Case Summaries

Beneath the title of each case summary below are links that connect to lists of similar cases sorted by topic areas relevant to each case by protected class. Links within each case summary connect to important case documents including complaints, briefs, settlement agreements, consent decrees, orders, and press releases.

On March 18, 2004, the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York and the Section moved to intervene in A.B. v. Rhinebeck Central School District and Thomas Mawhinney, a sexual harassment case brought against the Rhinebeck Central School District and the former high school principal Thomas Mawhinney. The case was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on May 9, 2003, by four current and former high school students and a school employee. The plaintiffs alleged that the school district and Mawhinney violated state and federal laws, including Title IX. The United States filed an intervention brief and complaint-in-intervention alleging that Mawhinney sexually harassed the four plaintiff students as well as other female high school students during his ten-year tenure as principal and that the school district violated Title IX by acting with deliberate indifference to known sexual harassment of these students. The district opposed the United States' intervention, and the United States filed a reply. On August 25, 2004, the court granted the United States' intervention motion.

On March 22, 2006, the court approved a consent decree that requires the district to develop and implement a comprehensive plan that will ensure a discrimination-free educational environment for all students. The district must retain an expert regarding sexual harassment training and prevention to assist in developing the comprehensive plan, to evaluate the district's sexual harassment policies, to conduct a school climate assessment, and to develop a mandatory training program. The consent decree also requires the district to educate school board members and employees regarding how to respond to sexual harassment complaints. Lastly, the district must pay $152,500 to compensate the student victims and to pay their attorney's fees. On December 9, 2009, the parties informed the court that the case could be closed based on the district's implementation of the consent order.

On October 3, 2018, the Section and the District of Colorado U.S. Attorney’s Office (collectively the “United States”) entered into an out-of-court settlement agreement with the Adams 12 Five Star Schools (“the District”) in Colorado to bring the District’s English Learner (EL) program into compliance with Section 1703(f) of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA). This is the United States’ second settlement agreement with the District. The first settlement agreement was reached in 2010 and aimed to resolve numerous EEOA violations that the Section had identified during a compliance review of all the District’s English Learner (“EL”) programs and practices. This 2010 agreement addressed, among other things, the school district's obligations to: ensure timely, adequate and appropriate EL services; train EL teachers and administrators; recruit and hire qualified staff for EL students; provide translation services for parents and guardians; ensure EL students are appropriately evaluated for special education and receive dual services when eligible; provide adequate and appropriate materials for EL classes; monitor current and exited EL students; and evaluate its EL programs adequately. The Section ended its monitoring of the 2010 agreement in 2015.

In 2016, the United States began conducting a complaint investigation to determine whether the District was appropriately serving its approximately 5,600 EL students as required by Section 1703(f) of the EEOA. The second settlement agreement addresses the narrower set of conditions that the United States identified as noncompliant with the EEOA in 2018. The 2018 agreement requires the District to: provide adequate language services to all EL students; provide EL students with appropriate access to core content through sheltered instruction; adequately train the administrators and teachers who provide language services and implement the EL program, including on how to use its curricula for EL students; adequately monitor the academic performance of current and former EL students; and properly evaluate the effectiveness of the EL program over time. The parties anticipate that the 2018 agreement will remain in place for three years.

This desegregation case involves the Longview Independent School District ("LISD") in Longview, Texas, which was ordered by the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas to desegregate on August 27, 1970. On January 24, 2011, as part of a district-wide consolidation plan, the court approved a consent order adopting LISD's revised attendance zones. On February 28, 2014, the court declared that LISD was partially unitary and had eliminated all vestiges of past de jure discrimination to the extent practicable in its facilities, transportation, extracurricular activities, and staff assignment. Following a comprehensive review of the school district's policies and practices, and subsequent negotiations, on December 22, 2014, the court approved the parties' proposed consent order. The Section is monitoring the district's compliance with this consent order, which requires LISD to publicize and broadly disseminate the application and assessment procedures it uses to admit students to the Hudson PEP Elementary School magnet program; permit and facilitate majority-to-minority transfers between certain schools; provide equal access to pre-advanced placement courses at its middle schools; and publicize and broadly disseminate its gifted-and-talented program admission procedures.

On October 12, 2022, the United States issued its Letter of Findings alleging the State of Alabama is violating Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Based on our investigation, we concluded the State of Alabama discriminates against students with emotional and behavioral disabilities in the foster care system who have been enrolled at on-site schools on the campuses of Alabama’s psychiatric residential treatment facilities. By enrolling students at the on-site schools without regard to each student’s ability to perform in local public schools, the State’s practices relegate them to unnecessarily segregated classes and unequal educational opportunities. During our investigation, we found these on-site schools differ in many and substantial ways from general education schools, including in their physical attributes, the multi-grade composition of the classes, their heavy reliance on online programs in classrooms without certified staff, and an overall and profound lack of resources. The on-site schools also lack grade-appropriate curricula; provide insufficient instructional services and supports, including through the use of shortened school days; and are often unable to provide students with access to facilities that are common in general education settings, such as libraries, gyms, and science labs, or opportunities to participate in sports and extracurricular activities. For more information, please see the press release.

In this matter involving the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s (PDE) system of alternative education programs, known as Alternative Education for Disruptive Youth (AEDY), the Section conducted an investigation into complaints that Pennsylvania’s statewide system of alternative education discriminated against students with disabilities in violation of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as English Language Learners (EL) students in violation of Section 1703(f) of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974. On March 25, 2019, the Section along with the United States Attorney’s Offices for the Western, Middle, and Eastern Districts of Pennsylvania entered into a settlement agreement with PDE. The settlement agreement requires that PDE monitor the AEDY system to ensure that students with disabilities are not placed in AEDY in a manner that discriminates based on disability; that they are not unnecessarily segregated within AEDY programs on the basis of disability; that they are not denied equal educational opportunities; and that students with disabilities are transferred back to their home schools in a timely manner. In addition, the agreement will require all local educational agencies referring EL students to AEDY to establish an EL service plan to ensure EL students are provided appropriate services. Further, PDE will ensure that AEDY programs provide EL services by utilizing teachers who hold ESL teaching credentials and by using appropriate materials. The United States will monitor compliance with the terms of the agreement. For more information, please see this press release.

On February 16, 2023, the Section entered into a settlement agreement with the Anchorage School District in Anchorage, Alaska to address the discriminatory use of seclusion and restraint against students with disabilities. The agreement followed an investigation conducted under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) based on allegations that the district engaged in improper restraint and seclusion practices in its specialized schools and programs for students with emotional and behavioral disabilities. Under the settlement agreement, the district will take proactive steps to ensure that its practices do not discriminate against students with disabilities. The district will, among other things: prohibit the use of seclusion; limit the use of restraint; document and review all instances of restraint and ensure they were justified; hire a district-level administrator to review incidents and ensure the district’s compliance with the agreement and Title II of the ADA; create classroom-wide behavior management plans to discourage restraint and promote positive behaviors; revise its complaint form to ensure it can receive complaints related to restraint and seclusion; provide training and professional development for all teachers and instructional staff at its schools and programs for students with emotional and behavioral disabilities; notify parents and guardians of all instances of restraint and seclusion; and offer compensatory counseling or education services to students with disabilities who were subjected to the district’s discriminatory practices. For more information, please see this letter, press release, and summary of the agreement.

In this longstanding school desegregation case, the Section and a class of black plaintiffs opposed the school district's proposal, among other things, to build five new schools. The Section contended that the district's proposal would not further desegregation of the district's schools, would not afford black students equal educational opportunities, and would impose disproportionate transportation burdens on black students. The school district's transportation records showed, for example, that some black high-school students were required to ride a bus up to nearly two and one-half hours each way to and from school, while white students were bussed no longer than forty-five minutes to and from the same school; nonetheless, the school district proposed to build a new high school at a location that would reduce the transportation times of white students while maintaining the transportation times of black students. The Section also alleged that the school district had failed to comply with existing desegregation orders in the areas of faculty and staff hiring, assignment and compensation; transportation; facilities; and curriculum.

After a seven-day evidentiary trial in May 1999, the district court issued an order approving the school district's construction plan, but requiring the school district to address several of the matters about which we had complained. Among other things, the district court ordered the school district to take steps to reduce the transportation times to school for black students. The Section and the plaintiff class appealed from the district court's order relating to new construction. At the request of the Section and the plaintiff class, the district court entered an order "staying," or putting on hold, the school district's proposed new construction, pending a decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

While the appeal was pending, the parties entered into settlement discussions. In April 2000 the parties signed and the district court approved a consent order that both required the school district to address areas of its alleged non-compliance with federal law and resolved all but one of the issues on appeal. The remaining issue on appeal was whether the school district's proposed site for a new high school was consistent with the district's affirmative desegregation obligations. On November 6, 2000, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court's ruling that allowed construction of the new high school to proceed at the contested location. In December 2000, the district court entered an order establishing a bi-racial advisory committee.

On August 5, 1965, the private plaintiffs brought this school desegregation case to enjoin the Monroe City School District from continuing to operate racially segregated schools. The United States joined the case as amicus curiae in 1970 and intervened in the lawsuit in 1978. On July 6, 1992, the Court declared the District unitary with respect to facilities, extracurricular activities, and “the hiring and retention of black teachers and administrators.” However, the Court declined to declare the District unitary with regard to “teacher and principal assignments, student assignments and transportation.” On March 30, 2010, the Court ordered the District to “offer the same courses at every high school in the District;” fully implement a medical magnet program at Carroll High School by the fall of the 2011-12 school year (in an attempt to increase the diversity of the student population at Carroll High); encourage each high school student “to attempt to qualify for the Tuition Opportunity Program for Students (TOPS), which provides scholarships for qualified high school students who choose to attend a Louisiana state college or university;” “work with the Equity Assistance Center for the Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) in order to ensure that all students have an equitable opportunity to participate in Gifted, Honors, pre-AP, and AP programming at all schools in the District;” and ensure that all principals, other administrators, faculty and certified staff are informed of the terms of the Court’s order. On September 25, 2015, the Court declared the District unitary with respect to student assignment and transportation, but declined to pronounce the District unitary as to teacher and principal assignments. In addition, the Court found that the District had not complied with the March 30, 2010 Consent Decree. On December 11, 2015, the Court entered a Consent Decree designed to remedy teacher and principal assignment and course offerings. Among other actions, the board must take steps to equalize course offerings and ensure that the racial makeup and credentials of the teachers and administrators at any given school does not indicate that a school is intended for black students or white students. On March 23, 2016, in the interest of securing full compliance with the letter and spirit of the December 2015 Consent Decree, the United States and the District jointly filed a motion for the extension of certain deadlines therein. The Court granted the motion and entered an Amended Consent Decree on March 24, 2016. On April 14, 2016, the Court entered a Second Amended Consent Decree.

On July 24, 2013, the Section and the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights entered into a resolution agreement with the Arcadia Unified School District in Arcadia, Calif., to resolve an investigation into allegations of discrimination against a transgender student based on the student's sex. Under the agreement, the school district will take a number of steps to ensure that the student, whose gender identity is male and who has consistently and uniformly presented as a boy at school and in all other aspects of his life for several years, will be treated like other male students while attending school in the district. The agreement resolves a complaint filed in October 2011. As detailed in the closure letter sent to the district, the complaint alleged that the district had prohibited the student from accessing facilities consistent with his male gender identity at school and on a school-sponsored overnight trip because he is transgender. The United States investigated this complaint under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both Title IX and Title IV prohibit discrimination against students based on sex. Under the agreement, the district will work with a consultant to support and assist the district in creating a safe, nondiscriminatory learning environment for students who are transgender or do not conform to gender stereotypes; amend its policies and procedures to reflect that gender-based discrimination, including discrimination based on a student's gender identity, transgender status, and nonconformity with gender stereotypes, is a form of discrimination based on sex; and train administrators and faculty on preventing gender-based discrimination and creating a nondiscriminatory school environment for transgender students. Additionally, the district will take a number of steps to treat the student like all other male students in the education programs and activities offered by the district. The district-wide provisions of the agreement will be in place until the end of the 2015-2016 school year. The student-specific provisions of the agreement will be in place as long as the student is enrolled in the district. For more information, please see this press release.

On May 2, the Departments of Justice and Education entered into a settlement agreement with the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) under the EEOA and Title VI. The agreement requires ADE to raise its English proficiency criteria to properly identify English language learner (ELL) students in grades three through 12 and to properly determine when those students no longer need language services. The agreement also requires ADE to ensure that Arizona public schools offer language support services to thousands of students who were prematurely moved out of language services or incorrectly identified as initially fluent English proficient from the 2012-13 school year to the present. The agreement follows a separate settlement agreement with the United States on April 22, 2016, requiring ADE to raise its proficiency criteria for identifying ELL students in kindergarten and to offer language services to ELL students incorrectly identified as English proficient in kindergarten. That agreement also requires ADE to ensure that ELL students who opt out of ELL services have their English language proficiency assessed every year until they are proficient in English. The agreements arise out of the United States’ monitoring of a 2012 settlement agreement with ADE that aimed to resolve its findings (as summarized in that agreement and in the United States’ August 31, 2012 resolution letter) that ADE had underidentified and prematurely removed the ELL status and ELL services of tens of thousands of ELL students between 2006 and 2012. The 2012 settlement required ADE and Arizona public schools to offer targeted reading and writing intervention services to tens of thousands of ELL students who were underidentified and prematurely exited from ELL services under ADE’s test scoring methods between 2006 and 2012. The settlement agreement further required ADE to stop using scoring methods that failed to require proficiency in reading and writing English and to provide sufficient evidence validating its new English language proficient (ELP) tests and cut scores. Through its monitoring of the 2012 agreement, the United States found that ADE’s evidence failed to validate its “proficient” ELP cut scores for grades three through 12 and that ADE underidentified thousands of kindergarten ELL students between 2012 and 2016 by using too low of a proficient cut score on the Kindergarten ELP test. This evidence showed unacceptably low levels of performance on the tests that ADE used from 2006 to 2015 to measure statewide student proficiency in reading, writing, and math by students whom ADE deemed “proficient” on the AZ-3, and unacceptably large gaps between these students’ performance and that of their never-ELL peers. The United States also determined that ADE did not comply with the terms of the 2012 agreement regarding how the new grade 3-12 ELP cut scores were to be set. On May 4, 2016, the United States sent ADE a resolution letter that summarized the United States’ findings about ADE’s noncompliance and the relief in the agreements of April 22, 2016 and May 2, 2016. On June 30, 2016, the parties finalized an amendment to the May 2, 2016 agreement regarding certain scores for grade 5 and scoring procedures.

