WASHINGTON, July 15 (Reuters) – A federal appeals court ended a more than six-decade-old federal oversight of a Louisiana school system related to a desegregation mandate, a court filing showed, on Tuesday, marking a win for Republican efforts led by President Donald Trump to end such programs.
Here are details:
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The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the mandate for the Concordia Parish School Board.
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Republicans and the Trump administration cast such federal oversight as outdated and as government interference in local affairs.
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Civil rights advocates say Republicans at the state level and the Trump administration at the federal level are trying to dismantle programs aimed at uplifting marginalized groups and combating historical and generational racial inequities.
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Civil rights groups have said dismantling the programs threatens to reverse decades of social progress.
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Trump, who has been rebuked by rights groups for claiming the presence of “reverse discrimination” and for suggesting that civil rights have hurt white people, has taken multiple steps aimed at dismantling diversity initiatives in the government and in the private sector, ranging from signing executive orders to attempting federal funding suspensions.
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“The good people of Concordia Parish elected their school board to govern their schools – not unelected federal judges,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said after the court’s decision. “Today’s decision puts that authority back where it belongs.”
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The Concordia Parish case dates back to the 1960s, when the region was segregated and had a violent offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group. Black families challenged segregated schools at the time.
Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus.
