school districts thousands of dollars every year,” Dhillon said in a video posted to X.
The release noted that the consent decrees stemmed from efforts by schools to defy desegregation policies and operate different schools for white and black students. Schools that no longer shunt students of one race into failing schools while a different race receives better schools will have those consent decrees dismissed.
The Daily Signal reported that to date, court decrees were dismissed in Tuscumbia, Alabama; St. Clair County, Alabama; Tarrant, Alabama; Rankin County, Mississippi; and Dyersburg, Tennessee.
SCOOP: The DOJ dismissed more than 50 desegregation cases that were more than half a century old.
The cases imposed what the DOJ calls “onerous” requirements on the school districts, with some paying hundreds of thousands in legal fees.
“In this administration, we are ending…
— Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell (@TheElizMitchell) September 24, 2026
“It’s been more than 50 years since desegregation happened, and in every school district in the South that we’ve worked with, it’s clear that black students are welcome in every school and that administrators and the community make sure of it,” The Daily Signal quoted a DOJ official it did not name as saying.
“It also seems to us that many southerners are tired of being called racist by the media because of things that happened more than 50 years ago,” the official said.
The Daily Signal reported that the official said “schools have been forced to selectively hire and recruit black teachers without openly acknowledging it.”
It further reported the official as saying schools were forced to “adopt non-merit-based criteria for identifying students as gifted, change school discipline protocol by not suspending misbehaving students, build new race-based magnet schools, scrap high school construction plans, block student transfers between schools or between school districts unless they are ‘majority to minority.’”
A federal court order should correct a violation, then end when the violation is cured. Permanent federal management of a community that has met the law violates that boundary.
DOJ says more than 50 school desegregation cases filed in the 1960s and 1970s have now been dismissed… pic.twitter.com/3INyIgeEWB
— Dan Holbrook (@DanHolbrook) September 25, 2026
The official said the schools under DOJ’s watchful eye were asked about the races of bus drivers and had yearbooks scrutinized to determine the races of students in extracurricular activities.
According to CBS News, schools in Tennessee, Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, and Connecticut are among those with decrees being dismissed.
As of May 2022, about 140 desegregation cases were on the DOJ’s books.
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