In this matter involving the Arlington Public Schools (“the District”), the Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia examined whether the District was properly identifying and placing its English Learner (“EL”) students into language programs and adequately serving its secondary EL students, as required by Section 1703(f) of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (“EEOA”). On May 31, 2019, the District and the United States entered into an out-of-court settlement agreement to address the issues identified by the United States and ensure the District’s compliance with Section 1703(f) of the EEOA. The agreement will benefit the District’s approximately 5,000 EL students. Among other things, the agreement requires the District to: properly identify and place EL students when they enroll in the District’s 34 schools; communicate with Limited English Proficient parents about program offerings and other essential information in a language they understand; provide English as a Second Language instruction to all EL students, including students with disabilities, so that they can become proficient in English; adequately train middle school core content teachers of EL students so that these students can meaningfully access grade-level curricula; train secondary school principals on how to evaluate teachers of EL students and support effective teaching strategies; ensure that EL students are timely and appropriately evaluated for special education services; and properly monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of its EL programs over time. The parties anticipate that the agreement will remain in place for three school years. For more information, please see this press release. On October 14, 2022, the parties executed a letter agreement, which modifies and extends the 2019 EL settlement agreement through the 2022-2023 school year. The parties executed a letter agreement on October 24, 2023, extending the agreement through the 2023-2024 school year.

On July 23, 2021, the Section and the U.S. Department of Education filed a statement of interest in the U.S. District Court for the South District of Texas in Arnold v. Barbers Hill Independent School District. In this case, the District disciplined two black boys when they refused to cut their locs to conform to the District’s hair length policy. Because similarly situated girls would not have been in violation of the District’s policy, the boys and their parents brought suit, alleging that the hair length policy unlawfully discriminates on the basis of sex (among other bases) in violation of the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Plaintiffs further allege that the District retaliated against one of the parents in violation of Title IX. On June 21, 2021, the District filed a Motion for Partial Dismissal, arguing primarily that Fifth Circuit precedent establishes a per se rule barring judicial review of all school hair length regulations and that a parent lacks standing to bring a Title IX retaliation claim. In its statement of interest, the United States advises the court that there is no binding Fifth Circuit precedent barring review of plaintiffs’ sex-based challenges to the District’s hair length policy. The United States further advises that Title IX applies to all aspects of a federal funding recipient’s education programs and activities, including its dress and grooming code, and that parents of minor schoolchildren have standing to bring Title IX retaliation claims. Applying the proper Equal Protection Clause and Title IX standards, the United States concludes that plaintiffs adequately allege that the District’s hair length policy unlawfully discriminates on the basis of sex in violation of the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX, and that the District unlawfully retaliated against a parent who complained about the hair length policy’s discriminatory effect. For this reason, the United States asserts that the District’s motion to dismiss plaintiffs’ sex discrimination claims should be denied.

On January 28, 1975, Mississippi was sued for maintaining an unconstitutional dual system of higher education. Plaintiffs argued that Mississippi denied equal opportunities to black students and faculty members by favoring the State's historically white colleges and universities at the expense of its historically black colleges and universities, and by failing to remove the vestiges of racial segregation in the former de jure dual system. On April 21, 1975, the Section intervened and joined the plaintiffs in seeking injunctive relief that would bring Mississippi's higher education system into conformity with constitutional and statutory provisions.

After a trial, the district court and appellate court found for the defendants, but, in 1992, the Supreme Court overturned the lower courts' decisions and remanded the case to the district court to determine if Mississippi had taken the necessary steps to ensure that a student's choice of college was indeed free and unconstrained by Mississippi's former discriminatory policies. The case marked the first time that the Supreme Court defined the applicable legal standards for higher education desegregation.

On February 15, 2002, the court entered a final judgment approving a $503 million settlement. Endorsed by the Mississippi legislature, the settlement will fund a comprehensive plan over a seventeen-year period aimed at improving academic programs, making capital improvements, and expanding summer programs at the State's historically black colleges and universities. The State also will recognize the historically black Jackson State University as a comprehensive university. The district court dismissed the case, but has retained jurisdiction to enforce the settlement agreement.

On January 30, 2017, the District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana approved a consent order that addresses the remaining issues in the desegregation case and when fully implemented will lead to its closing. The consent order, negotiated with the school district (the “District”) and private plaintiffs, represented by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, puts the District on a path to full unitary status within three years provided it:

• Implements a new student assignment plan that desegregates its three nearly all-black elementary schools to the extent practicable, by revising feeder patterns and creating specialized academic programs that will attract a diverse student body;
• Revises the District’s code of conduct to ensure fairness and consistency in the handling of subjective disciplinary offenses that do not threaten safety, and provides District staff with additional tools to address student misbehavior in nondiscriminatory ways;
• Takes reasonable steps to recruit a diverse pool of applicants for faculty and staff vacancies that arise in the course of implementing the new student assignment plan; and
• Incorporates into its student handbook a statement prohibiting discrimination in extracurricular activities and encouraging participation by students of all races.

The consent order declares that the District has already met its desegregation obligations in the area of transportation. The court will retain jurisdiction over the consent order during its implementation, and the Justice Department will monitor the district’s compliance. For more information, please see this press release.

This longstanding desegregation case was filed in 1965 by private plaintiffs, with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and local cooperating attorneys serving as counsel. The United States intervened later that year. In 1969, the Fifth Circuit entered a desegregation order permanently enjoined the District from discriminating on the basis of race or color in the operation of the Meridian schools. In 2010, as part of efforts to enforce the desegregation order, the department began to investigate complaints that the District had implemented a harsh and punitive student discipline policy that resulted in the disproportionate suspension, expulsion, and school-based arrest of black students in Meridian schools. The department found that these kinds of disparities persisted even when the students were at the same school, were of similar ages, and had similar disciplinary histories.

At the conclusion of the investigation, the United States and the District engaged in extensive negotiations, resulting in a proposed consent decree filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi on March 22, 2013. Along with the proposed consent decree, the parties jointly filed a motion to approve the decree, and the United States separately filed a memorandum of law. Under the consent decree, the district will take steps to create safe and inclusive learning environments in all Meridian schools, including providing students with supports and interventions before excluding them from school; limiting the use of discipline measures that remove students from the classroom; ensuring that discipline consequences are fair and consistent; establishing clear guidelines for when law enforcement intervention is appropriate; providing training to give teachers and administrators the tools necessary to manage their schools in a safe, effective and positive manner; and building data-driven monitoring and accountability systems. On May 30, 2013, the Court adopted the consent order.

For more information regarding the proposed consent decree, please see this press release.

On July 5, 2022, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama approved a consent order filed by the Justice Department, together with private plaintiffs represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the Madison County Board of Education, in this longstanding school desegregation case. The consent order requires the school district to take action to provide equal access to gifted and talented services and other academic programs, ensure non-discrimination in student discipline, and improve practices for faculty recruitment, hiring, assignment and retention. For more information, please see this press release.

On June 21, 2010, the Division filed a Motion for Leave to file an amicus brief in Biediger, et al. v. Quinnipiac University. Plaintiffs allege that Quinnipiac failed to provide female students an equal opportunity to participate in varsity intercollegiate athletics, and that this failure constituted intentional sex discrimination in violation of Title IX and 34 C.F.R. § 106.41(c)(1). The plaintiffs allege that Quinnipiac misrepresented its athletic participation numbers by, among other things, requiring women’s teams to artificially increase their number of participants, resulting in some members lacking a genuine varsity athletic participation opportunity; underrepresenting the number of male athletes on teams; eliminating the women's volleyball program; and counting participants on its cheer squad as a sport under Title IX. The United States' amicus brief provided guidance as to what constitutes a genuine participation opportunity, as well as guidance concerning what constitutes a sport for Title IX compliance.

On October 1, 2010, the Section, the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education (OCR), and the Boston Public Schools (BPS) entered into a Settlement Agreement to resolve violations of English Language Learner (ELL) students' rights under the Equal Educational Opportunities Act (EEOA), 20 U.S.C. § 1703(f), and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI), 20 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq. The 2010 Agreement, which grew out of the Section’s and OCR’s joint compliance review of BPS' ELL programs, was needed to address as soon as possible its failure to test approximately 7,000 students in reading and writing to determine if they were ELL students and over 4,000 known ELL students whom it had misidentified as having opted out of ELL programs between 2003 and 2009. The 2010 Agreement secured ELL and compensatory services for the more than 4,000 misidentified “opt out” students and the 4,300 of the 7,000 students who were improperly identified as non-ELL students. The 2010 Agreement further required BPS to provide all ELL students with English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction by ESL-certified teachers and Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) content classes by teachers trained to provide SEI instruction. While BPS was implementing the 2010 Agreement, OCR and DOJ completed the remainder of their compliance review and negotiated a Successor Agreement with BPS to resolve the additional areas of noncompliance identified in the review. The April 19, 2012 Successor Agreement replaced the 2010 Settlement Agreement and provides systemic, comprehensive relief across BPS’s ELL programs, procedures, and practices. The Successor Agreement requires, inter alia: accurate and timely identification of ELL students; appropriate ESL and SEI services provided by qualified faculty; meaningful communications with Limited English Proficient parents through translations and qualified interpreters; assessments and services specially designed to meet the needs of ELL students who face unique challenges, such as students with disabilities and students with interrupted formal education; and greater access for ELL students to the higher-level learning opportunities in BPS. To ensure these programmatic changes are effective, the agreement further requires BPS to evaluate the effect of these changes on student achievement over time through robust, disaggregated data analyses. For more information on both agreements, please see the 2010 press release and 2012 press release.

In this matter involving the Bound Brook New Jersey School District, the Section reviewed whether the district was providing appropriate instruction and services to English Language Learners (ELLs) as required by the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA). Based on its review of the district, the Section raised concerns about, among other things: the school district's procedures for screening new students to determine whether they are ELLs; ELLs' access to basic skills instruction, special education services, and academic enrichment programs; the opportunities that ELLs have to integrate with native speakers of English in a school setting; and monitoring of students currently enrolled in the ELL program and those students who have exited from the program. The school district and the Section engaged in good-faith negotiations about these and other issues and on October 16, 2003, entered into a settlement agreement outlining the measures that the school district was required to take to ensure its compliance with the EEOA. The agreement required the district to provide, among other things: timely assessment of all students with non-English speaking backgrounds; quality curricula and instruction for ELLs; adequate teacher training; and careful monitoring and reporting on the academic progress of current and former ELLs. After the district compiled in good faith with the settlement agreement, the agreement ended on January 12, 2007.

On June 17, 2021, the Section and the U.S. Department of Education filed a statement of interest to assist the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia in evaluating the Title IX and Equal Protection claims in B.P.J. v. West Virginia State Board of Education, et al., Case No. 2:21-cv-00316. In this case, the plaintiff, an 11-year-old girl who is transgender, challenged H.B. 3293, a state law that prohibits girls who are transgender from participating on female interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural, or club athletic teams or sports that are sponsored by any public secondary school or state institution of higher education. She asked the court to enjoin West Virginia from enforcing H.B. 3293 and allow her to participate on girls’ sports teams consistent with her gender identity. The plaintiff alleged that H.B. 3293 requires her school, a recipient of federal financial assistance, to exclude her from school athletics on the basis of sex, causing her harm in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The plaintiff also alleges that H.B. 3293 violates the Equal Protection Clause because the state law discriminates against her because of sex and gender identity and is not substantially related to an exceedingly persuasive justification. In its statement of interest, the United States advised the court that Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause prohibit discrimination against students because of their sex, including because a student is transgender. The United States concluded that the plaintiff was likely to succeed on these claims in support of her motion for a preliminary injunction.

On November 13, 2019, the Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Vermont entered into a Settlement Agreement with the Burlington School District in Burlington, Vermont, to resolve an investigation into allegations of sex discrimination. The Section initiated its investigation in response to a complaint by a group of parents alleging that their children had been subject to severe and pervasive sex-based harassment, including assault, that went unaddressed by the District. As a result, their children feared for their safety and several withdrew from the school. Under the Agreement, the District will take a number of steps to improve its ability to prevent and appropriately respond to peer-on-peer harassment based on sex. Those steps include retaining the technical assistance of the Mid Atlantic Equity Center to support a review of the District’s sex-based harassment policies, practices, and procedures as well as the District’s training on and implementation protocols for such policies. The Agreement further requires that the District work with the Equity Center to assess its resources and build capacity at individual schools and at the District-level to ensure that all schools have the capacity to implement fully the District’s policies and procedures. Under the Agreement, the District will provide particularized training for students and faculty at the elementary school implicated in the complaint, and will conduct climate surveys at that school to assess the presence and effects of harassment and bullying, the inclusiveness and safety of the educational environment, and the effectiveness of the measures taken pursuant to the Agreement. The Agreement will be in place through the 2021-22 school year.

