XPost: alt.politics, alt.politics.democrats.d, alt.louisiana
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When the Justice Department lifted a school desegregation order in
Louisiana this week, officials called its continued existence a
“historical wrong” and suggested that others dating to the Civil Rights Movement should be reconsidered.

The end of the 1966 legal agreement with Plaquemines Parish schools
announced Tuesday shows the Trump administration is “getting America refocused on our bright future,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet
Dhillon said.

Inside the Justice Department, officials appointed by President Donald
Trump have expressed desire to withdraw from other desegregation orders
they see as an unnecessary burden on schools, according to a person
familiar with the issue who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Dozens of school districts across the South remain under court-enforced agreements dictating steps to work toward integration, decades after the Supreme Court struck down racial segregation in education. Some see the
court orders’ endurance as a sign the government never eradicated segregation, while officials in Louisiana and at some schools see the
orders as bygone relics that should be wiped away.

The Justice Department opened a wave of cases in the 1960s, after
Congress unleashed the department to go after schools that resisted desegregation. Known as consent decrees, the orders can be lifted when districts prove they have eliminated segregation and its legacy.

The small Louisiana district has a long-running integration case
The Trump administration called the Plaquemines case an example of administrative neglect. The district in the Mississippi River Delta
Basin in southeast Louisiana was found to have integrated in 1975, but
the case was to stay under the court’s watch for another year. The judge
died the same year, and the court record “appears to be lost to time,” according to a court filing.

“Given that this case has been stayed for a half-century with zero
action by the court, the parties or any third-party, the parties are
satisfied that the United States’ claims have been fully resolved,” according to a joint filing from the Justice Department and the office
of Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill.

Plaquemines Superintendent Shelley Ritz said Justice Department
officials still visited every year as recently as 2023 and requested
data on topics including hiring and discipline. She said the paperwork
was a burden for her district of fewer than 4,000 students.

“It was hours of compiling the data,” she said.

Louisiana “got its act together decades ago,” said Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, in a
statement. He said the dismissal corrects a historical wrong, adding
it’s “past time to acknowledge how far we have come.”

Head of the White House Faith Office Paula White sings as she stands
next to President Donald Trump and other religious leaders during a
National Day of Prayer event in the Rose Garden at the White House on
May 1, in Washington, DC.

Murrill asked the Justice Department to close other school orders in her
state. In a statement, she vowed to work with Louisiana schools to help
them “put the past in the past.”

Civil rights activists say that’s the wrong move. Many orders have been
only loosely enforced in recent decades, but that doesn’t mean problems
are solved, said Johnathan Smith, who worked in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during President Joe Biden’s administration.

“It probably means the opposite — that the school district remains segregated. And in fact, most of these districts are now more segregated
today than they were in 1954,” said Smith, who is now chief of staff and general counsel for the National Center for Youth Law.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/02/us/louisiana-justice-department-desegregation-order

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