Desegregation lawsuits still remain 70 years after Brown v. Board of Education
NEW YORK (WABC) -- It's one of the most painful periods of America's history.
It was just over 70 years ago, on May 17th, 1954, The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a unanimous ruling that would change our educational system: "Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas."
"So, the Legal Defense Fund was founded in 1940 by who would later become Justice Thurgood Marshall. Justice Thurgood Marshall was the first Black Supreme Court justice. But before that, he founded the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which is the nation's first and foremost civil rights legal organization," said Michaele Turnage Young, NAACP LDF Senior Counsel and co-manager of the Equal Protection initiative at the Legal Defense Fund.
The plaintiffs argued that "state-sanctioned segregation" of public schools, on the basis of race, was a violation of the 14th Amendment and therefore, unconstitutional.
Now in 2025, many Americans might be surprised to learn that there are Desegregation lawsuits that are still in the courts today.
"So there are cases that came into being as a result of Brown v. Board of Education that continue to be litigated today. There are still school districts that are under federal court jurisdiction, and they're being supervised to make sure that they cure the original constitutional violation of operating a biracial school system, meaning that there were schools for white children and then there were schools for non-white children," Turnage Young said.
But now there are concerns we could be facing a sort of "Segregation 2.0"
In fact, New York City schools have even been called some of the most segregated school districts in the nation, particularly for Black and Latino students.
"One of the reasons why is because courts were never really involved in the same way after Brown v. Board of Education, in requiring the state to integrate its schools, right, because we weren't in a Jim Crow state, and so the interventions weren't the same," said Sarah Medina Camiscoli, Attorney and Co-Counsel for the Peer Defense Project and co-founder of Integrate NYC.
The district has also been the focus of several lawsuits regarding its high school admissions process.
In one lawsuit, a number of parents and community groups claimed the admissions process screens Black and Latino students "out" of elite public schools, creating a two-tiered education system. As a result, NYC public schools did expand the number of students who can be admitted under this program, but some groups say that action does not solve the problem.
"There are pipelines, and those pipelines start as early as being four years old when students are tested for gifted and talented," Medina Camiscoli said. "Now there are some students of color who happen to get into gifted and talented, but we see overwhelmingly that students of color are excluded from those pipelines, and our students, particularly Black and Latinx students and Asian students of particular ethnic and racial experiences, are not in are not integrated into those spaces."
Another lawsuit was filed on behalf of a multi-racial coalition including Black, Latino, and Asian groups, who also questioned the admissions process and its fairness to students.
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund is part of the legal team for this lawsuit.
"The complaint said, 'Choosing students based on that single test score was not actually identifying all students who could thrive in the specialized high schools.' It wasn't an objective way to assess who should be getting it, and in fact, it had an adverse racially disparate impact on some students. So while in New York City, the public school system educates a student body that is two-thirds, Black, two-thirds Latinx, just like a tiny fraction of those students are getting into the specialized high schools," Turnage Young said.
While many education analysts say economics contributes to why some schools are more segregated than others, critics say the city and state must do a better job of providing a quality education to all students.
"New York also has equal protection in its constitution. On top of that, New York also has a statute passed by the legislature for human rights to make sure that there are no human rights violations and discrimination based on specific categories," Medina Camiscoli said. "And so what this case is basically saying is that we are a state with some of the greatest protections for education and equal protection. So there is no way to justify having the most segregated schools."
Students also say there are many drawbacks to only allowing a small number of students of color into certain schools. It often leads to learning environments and curriculums that are culturally insensitive, and sometimes hostile.
"And specifically, I remember that there was a student that wrote in my year in my yearbook after middle school, like, go back to picking cotton. And so it was, it's a system that has like worked to the point where the young people are enforcing it, and are believers of it, and racism, you know, is not in the abstract form, right? Like when we think about integrating our schools and fighting these issues we're talking about, like being able to guard for perhaps, like a racist teacher, there are racist students as well that we go to school with. And there was work to be done in convincing people," said law student Obrian Rosario, former Integrate NYC leader and co-founder of Peer Defense Project.
As both lawsuits make their way through the courts, the plaintiffs say the goal is simple:
"Something along the lines of, well, we let more children take a test that doesn't address the facilities issues that we're speaking about, the curriculum that we're speaking about, that that is an old time perspective, that same sort of Little Rock Nine. Let nine kids into the building, and whatever happens when they're in there, happens. Well, most of the Little Rock Nine didn't graduate. Most of the Little Rock Nine experienced all forms of physical and emotional abuse," Medina Camiscoli said.
"If we have admissions policies that clearly are not identifying all of the talented, hard-working students who could thrive in those programs that we take action to do something about that and that you know it, it remains clear that it is not against the law to remedy inequality and that sort of inequality and access that has been going on for very long," Turnage Young said.
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