On July 14, 2014, the Division filed a Statement of Interest in D.J. et al v. State of California, a state case brought by parents and guardians of English Language Learner (ELL) students against the State of California and the California Department of Education (CDE) among others, which alleged that the State violated the Equal Educational Opportunities Act (“EEOA”) by failing to respond to credible information that tens of thousands of ELL students were not receiving ELL instructional services. The Division’s Statement of Interest articulated what the United States maintains are the correct legal standards governing the State’s obligations under the EEOA, including monitoring local education agencies (LEAs) provision of EL instructional services. In an August 12, 2014 decision, the state court ruled that the State had violated the EEOA and ordered it to take remedial action, reiterating many of the legal standards discussed in the United States’ brief. In November 2014, the State appealed the ruling, and then subsequently settled the appeal and all of D.J. plaintiffs’ claims in a private settlement approved by the state court.

Applying the standards in the Statement of Interest in its own EEOA compliance review of the State’s monitoring practices, the Division notified CDE and the California State Board of Education in a letter dated May 22, 2015, that the State was not meeting its obligations under the EEOA and needed to respond promptly and appropriately to ensure LEAs provide their EL students with appropriate EL instructional services. On September 8, 2016, the Division and the State settled the matter in a two-year settlement agreement that requires the State to respond in a timely and effective manner to credible evidence that LEAs are failing to serve their ELLs, including notifying them of violations and providing a protocol by which they must submit to CDE documented evidence that resolves the violations. The agreement also requires CDE to: consider LEAs’ reports of unserved ELs when selecting schools for monitoring reviews; improve CDE’s online monitoring tool; require that schools found to be out of compliance with specific requirements in this online tool receive onsite monitoring if they fail to provide adequate evidence that the noncompliance has been resolved; and develop and provide training on the monitoring, review, and corrective action processes associated with CDE’s system of monitoring schools for ELL service violations. For more information, please see the press release.

In this religious discrimination case, the plaintiffs alleged that their rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments were violated when the school board excluded them from using school facilities for a "prayer meeting" at which civic and social issues would be discussed. The school board permits community groups and non-students to use school facilities for a wide variety of civic and recreational purposes such as luncheons, homeowner association meetings, seminars, and athletic activities. The policy permits groups to use school facilities to engage in discussions having a "religious viewpoint," but not to engage in "religious services or instruction." Relying on this distinction, the board denied facility access to the plaintiffs on the grounds that the proposed prayer meeting was a religious service rather than a meeting presented from a religious viewpoint. On April 25, 2003, the Section filed an amicus brief in support of plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment, arguing that (1) plaintiffs' proposed meeting fits well within the forum created under the school board's facility use policy, and (2) there is no legal or practical distinction between religious viewpoints on a topic and "religious services or instruction." On June 3, 2003, the Section filed an amicus brief in opposition to defendants' motion for summary judgment.

On July 10, 2003, the court held a hearing on the parties' motions in which the Section participated. On July 29, 2003, the court issued an order granting summary judgment for plaintiffs. The court concluded that although the plaintiffs' proposed meeting was primarily a religious service, it also included a discussion of family and political issues from a legally protected religious viewpoint. Thus, the court held that the proposed meeting was not "mere religious worship," but included speech that the school district permitted through its facility use policy. The school district therefore improperly denied the plaintiffs access to school facilities for their evening meeting. On February 19, 2004, the case was dismissed.

On February 19, 2021, the Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio opened an investigation into Case Western Reserve University’s (“CWRU”) response to reports of sexual harassment, including sexual assault, and sexual misconduct in its Greek Life community. The Department’s investigation included interviews with former and current campus employees, students, and alumni, and an extensive review of CWRU’s polices grievance procedures, training, and response to reports of sexual harassment.

On August 22, 2023, the Department and CWRU reached a resolution agreement under Title IX to address the areas of noncompliance identified through the Department’s investigation. Under the agreement, CWRU will, among other steps: reorganize the Title IX reporting structure to remove it from the purview of the Office of General Counsel and ensure CWRU follows its grievance procedures free from conflicts of interest; promote greater awareness about the Office of Equity and the Title IX Coordinator; require annual training for all students and employees; invest resources into enhanced prevention programming and training for CWRU fraternities and sororities; conduct campus-wide outreach; and implement a campus-wide student survey to better serve its community. The Department will carefully monitor the CWRU’s implementation of this agreement, which will remain in place through the 2025-2026 academic year. For more information, please see this letter, press release, and a plain-language summary of the agreement.

On September 12, 2022, the Section entered into a settlement agreement with the Cedar Rapids Community School District in Cedar Rapids, Iowa to address the discriminatory use of seclusion and restraint against students with disabilities. The agreement followed an investigation conducted under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) based on allegations that the school district engaged in improper seclusion and restraint practices. Under the settlement agreement, the school district will take proactive steps to ensure that its practices do not discriminate against students with disabilities. The district will, among other steps: end its use of seclusion; limit its use of restraint, revise its restraint procedures and practices, and consistently implement those procedures and practices in all schools; report all instances of restraint and evaluate if they were justified; offer counseling and other services to students who are restrained; adopt policies and procedures to assess suicide risk, prevent suicide and self-harm, and implement immediate crisis intervention for students who threaten or engage in self-harm; designate trained staff to collect and analyze restraint data and oversee the creation of appropriate behavior intervention plans; deliver appropriate training and resources to help schools implement the agreement; and hire two new administrators to oversee schools’ use of restraint and ensure the district’s compliance with the agreement and Title II of the ADA. For more information, please see this letter, press release, and summary of settlement agreement.

In this matter involving Charleston County School District in Charleston, South Carolina, the Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina conducted an investigation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974. The United States received complaints that the school district failed to communicate essential information to Spanish-speaking, limited English proficient (LEP) parents, denying their children full and equal access to the school district’s education programs and services. The United States found that, over the course of several years, the school district often failed to use qualified interpreters to communicate with Spanish-speaking LEP parents and guardians, even when their need for an interpreter was documented or otherwise evident. The United States also found that the school district did not consistently translate essential written information into Spanish, and asked parents who can only communicate in Spanish to make important decisions about school programs and services without explaining the options in a language they understand.

On March 2, 2021, the United States entered into a settlement agreement with the school district to ensure that the school district and each its 80 schools and programs use qualified interpreters and translators to communicate with LEP parents about matters essential to their children’s education, including special education services. The agreement requires, among other things, that the district take proactive steps by: developing and implementing effective language access policies and procedures; training faculty and staff on how to properly identify and meaningfully communicate with LEP parents and guardians; informing LEP parents and guardians of their right to language access services at special-education related meetings and receive translated special-education related documents; and providing a language-assessment report and bi-annual compliance reports to DOJ. For more information, please see this press release and a translated version in Spanish. A translated version of the agreement is available in Spanish.

In this matter involving Cherry Creek School District in Colorado, the Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado conducted an investigation under the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974. The United States received complaints that the school district failed to communicate essential information to limited English proficient (LEP) parents, denying their children full and equal access to the school district’s education programs and services. The LEP parents in the community speak more than 150 languages, and the United States found that, over the course of several years, the school district often failed to use qualified interpreters to communicate with LEP parents, particularly when parents enrolled their children in the district’s schools and during expulsion hearings and other disciplinary proceedings.

On May 21, 2024, the United States entered into a settlement agreement with the school district to ensure that the school district identify LEP parents and provide them with appropriate language assistance services, such as in-person interpretation, remote video or telephonic interpretation, translation, and/or sight translation, when communicating with parents about matters essential to their children’s education. The agreement requires, among other things, that the district train faculty and staff on how to properly identify and meaningfully communicate with LEP parents and inform LEP parents about their right to language access services. The district will translate all enrollment documents, including all forms and registration instructions, into any languages used by 100 or more LEP parents in the district. The district also will identify parents’ preferred language of communication at the beginning of the student enrollment process and use telephonic interpretation services and other language assistance services to help LEP parents navigate the enrollment process. The district will take similar steps when staff communicate with parents concerning disciplinary proceedings, including potential exclusionary discipline hearings. The district also will provide annual compliance reports to DOJ.

For more information, please see this press release and the agreement. A translated versions of the press release are available in Amharic, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese, and a translated version of the agreement is available in Spanish.

On July 9, 2004, Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF), an organization that sponsors after-school Good News Bible Clubs, filed a complaint and a motion for preliminary injunction, alleging that officials of the Upland Unified School District (California) discriminated against CEF by allowing non-profit organizations such as the Boy Scouts free use of school facilities while at the same time charging religious organizations such as CEF rent equal to “direct costs.”

The United States filed a motion to participate as amicus curiae in this matter, as the United States is charged with enforcement of Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which authorizes the Attorney General to seek relief if a school deprives students of the equal protections of the laws. The Court granted the United States’ motion.

The United States filed a brief in support of plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction. The United States argued that the district’s practice of charging religious groups a fee to use school facilities for activities serving local youth when the district does not charge secular groups a fee to use facilities serving local youth violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments because the fee discriminated against CEF’s religious viewpoint.

On November 15, 2004, the Court granted the plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction thereby enjoining the district from requiring CEF to pay any rental fees or other fees that are not required of other non-profit community organizations for use of the district’s facilities.

Then, on February 4, 2005, the Court entered a Stipulated Dismissal without prejudice with an attached Settlement Agreement stating that the district agreed, among other terms, to permit CEF equal access to school facilities on the same terms and conditions as other similar non-profit groups.

The department conducted a compliance review of the English Language Learner (ELL) program at the Clay County School District in Alabama to determine whether ELL students were receiving services required by the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA). On June 19, 2014, a settlement agreement was reached that will ensure that this rural district takes appropriate action to serve its small but growing population of ELL students, including: increasing services for ELL students, obtaining additional English as a Second Language-certified instructors, conducting significant professional development for teachers, providing adequate materials and classroom supports for ELL students, monitoring the academic performance of current and former ELL students and improving language-accessible communication with limited English proficient parents. For more information, please see this press release.

Settlement Agreement in: Spanish

Press Release in: Spanish

In this matter involving the Clay County School District, the Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida investigated whether the District was providing appropriate language services to its English Learner (“EL”) students, as required by the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (“EEOA”). The investigation revealed that the District was not appropriately identifying EL students or providing them with the educational services and supports needed for EL students to become proficient in English and participate equally in school. On October 30, 2023, the District and the United States entered into an out-of-court settlement agreement. Under the agreement, the District will modify its practices so that EL students are properly assessed and identified shortly after their enrollment, promptly provided with language services if they qualify and have the opportunity to equally benefit from the academic and behavioral supports provided to their peers. The District will also make certain that all teachers are qualified, trained and provided enough support and resources to help EL students become fluent in English and understand their core-content courses. The District will also translate and interpret important school information for parents who are not fluent in English. For more information, please see the press release in English, Spanish, and Haitian-Creole. The agreement is available in English, Spanish, and Haitian-Creole, and summaries of the agreement are available in English, Spanish, and Haitian-Creole.

In this matter involving the Colton Joint Unified School District in California, the United States investigated whether the district’s programming for English learners was adequate under Section 1703(f) of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974. After a multi-year investigation conducted by the Educational Opportunities Section along with the U.S. Attorneys’ Office for the Central District of California, the United States found that English learners in the district did not receive adequate English language instruction, and that core content teachers did not have the requisite training to meet English learner needs in math, science and social studies courses. On December 19, 2022, the United States entered an out-of-court settlement agreement with the district to ensure that every English learner in the district receives English language instruction, and that teachers working with English learners are trained and qualified to meet their needs. The district will also implement additional changes to ensure that English learners have an equal opportunity to participate in the district’s various programs, including programs for gifted and talented students. The agreement will remain in place for three years. For more information please see this press release in English and Spanish (español).

In this sex discrimination case, high school girls in Michigan filed a complaint alleging that the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) violated Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. They contended that MHSAA refused to sanction additional sports for high school girls, provided inferior practice and playing facilities for post-season tournaments held in certain girls' sports, and required girls to play certain sports in disadvantageous seasons. This last contention allegedly reduced participation opportunities for high school girls by shortening playing seasons, thereby preventing participation in club competitions and all-star competitions involving players from other states and negatively affecting their chances of being recruited for collegiate-level sports programs. On September 7, 1999, the Section was granted leave to participate as litigating amicus curiae and filed an amicus brief at the summary judgment stage, arguing that the case should go forward under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause. On January 21, 2002, the court ruled in plaintiffs' favor, allowing the case to proceed to trial.

In the summer of 2001, the parties participated in mediation which resulted in a settlement of all claims except for the issue of playing seasons. The court conducted a two-week bench trial in September 2001 and received evidence concerning the following questions: (1) whether MHSAA, by assuming controlling authority over interscholastic athletics from member schools that receive federal funds, is subject to Title IX; (2) whether MHSAA is a state actor for purposes of 42 U.S.C. § 1983; and (3) whether MHSAA's scheduling of only girls' sports in disadvantageous seasons violated Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause. On December 17, 2001, the court issued its ruling finding in favor of the plaintiffs and the Section on all three issues. See Communities for Equity v. Michigan High Sch. Athletic Ass'n, 178 F. Supp.2d 805 (W.D. Mich. 2001). The court held that MHSAA is subject to Title IX and is a state actor for purposes of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. In so holding, the court further concluded that MHSAA's scheduling practices violated Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause. Lastly, the court ordered MHSAA to submit a compliance plan to remedy the discriminatory scheduling of girls' sports.

The Section filed an opposition to the compliance plan in June 2002. After reviewing briefing on the issue of the remedial plan and conducting a hearing on the matter, the Court issued a ruling requiring MHSAA to switch girls' basketball and volleyball to their traditional, advantageous seasons of the winter and fall respectively. The Court ultimately approved the rest of MHSAA's remedial plan, finding that the switching of the remaining sports at issue (soccer, golf, tennis, swimming, and diving) balanced the inequity of nontraditional playing seasons amongst high school boys and girls in Michigan.

