The Trump administration has ended a key school desegregation order in Louisiana that has been in place since 1966, signaling a significant retreat from Civil Rights-era protections aimed at ensuring racial integration in public schools.
On Tuesday, the Department of Justice officially lifted its oversight of the Plaquemines Parish school district, a small area in southeastern Louisiana, CNN reports. The move marks a pivotal moment in the rollback of desegregation efforts that began after the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 ruling that struck down racial segregation in education.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, speaking on behalf of the Trump administration, celebrated the decision. She described the end of the order as part of “getting America refocused on our bright future.” However, critics argue that this shift represents a dangerous retreat from decades of civil rights progress.
The Trump administration’s Justice Department has made it clear that it plans to move forward with lifting other desegregation orders across the country. According to a source familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity, officials see these long-standing orders as an unnecessary burden on local schools and are actively seeking to unwind them.
Though schools across the South were once legally required to desegregate following the Civil Rights Movement, many districts remain under court orders. These orders, also known as consent decrees, require school districts to take specific actions—like busing students or adjusting school policies—to integrate schools. While some argue these orders are relics of the past, others believe they are vital to ensuring progress in ending segregation, which still lingers in many areas.
In the case of Plaquemines Parish, the district was officially declared integrated in 1975, but the court had continued monitoring the situation. After the death of the judge overseeing the case in the same year, the district’s legal status remained unresolved, and court records were lost over time. The Justice Department argued that with no further action from the courts for nearly half a century, the case was effectively closed.
In a joint filing, the Justice Department and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill declared that “the parties are satisfied that the United States’ claims have been fully resolved.” For the local school district, the end of federal oversight is seen as a relief. Plaquemines Superintendent Shelley Ritz said that the annual reports required by the DOJ were a burden for the small district, which serves fewer than 4,000 students. “It was hours of compiling the data,” she explained.
Murrill has called for the termination of other desegregation orders in Louisiana, promising to help schools “put the past in the past.” But civil rights advocates are pushing back hard, warning that ending these orders could undo hard-won progress.
“It probably means the opposite — that the school district remains segregated,” said Johnathan Smith, who worked in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under President Biden. “In fact, most of these districts are now more segregated today than they were in 1954.”
There are still more than 130 school systems across the country under desegregation orders, including many in the South. These orders enforce a variety of measures designed to integrate schools, such as busing programs, policies allowing Black students to transfer to predominantly white schools, and changes to discipline practices. Civil rights groups have continued to use these orders in recent years to address ongoing issues in schools, such as inequality in school meal programs or the closing of Black schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
For example, in 2020, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund invoked a desegregation order in Alabama’s Leeds school district to ensure the resumption of school meal programs after the district stopped offering meals during the COVID-19 pandemic, disproportionately impacting Black students. In 2023, another desegregation order helped stop a Louisiana school board from closing a predominantly Black school near a toxic petrochemical facility.
The rollback of these legal safeguards raises concerns about what might come next. Halley Potter, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, warned that dismantling desegregation orders often leads to resegregation. “In very many cases, schools quite rapidly resegregate, and there are new civil rights concerns for students,” she said.
The decision to end the Plaquemines Parish order is part of a larger trend in the Trump administration’s approach to civil rights. By rolling back these legal protections, critics say the government is signaling that racial integration in schools is no longer a priority.
“This is a retreat,” said Robert Westley, a law professor at Tulane University. “It’s really just signaling that the backsliding that has started some time ago is complete. The United States government doesn’t really care anymore about dealing with problems of racial discrimination in the schools. It’s over.”
Opponents of the move argue that eliminating these orders sets a dangerous precedent.
Raymond Pierce, president of the Southern Education Foundation, warned that it represents a serious disregard for both educational opportunities and the rule of law. “It represents a disregard for education opportunities for a large section of America,” he said. “It represents a disregard for America’s need to have an educated workforce. And it represents a disregard for the rule of law.”