MHSAA appealed the district court's rulings on liability and the remedial plan to the U.S. Court of Appeals to the Sixth Circuit. The Division filed an amicus brief in August 2003. In July 2004, the Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court's ruling that MHSAA's scheduling of sports violates the Equal Protection Clause. MHSAA then appealed to the Supreme Court, which instructed the Sixth Circuit to reconsider the case. On August 16, 2006, the Sixth Circuit issued an opinion that again affirmed the district court's ruling that the sports schedule discriminates against female athletes on the basis of sex. On December 7, 2006, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit denied rehearing and rehearing en banc. On April 2, 2007, the United States Supreme Court denied review of MHSAA's petition for certiorari.

In 1999, the Section intervened in this lawsuit alleging the Denver Public Schools (DPS) violated Title VI and the EEOA by failing to take appropriate actions to overcome language barriers of its English Language Learner (ELL) students. On June 16,1999, the district court approved a new English Language Acquisition Plan for the Denver Public Schools.

The result of compliance monitoring by the Section and the Congress of Hispanic Educators (CHE), and DPS’s recognition that the 1999 order no longer reflected the district’s own best practices for serving ELL students, moved the parties to develop a new consent decree to replace the existing plan. On April 16, 2013 the district court in Denver approved a comprehensive consent decree between the Department of Justice, CHE, and DPS that requires DPS to provide language services to the more than 28,000 ELL students enrolled in the district’s 170 schools.

The consent decree requires the district to implement comprehensive measures to ensure that ELLs have equal opportunities to succeed academically in district educational programs, starting with the proper identification of ELL students when they enter DPS. Among other things, the consent decree requires DPS to: provide language acquisition services to ELL students in district schools, including charter schools, until they are proficient in English and to monitor ELL students after they exit services to ensure they are participating meaningfully and equally in mainstream classes; to make translation and interpretation services available for thousands of Limited English Proficient parents who speak more than 130 different languages – ensuring that all parents have access to essential information about their children’s education; to provide Pre-K language services at each school where DPS offers early childhood education; and to make appropriate language services available for ELL students who face unique challenges, including refugee students and students with disabilities.

The June 16, 2009 complaint alleges that FHSAA’s new policy discriminates against female students by reducing the maximum number of competitions that a school can schedule by 20% for varsity teams and 40% for sub-varsity teams while exempting 36,000 boys who play football and only 4,300 girls and 201 boys who participate in competitive cheerleading. The complaint also alleges that OCR has not recognized competitive cheerleading as a sport under Title IX and that even if it were recognized as a sport, the new policy exempts nearly nine times as many boys than girls from the reductions in their competition schedule. The complaint further alleges that FHSAA sanctions football for a total of 23 weeks of coaching, practices, and competitions, while the majority of girls’ sports operate for only a total of 15 weeks. The plaintiffs filed a motion for a preliminary injunction on June 19, 2009. The defendant filed a motion to dismiss on July1, 2009. On July 14th, the Division filed a motion for leave to file an amicus brief in opposition to the defendant’s motion to dismiss and in support of plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction. The United States’ amicus brief argues that plaintiffs’ allegations establish claims of intentional discrimination, not just disparate impact, under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause that are sufficiently detailed to survive the motion to dismiss. The brief also argues that there is a substantial likelihood that the Title IX and Equal Protection claims will succeed on the merits, and that the court should preliminarily enjoin new Policy 6. On July 15, the court granted the United States’ motion for leave to file its brief and its request for oral argument at a preliminary injunction hearing scheduled for July 17. Shortly thereafter on July 15, FHSAA voted unanimously to rescind its challenged policy. On July 16, 2009, the court cancelled the preliminary injunction hearing because the plaintiffs and defendants agreed that FHSAA’s rescission of the policy rendered the motion for a preliminary injunction moot. On October 21, 2009, the court issued an order granting the parties’ agreed motion to dismiss the case without prejudice and retaining jurisdiction to enforce the terms of their settlement until December 31, 2010.

In this matter involving the Coolidge Unified School District (“the District”) in Arizona, the Section examined whether the District’s instructional services and materials for English Learner (EL) students and its training for their teachers and administrators complied with Section 1703(f) of the Equal Opportunities Act of 1974. On April 16, 2021, the District and the United States entered into an out-of-court settlement agreement to resolve the District’s compliance issues identified by the United States. The agreement requires the District to improve and increase language instruction for EL students so they can become fluent in English and understand the coursework in all of their academic subjects. The agreement also requires the district to provide robust teacher and administrator training, obtain the special materials and curricula that English learner students need to succeed academically, and actively evaluate students’ progress over time. The agreement will remain in place for three full school years. For more information, please see this press release in English and Spanish. A translated version of the agreement is available in Spanish.

In this longstanding desegregation case involving the Franklin County Board of Education (North Carolina), the Section monitors the school district's compliance with existing court orders. The school district achieved partial unitary status in certain areas in 2002 and additional areas in 2018. The court retains jurisdiction over the Green factor of student assignment, including the school district’s administration of discipline and its gifted and talented programs.

On April 13, 2000, the school district moved to dismiss the case on the grounds that it had attained unitary status. On November 22, 2000, the Section filed a memorandum opposing, in part, the school district's motion. On June 24, 2002, the district court held that the school district was partially unitary with respect to school transportation, extracurricular activities, school construction and facilities, student transfers, and faculty desegregation. On June 17, 2003, the Court approved a Consent Order governing the school district’s remaining areas of obligation (student assignment, staff desegregation, and quality of education). A new student assignment plan was approved in a May 2005 order.

At the court’s request, in a January 2018 response to the school district’s annual report the Section identified two areas of ongoing district noncompliance with the 2003 Consent Order that pertain to the assignment of students within schools: (1) discipline that excludes students from schools and classrooms; and (2) the referral and assignment of students to the gifted and talented program. With the consent of the school district, the Section simultaneously filed a joint motion to declare the district partially unitary and approve a proposed stipulation with regard to several of the school district’s remaining desegregation obligations. Separately, counsel for Plaintiffs asked the Court to require the school district to provide notice of the proposed changes and invite public comment before dismissing any part of the 2003 Order. The Court granted plaintiffs’ counsel’s request.

Having provided the public appropriate notice and an opportunity to submit comments pursuant to a court-approved schedule, the United States and the school district filed a Joint Motion and Memorandum of Support on December 14, 2018, to declare the District partially unitary with respect to desegregation of staff and the following quality of education areas governed by the 2003 Order: academic achievement, advanced course offerings and enrollment, special education program, and student dropouts. The court granted the joint motion in an order dated December 18, 2018.

This case was brought by the Henrico County School Board (board) to appeal a Virginia hearing officer’s decision in favor of R.T.’s parents’ private school placement. R.T. is an autistic child entitled to a free and appropriate education (FAPE) under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The hearing officer agreed with R.T.’s parents that the board failed to provide R.T. with a FAPE and that the private school placement was a FAPE. One issue before the federal district court was which party should pay for the private school placement pending the board’s appeal of the state hearing officer’s decision. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s regulation, 34 C.F.R. §300.514(c), which implements the IDEA’s stay put provision, 20 U.S.C. §1415(j), the board should fund the placement while litigation is pending. The board challenged the validity of the statutory and regulatory stay put provisions, and the Section filed an amicus brief on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education to defend both provisions. The Section argued that the regulation was consistent with the plain meaning of the statutory provision and that the statutory provision was a valid exercise of the Spending Clause power. On June 22, 2006, the court issued an opinion rejecting the board’s Spending Clause challenge and agreeing with the United States that the board must pay for R.T.’s private pendent placement.

On January 18, 2017, the Section entered into a settlement agreement with the Covington Independent Public Schools to ensure the District does not discriminate on the basis of disability in its administration of school discipline. The agreement will guarantee that the District provides reasonable modifications of school policy for students with disabilities to avoid the use of exclusionary discipline, isolation, seclusion, or restraint, and contact with law enforcement. The agreement will also replace the use of punitive discipline with more positive approaches as part of an overall focus on improving student achievement and school climate.

This is a cooperative resolution of the Justice Department’s investigation, opened in November 2015 in response to complaints that the District’s discipline practices discriminated on the basis of race and disability. As a part of the settlement agreement, the District will continue its current practice of not stationing School Resource Officers (SROs) at elementary schools; cease requesting SROs to enforce disciplinary rules; eliminate the use of seclusion and isolation rooms; prohibit the use of restraints unless there is imminent danger to the physical safety of the student or others; develop a protocol to identify students who are disproportionately subject to disciplinary referrals, particularly those students who receive exclusionary discipline as a result, and provide those students with interventions and supports intended to reduce disciplinary actions; take prompt and effective steps to help students who are in crisis; implement a code of conduct that focuses on positive interventions, rather than punitive discipline; and train administrators and teachers on how to provide all students with effective interventions and supports.

On August 7, 2017, Cleveland Central High School and Cleveland Central Middle School opened in Cleveland, Mississippi, a major milestone in this longstanding desegregation case, which was initially filed in 1965 by private plaintiffs (the United States intervened in 1985).

On May 2, 2011, the United States had filed a motion for further relief asking the court to find that the district had violated its desegregation obligations under several previously-entered desegregation orders governing the District, and to compel the district's compliance with federal law. In its brief, the United States argued that, while the district had been governed by desegregation orders for more than 42 years, the predominantly black schools on the east side of the District had never been desegregated. The United States further asserted that the ratio of black and white faculty at numerous District schools reinforced the reputation of those schools in the community as "white" or "black" schools. The district filed an opposition brief on August 18, 2011, and the United States filed a reply brief on October 6, 2011.

In an opinion issued on March 28, 2012, the court determined that two schools, a middle school and high school that were formerly de jure black schools, had never been desegregated. The court also found that the ratio of black and white faculty at every school in the District deviated from the district-wide faculty ratio. The court ordered the district to submit a proposed desegregation plan addressing these issues. On December 11, 2012, following a hearing on the District’s proposed plan, the Court issued an order and opinion, finding that the District's proposal did not meet constitutional requirements and ordering the District to implement a "freedom of choice" plan for its middle and high school students.

On February 21, 2013, the United States filed a motion asking the Court to reconsider its remedial order, arguing in its brief that "freedom of choice" was an inadequate remedy in this case. The Court denied the motion in an April 30, 2013 order. On April 1, 2014, following the United States' appeal of the court's remedial order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued an opinion reversing and remanding for further proceedings. On January 23, 2015, the United States submitted a proposed desegregation plan to the Court. The district filed two separate plans. The United States objected to the District's plans on February 13, 2015 and responded to the District's objections to its plan on February 27, 2015. The court held a five-day evidentiary hearing on the proposed plans in May 2015.

On May 13, 2016, the Court approved the U.S. plan and ordered the Cleveland School District to consolidate its secondary schools, rejecting as unconstitutional both of the District’s proposals. For more information on the Court’s order, please see this press release. After several months during which the District proceeded with an appeal of the Court’s May 2016 decision to the Fifth Circuit and submitted additional proposals to the district court, the Parties reached an agreement. On February 8, 2017, the Parties filed a Joint Motion for Modification of the Court’s May 2016 Order that would end the appeal and remove the additional proposals from the district court’s consideration. In a March 13 order, the Court granted the Parties’ motion, and on March 17, 2017, the Court issued an updated implementation timeline. For more information on the Court’s order, please see this press release.

Cleveland Central High School opened to all District 9th-12th graders and Cleveland Central Middle School opened to all District 7th-8th graders in August 2017. The Department of Justice will continue to monitor the District’s compliance with the Court’s orders and federal law.

In this matter involving the Crestwood School District in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, the Department investigated a complaint alleging violations of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act, 20 U.S.C. §1703 et seq., related to the district's English Language Learner (ELL) program, as well as claims of employment discrimination and unlawful retaliation. On August 13, 2014, the Department and the district entered into a comprehensive, multi-part Settlement Agreement. The agreement requires the district to ensure all of its ELL students, most of whom are native Arabic speakers, receive appropriate English as a Second Language and sheltered content instruction taught by teachers who are properly qualified and trained. The district also must provide ELL students and limited English proficient parents with meaningful access to important information, including discipline and special education materials and procedures. Pursuant to the agreement, the district will work with the Department' Community Relations Service to improve parental outreach and community engagement, establish a community advisory panel, and implementing training on cultural competency. The district also will retain a qualified consultant to help it draft a comprehensive recruitment and hiring policy and implement best practices for recruiting, hiring, and retaining a qualified and diverse faculty and staff. The agreement also requires the district to institute internal complaint processes to investigate and resolve allegations of employment discrimination and/or retaliation. The district's compliance with the agreement will be monitored for four years. For more information, please see this press release.

Settlement Agreement in: Arabic

Press Release in: Arabic

On June 16, 2004, the parents of a 5th-grade student at the Hadley School Program for the Creative and Academically Talented sued the school district of the City of Saginaw, Michigan for allegedly discriminating against the student’s religious beliefs. Specifically, the complaint alleged that the district prohibited him from “selling” candy cane ornaments with an attached card explaining the religious origin of the candy cane as part of “Classroom City”–a multi-disciplinary marketplace town simulation that was part of the school’s social studies curriculum. The district conceded that the student had properly followed the assignment’s directions and received a grade of A for the simulation. Both the plaintiffs and the district filed cross motions for summary judgment.

The United States filed a motion to participate as amicus curiae in this matter, as the United States is charged with enforcement of Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which authorizes the Attorney General to seek relief if a school deprives students of the equal protections of the laws. The Court granted the United States’ motion.

The United States filed an amicus brief in support of plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment. The United States argued that the district’s censorship of student religious speech that otherwise fulfills the assignment criteria violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments proscribing government regulation of speech that discriminates against a particular point of view–here a religious viewpoint. On September 18, 2006, the Court issued an opinion finding that the district had abridged the plaintiff student’s First Amendment free speech rights, but granted the district’s motion for summary judgment on other grounds.

On September 7, 2022, the Section, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts, and the U.S. Department of Education filed a statement of interest in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in Czerwienski, et. al. v. Harvard University, et. al. The plaintiffs in this case are doctoral students at Harvard University who allege that they were retaliated against for reporting sexual harassment by a professor. Harvard argues that it cannot be held liable for any retaliatory acts by the professor. The United States’ brief clarifies that a recipient of federal financial assistance, like Harvard University, may be held liable for damages under Title IX where retaliatory conduct amounts to an official act of the recipient or where the recipient is deliberately indifferent to its employee’s retaliatory conduct.

On July 17, 2019, the Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah notified the Davis School District in Utah that we had opened an investigation under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in response to parent complaints that Davis deprived students of equal protection of the law based on race. The Department’s investigation principally focused on Davis’s response to serious and widespread racial harassment of Black and Asian-American students. The Department also investigated reports that Davis disciplined Black students more harshly than their white peers for similar behavior and that Davis denied Black students the ability to form student groups while supporting similar requests by other students. After conducting over 100 interviews and an extensive review of Davis’s policies, trainings, discipline and other records, and responses to reports of racial harassment and other discrimination, the Department concluded that Davis violated students’ equal protection rights.

On September 15, 2021, the Department issued a letter notifying Davis of the Department’s conclusions, and on October 20, 2021, the Department entered into a settlement agreement with Davis to address its violations of the Equal Protection Clause. Under the Agreement, Davis will take significant steps to prevent and appropriately respond to racial harassment and other discrimination, including to: create a new department to handle complaints of race discrimination; train staff on how to identify, investigate, and respond to complaints of racial harassment and discriminatory discipline practices; inform students and parents of how to report harassment and discrimination; create a centralized, electronic reporting system to track and manage complaints and Davis’s response to complaints; implement student, staff, and parent training and education on identifying and preventing race discrimination, including discriminatory harassment; analyze and review discipline data and amend policies to ensure non-discriminatory enforcement of discipline policies; and develop a districtwide procedure to assess requests for student groups and treat such requests fairly. The Department will carefully monitor Davis’s implementation of this agreement, which will remain in place through the 2024-2025 school year. For more information, please see this summary and the press release. An Amendment to the 2021 Agreement is available, here.

In October 2012, counsel for the Sikh Coalition filed a complaint with the Department of Justice alleging that a middle school student had been repeatedly targeted with verbal and physical harassment because of his Sikh faith. The United States has authority to investigate and resolve complaints of religious and national origin harassment through its enforcement of Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Following an inquiry into the student-specific complaints, the United States notified the district of its concerns that the district had failed to respond promptly and appropriately to the Sikh Coalition's allegations of harassment, including allegations that the student was called "Aladdin" because he wore a turban and was told by a fellow student to "go back to his country." The United States also raised concerns that the district had not investigated witness statements that the student had been called a "terrorist" and that there was a history of fellow students targeting him because of his turban. The United States also found that the disciplinary measures the district did take had not been effective in ending the harassment, and that the student feared continued harassment.

The district worked cooperatively with the United States to resolve the complaint and ensure greater protections for the student. The May 2013 Resolution Agreement, which will be in effect until the end of the 2014-2015 school year, requires the district to: work with a consultant to develop and implement anti-harassment training at the student's middle and high school; immediately implement a safety plan to ensure that the student is safe at school and, should incidents of harassment occur, that the district responds quickly and effectively; and meet with the student, his family, and administrators from his middle school and the high school where he will enroll, to identify key school personnel who can support the student should any future incidents of harassment occur. The Parties also agreed to continue to work collaboratively to resolve the United States' remaining concerns regarding the district's anti-harassment policies, procedures, and practices, and to ensure that district students and employees had appropriate training and guidelines on their federal civil rights and obligations as they pertain to harassment based on religion and national origin.

As a result of that joint effort, the district and the United States agreed to a second Resolution Agreement in November 2014 that supplements the existing and operative May 2013 agreement. The districtwide agreement, which will be in effect through the 2016-2017 school year, is designed to enhance the district's ability to prevent and respond to peer-on-peer harassment based on national origin and religion and to provide clear and consistent procedures for reporting, investigating, and responding to such conduct. The agreement requires the district to: review and revise all district anti-harassment and discipline policies and procedures to ensure consistency with the district's obligations under federal law; ensure that parents and students with limited English proficiency have access to essential information, including discipline policies and procedures, in a language they understand; develop and implement annual age- and position-appropriate trainings on religious and national origin harassment for all students, district and school administrators, faculty, and staff; and continue to build upon the district's existing anti-bullying initiatives and the May 2013 resolution agreement.

For more information, please see this press release.

The Department of Justice, through the Civil Rights Division and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia, filed a statement of interest on July 7, 2020 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in Doe v. Fulton County School District. In this case, the plaintiff, a middle school girl with significant physical, developmental, and intellectual disabilities, alleges that the Fulton County School District subjected her to unlawful discrimination on the basis of sex. Her claims of discrimination arise from an escalating series of sexual assaults and rape that she endured at the hands of other students while riding on a District special needs school bus, all with no intervention by the bus driver. The plaintiff seeks damages under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, as well as injunctive relief under the Georgia Open Records Act. On June 15, 2020, the District filed a Motion to Dismiss, arguing primarily that the knowledge of a bus driver categorically may not be attributed to the District for purposes of plaintiff’s discrimination claims. In its statement of interest, the United States advises the court that determining whether a school district employee is an “appropriate person” under Title IX is fact-dependent and thus may not be based on the employee’s title alone. The United States concludes that proper application of Title IX case law requires that plaintiff be permitted to demonstrate facts in support of her allegations and that the Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss should therefore be denied.

In November 2010, the Department of Justice received a complaint alleging that students in the school district were being harassed by other students because they didn't dress or act in ways that conform to gender stereotypes. Pursuant to Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the Departments of Justice and Education conducted an extensive investigation into sex-based harassment in the district's middle and high schools. Many students reported that the unsafe and unwelcoming school climate inhibited their ability to learn.

Six student plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against Anoka-Hennepin School District in the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota in July 2011. In August 2011, the Court asked the United States to join in the mediation of the lawsuit. On March 5, 2012. The United States, the six student plaintiffs, and the District filed a Consent Decree, which was entered by the Court on March 6, 2012. Also on March 5, 2012, the three parties filed a Joint Motion to Approve the Proposed Consent Decree and a Memorandum of Law in Support of the Joint Motion to Approve the Proposed Consent Decree, and the United States filed its Complaint-in-Intervention.

The Consent Decree requires the school district to retain an expert consultant in the area of sex-based harassment to review the district's policies and procedures concerning harassment; develop and implement a comprehensive plan for preventing and addressing student-on-student sex-based harassment at the middle and high schools; enhance and improve its training of faculty, staff and students on sex-based harassment; hire or appoint a Title IX coordinator to ensure proper implementation of the district's sex-based harassment policies and procedures and district compliance with Title IX; retain an expert consultant in the area of mental health to address the needs of students who are victims of harassment; provide for other opportunities for student involvement and input into the district's ongoing anti-harassment efforts; improve its system for maintaining records of investigations and responding to allegations of harassment; conduct ongoing monitoring and evaluation of its anti-harassment efforts; and submit annual compliance reports to the departments during the five year life of the Consent Decree. For more information on the Consent Decree, please see this press release.

In 2008, the U.S. Department of Justice began investigating Colorado Springs' Falcon School District 49 in response to complaints that the District was not adequately responding to incidents of racial harassment and discrimination in its schools. On January 25, 2010, the parties executed a settlement agreement to resolve the United States' concerns. A modified settlement agreement designed to address the District's non-compliance with the parties' original settlement agreement was executed on October 14, 2014. The modified settlement agreement requires the District to adequately address incidents of racial harassment by keeping adequate records, analyzing those records, training teachers and students, and providing appropriate disciplinary responses. For more information on this settlement, please see this press release and agreement.

On November 12, 2020, the Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington entered into a Settlement Agreement with Federal Way Public Schools in Federal Way, Washington to resolve an investigation into allegations of peer-on-peer harassment on the basis of religion and national origin between 2014 and 2018, and that the District failed to properly communicate with parents and guardians who are not English language proficient. The Department initiated its investigation under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in response to complaints by parents alleging their children had been subjected to severe and pervasive religion- and national-origin-based harassment that went unaddressed by the District. The complaints alleged that other students repeatedly called Muslim students “terrorists,” pulled off their hijabs, and physically assaulted them, and told a Latina student to “Go back to Mexico,” threatened to kill her, and physically assaulted her. The Department also investigated complaints that the District failed to properly communicate with parents and guardians with English language barriers as required by the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974. Under the Agreement, the District will take proactive steps to improve its ability to prevent and appropriately respond to peer-on-peer harassment based on religion and national origin. Those steps include retaining consultants to provide technical assistance to support a review of the District’s harassment policies, practices, and procedures, as well as the District’s training on and implementation of protocols for such policies. The Agreement also requires the District to work with the consultants to assess its resources and build capacity at individual schools and at the District level to ensure that antiharassment policies are properly implemented. The District will also provide training for students and faculty, and will survey the educational environment and effectiveness of measures taken pursuant to the Agreement. Lastly, the District will ensure that it communicates essential school-related information in a language that parents and guardians with limited English proficiency understand so that their children can access the District’s educational programs. The Section will monitor compliance with this three-year agreement. For more information, please see this press release and Extension Agreement.

On February 6, 2013, the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona approved a Unitary Status Plan ("USP") filed by the Department of Justice, together with private plaintiffs and the Tucson Unified School District. The USP is the latest step in this longstanding desegregation case, originally filed in 1974. The United States intervened in the case in 1976. In 2012, after extensive negotiations, the parties jointly submitted the USP, a four-year plan requiring the District to undertake a robust set of measures to desegregate its schools. The USP touches on nearly every aspect of school operations and lays a strong foundation for a high quality educational environment for all students. For more information, please see this press release.

On December 1, 2021, the Section entered into a settlement agreement with the Frederick County Public School District in Maryland to address the discriminatory use of seclusion and restraint against students with disabilities. The agreement followed an investigation conducted under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into complaints that the school district inappropriately secluded and restrained children enrolled in the district’s specialized programs for students with autism and emotional and behavioral disabilities. Under the settlement agreement, the school district will take proactive steps to ensure that its practices do not discriminate against students with disabilities. The district will, among other things: prohibit the use of seclusion; report all instances of restraint and evaluate whether they were justified; designate trained staff to collect and analyze restraint data and oversee the creation of appropriate behavior intervention plans; deliver appropriate training and resources to help schools implement the agreement; design and implement procedures for handling complaints about restraint; offer counseling and compensatory education services to students with disabilities who were subjected to the district’s discriminatory practices; and hire an administrator to supervise school-based staff and ensure the district’s compliance with the agreement and Title II of the ADA. For more information, please see this letter, press release, and summary of the agreement.

On June 24, 2024, the Section entered into a settlement agreement with Fulton County Schools following an investigation into the district’s response to an escalating series of student-on-student sexual assaults on a school bus serving students with special needs. The agreement followed an investigation conducted under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974. The investigation found that the school district’s policies and practices failed to ensure equal access to its educational programs based on sex, disability, and national origin/English Learner status. Under the settlement agreement, the district will, among other steps: revise its policies for responding to complaints of student-on-student sexual misconduct; provide appropriate district personnel with trainings on student-on-student sexual misconduct, including the vulnerabilities unique to students with disabilities; ensure it provides students with disabilities the accommodations they need to participate in the district’s educational programs; and ensure that appropriate language assistance services are available to Limited English Proficient parents and guardians. The United States will monitor compliance with the terms of the agreement. For more information, please see this press release in English and Spanish.

In this matter involving the Ganado Unified School District in Arizona, the Section conducted a review to determine whether the district was providing appropriate services to English Language Learner (“ELL”) students as required by the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA), 20 U.S.C. §1703(f). On February 18, 2014, the Section and the district entered into an out-of-court settlement agreement to resolve the district’s noncompliance with the EEOA. The agreement requires the district to: improve language acquisition instruction to ELL students; conduct significant training for staff and teachers of ELL students; provide adequate materials to support their acquisition of English and academic content; monitor ELL students who opt out of ELL services and after they exit such services to ensure they are participating equally in instructional programs; and evaluate the effectiveness of the ELL program. The training-related remedies require teachers to facilitate ELL students’ access to the grade-level core content curriculum by using appropriate instructional strategies and providing a culturally responsive learning environment. For more information, please see this press release.

The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) partnered with the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division - Educational Opportunities Section (DOJ) to initiate a compliance review of the Gallup-McKinley County School District (District). The purpose of the review was to determine whether the District discriminated against Native Americans by excluding them from college and career readiness programs and courses, such as Gifted and Talented (GATE), Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and honors courses. We also evaluated whether the District discriminated against Native American parents by failing to ensure meaningful access to the information surrounding the aforementioned programs and courses.

On June 16, 2017, the District entered into a Resolution Agreement to address OCR and the DOJ’s concerns. As part of the Agreement, the District agreed to (i) retain a consultant to examine and make recommendations to address the underrepresentation of Native American students in the college and career readiness programs and courses; (ii) improve outreach to the Native American community to ensure that Native American students and their parents are timely informed about the various college and career readiness programs and courses, including the application and admission processes and procedures; (iii) review and revise its practices and procedures for identifying and recommending students to college and career readiness programs and courses; (iv) provide mandatory training to teachers involved in the identification or referral of students to the college and career readiness programs and courses; (v) increase the number of college and career readiness programs and courses offered in its high schools; (vi) monitor the academic performance of students enrolled in the college and career readiness programs and courses, providing academic support where necessary; and (vii) provide language assistance, including translation services, for limited English proficient parents/guardians.

On January 4, 2001, the court approved a five-year consent decree negotiated by the parties to eliminate further the vestiges of segregation in the Tennessee system of public higher education. Under this consent decree, the State committed to creating new high-demand programs at TSU, particularly at the downtown campus (the former UT-N site), to appeal in particular to nontraditional students. Other efforts included revitalization of the downtown TSU campus, an increase in system-wide efforts to recruit black undergraduate students, and the creation and funding of a TSU endowment for educational excellence. In an order dated September 21, 2006, the court recognized the parties' efforts and achievements in the case in establishing a unitary system of public higher education in Tennessee, and approved the parties' joint motion for a final order of dismissal and terminated this longstanding litigation.

The Department of Justice and the Department of Education filed a statement of interest on June 29, 2015 with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board. In this case, the plaintiff, a transgender boy, alleges that the Gloucester County School Board unlawfully discriminated against him and denied him equal treatment and benefits based on his sex when it passed a policy that prohibited transgender students from using facilities matching their gender identity. The plaintiff, represented by the A.C.L.U., asked the court for a Preliminary Injunction to permit him to use the boys’ restrooms the beginning of next school year. In the statement of interest, the departments advised the court that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination against students because of their sex, including on the basis of a student's gender identity, transgender status, and nonconformity to sex stereotypes. The departments also stated that a sex-stereotyping claim can be based on an individual’s anatomical features, as well as behavior and appearance. The departments concluded that the plaintiff's Motion for a Preliminary Injunction had a likelihood of success on the merits under Title IX and that granting the relief would serve the public interest.

On June 10, 2024, the Department entered into a settlement agreement with Hawkins County Schools in eastern Tennessee in response to complaints of racial harassment and discrimination targeting Black students. The agreement resolved an investigation conducted jointly with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee under Titles IV and VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The investigation focused on whether the school district insufficiently responded to the race-based harassment. Under the settlement agreement, the school district will take proactive steps to ensure it properly responds to complaints of harassment and monitors and addresses any racially hostile environment. The district will, among other steps: retain a consultant to support agreement implementation and creation of a discrimination-free learning environment for all; create a new electronic reporting portal; update its racial harassment and school discipline policies; train staff on identifying, investigating, and responding to complaints of racial harassment and discriminatory discipline practices; inform students and parents of how to report harassment and discrimination; conduct listening sessions, school climate surveys, training, and educational events on identifying and preventing race discrimination; and analyze discipline data and amend policies to ensure non-discriminatory enforcement of discipline policies. For more information, please see this findings letter and press release.

A sixth-grade student who practiced Islam wore her hijab, a religious head covering, for several weeks at the beginning of the 2003-04 school year in the Muskogee Public School District. On September 11, 2003, school officials told the sixth-grader that she could no longer wear her hijab because of the “no hats” policy in the school’s dress code. The dress code, however, had not been applied consistently, and the school district had allowed students to wear hats for medical, educational, and other secular purposes. When the sixth-grader refused to remove her hijab, she was suspended for eight days.

In October 2003, the student, through her father, sued the school district for alleged violations of her constitutional rights and Oklahoma law. The United States opened an investigation in November 2003, and then intervened in the lawsuit upon finding evidence to support a claim based on the denial of her rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. On May 6, 2004, the United States filed a motion for summary judgment and an accompanying memorandum in support.

On May 20, 2004, the parties negotiated a consent order. Under the six-year consent order, the school district must: allow the plaintiff to wear her hijab; make similar religious accommodations for any other student in the school system who has a bona fide religious objection to the dress code; implement a training program for all teachers and administrators regarding the revised dress code; and publicize the revisions to students and parents. The district also must certify its compliance with the terms of the order to the United States for a four-year period. The private plaintiffs and the school district also negotiated a confidential damages settlement and the claim for expungement of her school records. For more on this settlement, please see the press release linked here.

In this matter involving the Horry County Schools, the Section examined whether South Carolina’s third-largest public school district was providing appropriate services to its rapidly growing population of English Learner (“EL”) students, as required by the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (“EEOA”). On August 24, 2017, the Section and the district entered into an out-of-court settlement agreement outlining the steps that the district would take to resolve the issues identified by the United States and ensure compliance with Section 1703(f) of the EEOA. Among other things, the agreement required the district to: properly identify and place EL students when they enroll in school; provide adequate language services to all EL students, including those with disabilities, so that they can become proficient in English and access grade-level core content instruction; secure enough teachers certified in English as a Second Language to serve all EL students; adequately train the administrators and teachers who implement the EL program; monitor the academic performance of current and former EL students; and evaluate the effectiveness of the EL program over time. The agreement required the district to regularly report to the Section on the agreement’s implementation; the agreement was terminated December 2023.

In a long-standing desegregation case, the Huntsville City Schools proposed plans for construction to replace or expand several schools. Following negotiations, the United States agreed not to oppose the district's proposed motion for approval of school construction plan, which the district submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. The court approved the plan on May 20, 2013. On April 21, 2015, the court issued an opinion setting forth its reasons for approving a consent order jointly filed by the United States and the Huntsville City Schools. The consent order revises attendance zones and strengthens magnet offerings across the school district; expands access to pre-K, gifted programs, advanced course offerings, academic after-school programs, and college counseling; and includes comprehensive remedies to address racial discrimination in student discipline, among other areas.

On August 28, 2023, the Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas entered into a Settlement Agreement with Highland Community College in Kansas to resolve an investigation into allegations it discriminated against Black students—primarily Black student-athletes—on the basis of race in the administration of its discipline, housing and campus security policies and procedures, and its response to complaints of racial discrimination. The investigation was conducted under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Under the settlement, the college will strengthen its policies and procedures to ensure an effective response to students’ complaints of racial discrimination and clarify campus security policies, procedures, and training to promote consistent, non-discriminatory interactions between security personnel and students. The college will, among other steps, train relevant staff on how to respond to and resolve allegations of discrimination; promote fair and equitable application of discipline policies and analyze discipline data to ensure non-discrimination; train campus security and other staff on effective de-escalation techniques and non-coercive methods of gathering information; survey and improve the climate and culture of the college’s main campus and cultivate safe, welcoming spaces for Black students; and ensure students’ equitable access to the college’s education programs and activities regardless of race. For more information, please see the cover letter to the agreement and press release.

On November 22, 2022, the Section entered into a settlement agreement with Illinois Central College in Peoria, Illinois, to ensure that students with disabilities have access to the College’s programs, and to address concerns related to the College’s process for investigating complaints of disability discrimination. The agreement followed an investigation conducted under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) based on allegations that a student with a hearing disability was denied access to the College’s theatre program, and that the College failed to adequately investigate the student’s complaint. Under the settlement agreement, the College will update its investigation process to ensure that student complaints of disability discrimination are handled in a fair and timely manner. In addition, the College will train the managers and staff involved in investigations, as well as staff in the College’s theatre department, on the new complaint investigation procedures and the requirements of the ADA. Finally, the College will appoint an ADA Coordinator charged with overseeing implementation of the revised processes and compliance with Title II of the ADA.

In this matter involving the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), the Section conducted a review to determine whether ISBE was providing appropriate guidance and monitoring of school districts' services to English Language Learner ("ELL") students as required by the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA). The Section determined that ISBE was violating the EEOA because its administrative rules and guidance did not ensure that districts serve ELL students beyond the three-year requirement under State law for transitional bilingual education (TBE) and transitional program of instruction (TPI) services. Although ISBE denied violating the EEOA, it agreed to revise its administrative rules and guidance to make clear that ELLs must receive services until they achieve English proficiency on the State's mandated test. The amended rules were approved by ISBE on June 24, 2010, were cleared by the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules on July 13, 2010, and will take effect once filed with the Illinois Secretary of State. See press release. The amended rules require school districts that terminate TBE and TPI services at year three to submit to ISBE a plan explaining the ELL services to be provided beyond year three, the staff providing such services, and the resources available to implement those services. ISBE also agreed to monitor these plans to determine if they are sufficient and appropriately implemented. ISBE further agreed that it will issue guidance identifying educationally sound ELL services that could be provided in lieu of TBE and TPI services after year three. ISBE released this guidance in March 2011. Pursuant to the agreement between the Department and ISBE, ISBE will apply the amended rules and this guidance when monitoring districts' ELL programs.

Following negotiations, the parties agreed to a consent order, which the court approved on July 14, 2000. The order required the district to take steps to increase African-American student participation in its gifted program and its advanced classes. To decrease the number of African-American students in resource classes, the order also required the district to annually evaluate students in resource classes to determine if placement in a regular class would be more appropriate. The JISD provided three reports in conjunction with its requirements under the order, as well as supplemental reports requested by the Section. On October 16, 2001, the parties agreed to, and the court signed, an agreed order of dismissal, indicating that the JISD had achieved unitary states in all facets of its operations.

In September 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights began investigating the Jefferson Parish Public School System ("JPPSS") after the Departments received several complaints alleging violations of federal civil rights laws. Specifically, the complaints concerned JPPSS's policies and practices for student registration, enrollment, and graduation; JPPSS's policies and practices for communicating with national origin minority parents who have limited English proficiency; and JPPSS's response to alleged harassment of Latino students based on their national origin. After requesting and reviewing documents and information provided by JPPSS, the Departments visited Jefferson Parish and interviewed many administrators, faculty, and students in May 2013. At the conclusion of the Departments' visit, JPPSS voluntarily agreed to resolve the investigation by entering into an agreement that includes school-specific and parish-wide remedial measures to address the United States' concerns.

The agreement, signed by the parties on July 9, 2014, will ensure that all students who reside in Jefferson Parish can enroll in school regardless of their or their parents' national origin or immigration status. The agreement also requires JPPSS to review and revise its policies and practices for communicating with national origin essential parents who have limited English proficiency to make sure that parents receive important information in a language they can understand. Additionally, JPPSS will review and revise its policies and practices to ensure that all complaints alleging discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin, including allegations of harassment, are appropriately investigated and resolved.

For more information, please see this press release and the full agreement available in English and Spanish.

On January 14, 2010, in the Northern District of New York, the Section moved to intervene in J.L. v. Mohawk Central School District. The lawsuit was filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of J.L., a 15-year-old student in the District. J.L. alleged that the District violated state and federal laws including the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, both of which prohibit discrimination based on sex, including discrimination based on failure to conform to gender stereotypes. According to the United States' motion, J.L. failed to conform to gender stereotypes in both behavior and appearance. He exhibited feminine mannerisms, dyed his hair wore makeup and nail polish, and maintained predominantly female friendships. The alleged severe and pervasive student-on-student harassment based on sex escalated from derogatory name-calling to physical threats and violence. The United States further alleged that the District had knowledge of the harassment, but was deliberately indifferent in its failure to take timely, corrective action, and that the deliberate indifference restricted J.L.'s ability to fully enjoy the educational opportunities of his school. The District denied all allegations. Prior to the court ruling on the United States' intervention motion, an out-of-court settlement was reached among J.L., the District, and the United States. The court approved the settlement agreement on March 29, 2010. The agreement requires the District to (1) retain an expert consultant in the area of harassment and discrimination based on sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation to review the District's policies and procedures; (2) develop and implement a comprehensive plan for disseminating the District's harassment and discrimination policies and procedures; (3) retain an expert consultant to conduct annual training for faculty and staff, and students as deemed appropriate by the expert, on discrimination and harassment based on sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation; (4) maintain records of investigations and responses to allegations of harassment for five years; and (5) provide annual compliance reports to the United States and private plaintiffs. Lastly, $50,000.00 will be paid to J.L. and $25,000.00 in attorneys' fees will be paid to the New York Civil Liberties Foundation.

On May 5, 2006, Junior Does filed a complaint against the Allentown School District alleging that, as six- and seven-year-old students, they were sexually assaulted by another student in the bathrooms at Central Elementary School during the 2003-2004 school year. On April 21, 2009, Junior Does amended their complaint to include a sex discrimination claim pursuant to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. § 1681, and on July 10, 2009, the Division intervened. On August 3, 2011, Junior Does again amended their complaint to include allegations that a fifth student was sexually assaulted, adding another minor plaintiff as a party.

In the case, the Division alleged the following: that sexual assaults occurred on at least five separate occasions; that the district was made aware of each incident immediately after it occurred; and that despite this notice, the district did not take appropriate action, and in some circumstances took no action, to prevent the harassment from recurring. Furthermore, the department alleged that both before and after the sexual harassment of the students, the district failed to adopt and implement adequate and effective sexual harassment policies and procedure as required by federal law; had the district adopted and implemented such policies and procedures, the district would have prevented the continued sexual assault of students.

After extensive discovery, the Division and the school district negotiated a consent decree. The court approved the proposed consent decree on July 31, 2012. The consent decree provides for substantial systemic relief and requires the school district to take the following steps: develop and implement a comprehensive plan for addressing and preventing sexual harassment in all district schools; retain an expert consultant in the area of student-on-student harassment to draft and implement a sexual harassment policy and procedures; provide training to administrators, faculty, staff, students and parents on sex-based harassment; select qualified district and school-based equity coordinators to ensure proper implementation of the district's harassment policies and procedures and compliance with Title IX, including prompt investigation, resolution and reporting of sexual harassment complaints and allegations; create procedures for identifying, monitoring, and supervising students with a confirmed history of sexual harassment toward other students; develop and implement policies and procedures for communicating with outside agencies, such as police, hospital and child protection agencies, of allegations of sexual harassment in the district; and submit annual compliance reports to the Division.

On July 1, 2016, the Section and the United State Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas filed two statements of interest to assist the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas with evaluating the Title IX sexual assault claims in T.F. v. Kansas State University and S.W. v. Kansas State University. In these cases, the plaintiffs, both students of Kansas State University (K-State), allege that K-State discriminated against them on the basis of sex in violation of Title IX when K-State allegedly refused to respond to or investigate their reports of sexual assault by K-State students during parties hosted at and by fraternities recognized and supported by K-State. In the statements of interest responding to K-State’s motions to dismiss the plaintiffs’ Title IX claims, the United States advised the court that Title IX imposes an obligation on federally-funded schools to respond to reports of rape that occurred at off-campus school-recognized fraternity houses and events and to determine if a hostile educational environment exists in such school-recognized activities or other education programs or activities. The United States further argued that under the proper Title IX standards, Plaintiffs’ Title IX claims for damages and equitable relief should be allowed to proceed. On March 14, 2017, after considering the parties pleadings and the United States’ statements of interest, the court denied K-State’s motions to dismiss the plaintiffs’ Title IX claims, holding that both plaintiffs had alleged the elements required to state a plausible Title IX harassment claim. Specifically, the court held that the plaintiffs plausibly alleged that K-State had substantial control over the alleged assailants and the context of the assaults, which were so severe as to deny plaintiffs access to educational benefits and opportunities, and that K-State’s alleged deliberate indifference to the plaintiffs’ reports of rape made them “liable or vulnerable” to further harassment or assault.

In this case, formerly known as Lau v. Nichols, the United States Supreme Court held that the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) had violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d, and its implementing regulations by failing to provide special programs designed to rectify the English language deficiencies of students who do not speak or understand English, or are of limited English-speaking ability, and by failing to provide these students with equal access to the instructional program. Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563 (1974). The Supreme Court remanded the case for the fashioning of appropriate relief. On October 22, 1976, the parties entered into a Consent Decree that incorporated a Master Plan that requires bilingual-bicultural education for the English Language Learner (ELL) students who speak Chinese, Filipino, and Spanish. Chinese and Spanish bilingual programs continue subsequent to the passage of California's Proposition 227. The Consent Decree also requires the provision of other special programs and English as a Second Language (ESL) for ELL students of other language groups, as well as the provision of bilingual instruction, whenever feasible. The Consent Decree calls for annual reporting to the Court by the SFUSD regarding its ELL programs and the establishment of a Bilingual Community Council (BCC) to assist the SFUSD in filing these annual reports.

On August 24, 2006, the Court issued an order requiring the parties to show cause why the Court should not relieve the SFUSD of responsibility for reporting under the extant Consent Decree. The United States filed a response to the show cause order that identified problems with the ELL programs and recommended continued reporting by the SFUSD, additional on-site visits of the ELL programs, and the development of an updated Master Plan for ELL programs. The SFUSD and the private plaintiffs filed responses agreeing to this approach for going forward. The Court continued the reporting obligations and assigned the case to an active judge. On May 1, 2007, the new judge held a status conference in which he agreed to let the parties continue their school visits and work collaboratively on developing an updated Master Plan. The United States' consultant and members of the BCC completed visits to twenty-four schools on May 18, 2007. The parties agreed to a new Master Plan that would replace the outdated plan and filed a stipulated application to modify the 1976 Consent Decree. On September 11, 2008, the Court approved the new Master Plan and entered an order modifying the 1976 Consent Decree.

The United States and the Private Plaintiffs then monitored SFUSD's implementation of the 2008 Master Plan through the District's annual reports, regular site visits, community meetings, and communications with parents and students. To resolve the United States' and Private Plaintiff's consistent concerns about SFUSD's compliance, the parties negotiated a Modified Consent Decree (MCD). On June 24, 2015, the parties jointly filed a motion and supporting memo seeking court approval of the MCD. The MCD, approved by the court on June 29, 2015, requires SFUSD to, among other things: promptly identify, assess, and place EL students in effective EL programs; offer a range of EL programs and services to meet the needs of all EL students, including newcomers, students with disabilities, and long-term EL students; expand translation and interpretation services for LEP families; adequately train employees who serve EL students so that they can fulfill their roles; and conduct robust monitoring. The MCD also protects the educational rights of the district's most at-risk and vulnerable EL students who are learning in alternative education or juvenile justice settings. If SFUSD implements the MCD fully and in good faith, the MCD and this historic case are expected to end in the fall of 2018. For more information about the MCD, please see the June 24, 2015 press release. Translated copies of the MCD are linked here in Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Filipino, and Arabic.

This statewide settlement resolved issues relating to the overrepresentation of black students in the mental retardation and emotional disturbance special education classifications and the underrepresentation of black students in the specific learning disabilities and gifted and talented special education classifications. This consent decree, approved by the court on August 30, 2000, involves special education issues that were raised as a result of information gathered during unitary status reviews in eleven desegregation cases pending before the United States District Court in the Middle District of Alabama. Parties to the decree include the United States, private plaintiffs, and the Alabama State Department of Education.

The settlement required the State of Alabama to undertake initiatives in providing teacher training, to establish a program to improve reading achievement, and to make changes to Alabama administrative law in the areas of pre-referral, referral, evaluation procedures, and eligibility criteria. This emphasis on pre-referral intervention services resulted in substantial changes over the six years of implementing the consent decree. There have been significant reductions in racial disparities in the special education classifications of mental retardation (MR), and disparities have been virtually eliminated in the classifications of emotional disturbance (ED) and specific learning disabilities (SLD). There also has been an overall decrease in the number of students classified as MR or ED, and increases in students classified as SLD. The number of black students classified as gifted also has increased.

The settlement also required reevaluation of certain categories of minority students who had been identified as MR. As a result, several hundred students who had been inappropriately placed as MR were exited from special education. These students were provided with appropriate supplemental services to help transition successfully into the general education program, and were carefully monitored during this process.

On February 12, 2015, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama approved a consent order filed by the Justice Department, together with private plaintiffs and the Calhoun County, Alabama School District, in this longstanding desegregation case. The order found that the district has met its desegregation obligations in certain areas and providing for additional, comprehensive relief in the areas of faculty and staff hiring and recruitment and student discipline and school climate.

In approving the consent order, the district court declared that the 9,200-student school district has eliminated the vestiges of prior segregation in the areas of student assignment, extracurricular activities, school facilities, and transportation, thereby ending the court's supervision in those areas. The order requires the district to take additional steps to reach full compliance, including adopting measures to promote racial diversity in its faculty and staff, expanding its use of positive behavioral supports and interventions throughout its schools, and revising its student discipline policies and procedures to ensure they are fair, non-discriminatory, and limit the use of exclusionary discipline such as suspensions and expulsions.

In this school desegregation case, the parties entered into a consent decree, which provided for the closure of two K-12 schools and the consolidation of the students into two central school zones. One of the K-12 schools to be closed had a virtually all-white student body and had never graduated a black student. The day after the decree was filed, the school board voted to rescind its consent. The Section filed a motion to enforce the consent decree, arguing that once the board had given its consent, granted authority to counsel to sign on its behalf, and jointly filed the consent decree, the board was bound by the terms of the consent decree.

At the same time, two groups moved to intervene in the case for the purpose of opposing the consent decree. The groups comprised parents, students, and other citizens from each of the two schools scheduled for closure. The Section filed briefs opposing both motions for intervention – one against the Mellow Valley School intervenors and one against the Bibb Graves School intervenors – arguing that the proposed intervenors did not express a cognizable interest in furthering desegregation, and, even if they had, the United States and private plaintiffs adequately represented any such interest.

On May 13, 2003, the district court accepted all of the Section's arguments and entered an order (1) denying the Board's motion to rescind its consent, (2) denying both motions to intervene, and (3) enforcing the consent decree. The parties worked to implement the consent decree, and the two schools were successfully closed prior to the beginning of the 2003-04 school year. The two groups of unsuccessful intervenors appealed to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which ultimately dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.

In this matter involving the Lewiston, Maine school district, the United States reviewed whether the district was providing appropriate instruction and services to English Language Learners (ELLs)–particularly among the district’s large population of Somalian refugees–as required by the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA). On June 4, 2007, the school district and the United States entered into a settlement agreement outlining the measures that the school district will take to ensure its compliance with the EEOA. The agreement requires the district to develop, among other things: standardized curricula for ELLs; adequate teacher training and collaborative opportunities; systematic monitoring and reporting on the academic progress of ELLs; and a comprehensive ELL program evaluation model.

The Section investigated complaints about whether (i) the Lewiston Public School District’s shortening school days for students with disabilities by placing them on an “abbreviated” school day schedule violated Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and (ii) the District’s English Learner (EL) programs and practices complied with Section 1703(f) of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA). The investigation found that the District routinely shortened school days for students with disabilities because of behavior related to their disabilities without considering their individual needs or testing alternative interventions or supports to keep students in school for the full day. The investigation further revealed that the District failed to provide EL students with the instruction and support needed to become proficient in English and participate equally in school. On May 27, 2021, the District and the United States entered into an out-of-court settlement agreement to resolve the compliance issues identified by the United States, including: ensuring students with disabilities receive supports they need to remain in school for the full day; developing policies and procedures for non-discriminatory abbreviated school day placements; and ensuring that all special education personnel, school counselors, and school psychologists receive training on appropriately responding to disability-related behaviors. The agreement also requires the District to provide English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction to all of its EL students and targeted programming for those ELs with limited or interrupted formal education; fully staff its EL programs with ESL-certified teachers; provide training to principals and teachers; communicate effectively with Limited English Proficient parents about school activities; and monitor the EL program over time to evaluate its efficacy. The agreement will remain in place for three school years. For more information, please see this press release in English, Somali, Swahili, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Translated versions of the agreement are also available in Somali, Swahili, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

This historic desegregation involving the St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) began in 1972. The Section continues to monitor the SPLS’s compliance with a 1999 Agreement that set forth requirements to ameliorate the effects of segregation through voluntary interdistrict transfers, remedial programs, school improvement and accountability, and the provision of funds from the state to the SLPS. This Agreement has been consensually modified by new orders and agreements in recent years, including a 2011 agreement that allowed for the use of desegregation funds for specific programs, such as magnet school transportation, principal leadership training, early childhood, and enhanced computing and technology in the SLPS. Section 10 of the 1999 Agreement set aside funds for “construction and site acquisition costs to accommodate any reasonable anticipated net enrollment increase caused by any reduction or elimination of the voluntary transfer plan.” 1999 Agreement, Section 10, at 12. While the parties anticipated in 1999 that the voluntary transfer program would continue for a number of years, Section 10 was designed to provide for SLPS’ capital needs if the transfer program ended and numerous students returned at one time to the SLPS. Over the years, however, the assumptions underlying creation of the Section 10 fund did not come to pass, primarily as a result of population declines, the advent of charter schools, and the ongoing commitment by both city and county schools to the voluntary transfer program. Accordingly, in 2013, the court approved the parties’ agreement to allow the use of certain remedial funds set aside in the desegregation account to provide continued funding for the St. Louis Community Monitoring and Support Task Force.

On July 30, 2007, Kimberly Lopez filed a complaint against the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County (“Metro”) alleging her son was sexually assaulted by another student while riding a special education school bus operated by Metro. On April 30, 2008, Plaintiff amended her complaint to add a sex discrimination claim against Metro pursuant to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. § 1681. Recognizing the United States’ substantial interest in ensuring recipients of federal funds do not discriminate on the basis of sex in violation of Title IX, the Court issued an order granting the United States Motion to Intervene and permitting the United States to file its complaint in intervention. In January 2009, the United States moved for summary judgment, and subsequently opposed Metro’s cross-motion for summary judgment on Plaintiffs’ Title IX claim and submitted a reply brief in support of its own motion. On July 7, 2009, the Court issued a memorandum opinion denying the parties' cross-motions for summary judgment but adopting the Section’s interpretation of Title IX in numerous key respects. On February 8, 2010, the parties entered into a consent decree that obligates the Nashville Public School District to take substantial steps to enhance the security of students with disabilities on its public school transportation system. These steps include staffing bus monitors to assist drivers on all special education buses; implementing comprehensive screening procedures to ensure that students with disabilities are not assigned to buses where they would be at risk of harassment; expediting the investigation of suspected acts of sexual harassment involving students with disabilities; and ensuring open lines of communication between transportation officials and school-based personnel. Metro also agreed to pay Plaintiff $1.475 million as part of the settlement.

The Section intervened in this same-sex peer harassment case alleging the school district violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by failing to respond appropriately to harassment of a student on the basis of sex. Specifically, the Section alleged in our complaint-in-intervention : from the eighth grade through the eleventh grade, Jeremy Lovins was subjected to harassment on the basis of sex (ostensibly because other students believed he was gay); Jeremy and his parents repeatedly informed school officials of the harassment but the harassment continued; and Jeremy was eventually subjected to an assault and forced to leave school because of the harassment. On July 31, 2000, the Court entered a consent decree settling the case

The consent decree included monetary relief for Mr. Lovins in the amount of $72,500 and injunctive relief. Under the consent decree, the school district agreed, among other things: to conduct a climate assessment of student-to-student and teacher-to-student relations within its schools; to develop a comprehensive plan to identify, prevent, and remedy harassment and discrimination on the basis of sex and sexual orientation; to educate and train teachers, staff, and students about the operation of the policy and procedures; to maintain written records of complaints and investigations; and to file implementation reports with the Section and the court.

The two plaintiffs alleged, among other things, that the Sullivan County Board of Education (SCBE) violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by failing to appropriately address known student-on-student harassment on the basis of race. Specifically, plaintiffs' amended complaint alleges that both Michael and Marquita Madison, who are black, were subjected to ongoing racial harassment while attending Sullivan East High School (East). This harassment included a constant barrage of racial slurs, some made within earshot of teachers, racially derogatory graffiti on walls and desks, and racially offensive paraphernalia. Though school officials knew or should have known of the harassment, they failed to take appropriate steps to address it. Marquita eventually transferred to another school after her sophomore year. Michael fell victim to a racially-motivated assault outside the school cafeteria his junior year. He did not return to East after the assault and finished high school on homebound studies.

The Section filed its complaint-in-intervention, motion to intervene, and supporting memorandum in November 2000. In our complaint-in-intervention, we sought monetary relief for the plaintiffs and injunctive relief, such as policies and procedures to prevent or address such harassment in the future. The court granted the Section's intervention on November 28, 2000. The parties conducted discovery in 2001 and early 2002. Following discovery, the parties negotiated a consent order and monetary settlement of the Title VI and equal protection claims. Under the consent order, which was approved by the Court on October 16, 2002, the school system agreed to retain an expert to develop a comprehensive plan to prevent, identify, and remedy harassment and discrimination; provide an education and training program for teachers, staff, and students about the school district's policies prohibiting harassment and discrimination; and maintain written records of each harassment allegation received, investigation conducted and corrective action taken by the district to ensure a consistent and effective review of allegations. For more details about the settlement, please see the press release linked here.

On June 12, 2023, the Section entered into a settlement agreement with the Madison County School District to address complaints of race-based harassment in its schools. The agreement followed an investigation conducted under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, based on allegations that the school district denied students equal protection of the laws based on their race. Under the settlement agreement, the school district will undertake significant institutional reforms. The district will, among other steps: revise its anti-discrimination policies and procedures; create three new central office positions to oversee effective handling of complaints of race discrimination; update its racial harassment and discipline policies to more accurately track and consistently respond to complaints of race-based harassment; train staff on how to identify, investigate, and respond to complaints of racial harassment and discriminatory discipline practices; inform students and parents of how to report harassment and discrimination; update its centralized, electronic reporting system to track and manage complaints and the district’s response to complaints; implement focus groups, conduct surveys, training and educational events on identifying and preventing race discrimination, including discriminatory harassment; and analyze and review its discipline data and amend its policies to ensure non-discriminatory enforcement of discipline policies. For more information, please see this letter to the District and press release.

In this matter involving the Martin Luther King, Jr. Charter School of Excellence (“the School”), the Section and the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts examined whether the School was adequately serving its English Learner (EL) students, including EL students with disabilities, as required by Section 1703(f) of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (“EEOA”). On March 10, 2020, the School and the United States entered into an out-of-court settlement agreement to address the issues identified by the United States and ensure the School’s compliance with Section 1703(f) of the EEOA. Among other things, the agreement requires the School to: provide all EL students – who make up nearly a quarter of the School’s population – with an adequate amount of daily English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction taught by an ESL-certified teacher; actively recruit qualified, certified staff for ESL, core content area, and special education teaching positions; ensure all ELs with disabilities receive both ESL and special education services unless their parents/guardians voluntarily and knowingly waive one or both services; train special education and ESL-certified teachers who work with EL students with disabilities on how to provide services to ELs with disabilities; communicate with Limited English Proficient parents about essential school information in a language they understand; and properly monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of its EL program over time. The parties anticipate that the agreement will remain in place through the end of the 2021-22 school year.

Private plaintiffs filed this school desegregation case in 1965; the United States intervened later that year. On July 31, 1969, the Court approved the District's 1969-70 Revised Desegregation Plan, which was subsequently modified with the court's approval in 1970, 1971, 1973, 1975, and 1978. In 2007, the United States initiated a review of the District's compliance with the court's desegregation orders and applicable federal law. This review resulted in the filing of negotiated consent order, which was approved by the court on February 5, 2009. On July 27, 2012, the parties filed another motion for approval of a negotiated consent order, which was granted on August 21, 2012. On July 3, 2013, the parties filed another motion for approval of a negotiated consent order, which was granted on July 12, 2013. The consent order requires the district to close four of its seven elementary schools, including three racially identifiable schools; construct a new school; modify its attendance zones; and implement a controlled choice program at two of its elementary schools. The consent order also will require the district to continue certain intra-district transfers that have the effect of furthering the desegregation of the district's schools. On March 5, 2014, the court approved amendments to the July 12, 2013 consent order, which extended the timeline for implementing the elementary desegregation plan and established monitoring and reporting requirements sought by the United States. On October 11, 2023, the court declared the district had met its desegregation obligations in several areas of operations, including staff assignment, facilities, transportation and extracurricular activities, and approved a negotiated consent decree that requires the district to take measures to desegregate its gifted program and advanced and dual enrollment courses. The consent order also requires the district to implement changes to its student discipline policies designed to reduce racial disparities in discipline and eliminate the use of corporal punishment.

In this matter involving the Mercer County School District in West Virginia, the Section conducted a review to determine whether the district was providing appropriate services to English Language Learner ("ELL") students as required by the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 ("EEOA"). After determining that the school district was not complying with Section 1703(f) of the EEOA, the United States entered into a settlement agreement with the school district on January 31, 2012. This agreement addressed, among other things, the school district's obligations to: timely identify and assess all students with a primary or home language other than English; serve ELLs with appropriate instruction; provide adequate teacher training; and carefully monitor the academic progress of current and former ELLs.

On September 26, 2016, the Division filed a Statement of Interest to assist the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida in evaluating the plaintiffs’ claims under Title VI, its implementing regulations, and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act (EEOA) in Methelus v. School Board of Collier County. The plaintiffs filed on behalf of their newly-arrived, foreign-born English Language Learner (ELL) children ages 15-17, arguing that the Collier County School Board (Board) has violated the EEOA and Title VI by refusing to enroll these children in its regular high schools and diverting some to enroll in Adult English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) programs that charge a fee and do not earn credit toward a high school diploma. Among other claims, the plaintiffs alleged that the Board’s practices did not constitute “appropriate action to overcome language barriers” under Section 1703(f) of the EEOA and intentionally discriminated against these foreign-born, ELL children on the basis for their national origin in violation of Title VI. The Board moved to dismiss all of plaintiffs’ claims in their Amended Complaint. The United States’ Statement of Interest, filed in response to the motion to dismiss, sets forth the legal standards applicable to the claim under Section 1703(f) of the EEOA, including the Castaneda v. Pickard standards binding on the Florida federal court. The filing explains why under those standards the plaintiffs adequately pled facts supporting a plausible Section 1703(f) claim. The filing also sets forth the well-established Arlington Heights factors for evaluating intentional discrimination claims under Title VI, explaining how the plaintiffs’ factual allegations addressed many of these factors and sufficed to state a plausible Title VI claim.

On April 24, 2013, the Section entered into a settlement agreement with the Metropolitan School District of Decatur Township, Indiana to prevent and respond to peer-on-peer harassment in schools. The agreement resolved the Section's review of the district's policies and practices related to harassment and bullying, which was initiated in June 2011 after reports of possible racial harassment at a district school. The agreement requires the district to take a number of steps to prevent and address harassment based on race, color, national origin, sex, religion and disability, and to ensure a safe and supportive learning environment for all students. These steps include forming a district-wide anti-harassment task force to review and revise the district's policies and procedures related to harassment, bullying, and discipline; establishing a cohesive process for receiving, investigating and monitoring complaints of harassment and bullying, enabling the district to track repeated incidents involving individual students or groups targeted for their membership in a protected class; and providing training, professional development and school climate assessments for both students and staff at two of the district's schools. For more information, please see this press release.

On November 18, 1963, private plaintiffs filed this case complaining that the Gadsden City Board of Education was maintaining a segregated school system. On May 9, 1966, the Section intervened and joined the plaintiffs in seeking injunctive relief that would bring the school system into conformity with federal constitutional and statutory provisions.

Over the years, the court issued a series of orders aimed at eliminating the vestiges of past discrimination and completely desegregating the school system. In July 2003, the court approved the parties' proposed consent order that required the school district to take remedial actions in the areas of student assignment, personnel assignment, facilities, and quality of education. The consent order required the district to assign students randomly to classrooms and to enforce attendance zone lines strictly. With respect to personnel assignment, the consent order required the district to increase efforts to recruit minority teachers and to ensure that each school had a faculty whose racial diversity was reflective of the district-wide faculty. The consent order also required the district to make substantial improvements to its secondary schools so that these facilities were all of comparable quality. Finally, with respect to quality of education, the consent order required the district to equalize its offering of and access to advanced and honor classes among secondary schools. Having fulfilled these obligations, the district was declared unitary on August 26, 2005.

In this long-standing school desegregation case, the Jackson-Madison County School Board filed a motion for unitary status in December 1999, asserting that it had complied in good faith with prior desegregation decrees and had eliminated the vestiges of segregation to the extent practicable. The Section and the private plaintiffs opposed the board's motion for unitary status. The parties engaged in extensive negotiations, which resulted in an agreement shortly before trial in November 2000.

The agreement, which the court approved in December 2000, permits the board to proceed with its plan to construct five new schools and implement revised student attendance zones over the next four years. The agreement includes numerous measures that will further desegregation by voluntary means, including the construction of magnet schools and the introduction of other school choice options. The board is also required to take additional remedial action in faculty and staff assignments, and to encourage minority student participation in all programs and activities. Implementation and monitoring of the agreement is ongoing

Parents of students with disabilities who allege that their children were not properly identified, evaluated, and provided with special education services filed a class action lawsuit against the Newark Public Schools, the State of New Jersey, and several state officials. The lawsuit alleges that Newark does not have adequate systems in place to comply with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and that New Jersey has violated its obligation to supervise local implementation of IDEA requirements.

In its motion to dismiss, New Jersey raised a constitutional challenge to the IDEA, claiming that the Eleventh Amendment afforded it immunity against a private lawsuit to enforce the IDEA. The Section sought and was granted intervention to defend the constitutionality of the IDEA. In its brief, the Section argued that New Jersey had agreed to comply with the IDEA and waive its sovereign immunity when it accepted federal IDEA funds to defray the cost of educating students with disabilities. In the alternative, the Section argued that Congress validly abrogated state sovereign immunity pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court accepted both arguments and denied the State's motion to dismiss. The defendants appealed the denials of their motions to dismiss, and the Appellate Section defended the IDEA's constitutionality on appeal. On September 16, 2003, the Third Circuit issued an opinion affirming the district court's holding that the State of New Jersey had waived its sovereign immunity.

In this matter involving the Nashua School District (“the District”) in New Hampshire, the Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Hampshire investigated whether the District’s English Learner (EL) programs and practices complied with Section 1703(f) of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974. The investigation revealed that the District failed to provide EL students with the instruction and support they need to become proficient in English and participate equally in school. On May 24, 2021, the District and the United States entered into an out-of-court settlement agreement to resolve the District’s compliance issues identified by the United States. The agreement requires the District to provide English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction to all of its EL students, fully staff its EL programs with ESL-certified teachers, provide training to principals and core academic teachers of EL students, communicate effectively with Limited English Proficient parents about school activities, and monitor the EL program over time to evaluate its efficacy. The agreement will remain in place for three school years. For more information, please see this press release in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

The United States initiated this litigation against the Nettleton Line Consolidated School District on September 8, 1969, and the court subsequently approved consent decrees requiring the District to desegregate on December 8, 1969 and June 19, 1970. On August 8, 2011, following negotiations between the United States and the District, the court issued a consent order requiring the District to revise its policies and procedures and to terminate its race-based selection and election procedures for extracurricular activities (e.g., elections for class officers, homecoming court, and class superlatives). After the United States completed a review of the District’s operations and compliance with the Court’s orders, on September 2, 2020 the court approved an additional consent order. The 2020 Consent Order granted partial unitary status and found that the District had eliminated the vestiges of de jure segregation in the areas of student assignment, staff, extracurricular activities, and facilities. The 2020 Consent Order also required the District to complete more work to demonstrate that it has eliminated the vestiges of de jure segregation in the areas of faculty and transportation. Therefore, the 2020 Consent Order requires the District to take steps to (i) increase its recruitment of black applicants for teacher vacancies; (ii) conduct its hiring with the goal of eliminating any real or perceived racial barriers in hiring; (iii) retain qualified, black faculty members who are employed by the District; (iv) eliminate overlapping or duplicative bus routes; and (v) eliminate or reduce the number of racially identifiable bus routes or at least mitigate the disparities between the percentages of black and white students assigned to each racially identifiable bus. The District may file a motion with the court for full or partial dismissal of the case after three full school years of compliance with the relevant provisions of the 2020 Consent Order.

In this matter involving the Newark Public Schools (“the District”), the Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey examined whether the District’s English Learner (“EL”) programs and practices complied with Section 1703(f) of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (“EEOA”). The United States initiated its investigation in response to a complaint alleging that the District was failing to appropriately communicate with parents who have limited proficiency in English (“LEP parents”). In addition to corroborating the District’s LEP parent communications failures, the United States found that the District failed to hire and retain enough qualified teachers to support its program, resulting in limited instruction time for some students, and for others, no language services at all. On September 1, 2021, the District and the United States entered into an out-of-court settlement agreement to address the noncompliant conditions identified by the United States and ensure the District’s compliance with Section 1703(f) of the EEOA. Among other things, the agreement requires the District to: identify and place EL students appropriately when they enroll in school; provide adequate language services to all EL students, including those with disabilities, so that they can become proficient in English; and locate and re-offer services to EL students who were exited improperly from the District’s programs without achieving English proficiency. The agreement also requires the District to ensure that English as a Second Language (“ESL”) classes and bilingual classes are taught by ESL-certified and bilingual-endorsed teachers; adequately train the administrators and teachers who implement the District’s EL programs; ensure meaningful communication with LEP parents about District and school programs and activities; and evaluate the effectiveness of the EL programs over time. The parties anticipate that the agreement will remain in place for at least three school years until the District has fully complied with its obligations. Translations of the Agreement are available in Spanish, French, Haitian Creole, and Portuguese. For more information, please see press releases available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, and French.

On September 15, 2022, the United States entered into a settlement agreement with the district to resolve the Section’s investigation of the district’s English Learner (EL) programs and practices under the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA). The Section opened the investigation in 2020, after the U.S. Department of Justice received a complaint alleging that the district violated the EEOA by failing to communicate effectively with K’iche’-speaking Limited English Proficient parents and denying K’iche’-speaking EL students equal educational opportunities.

Through its investigation, the Section identified that the district: (1) failed to communicate adequately with Limited English Proficient parents, including K’iche’ speakers, about school-related programs and activities; (2) did not adequately train its faculty on providing appropriate services to its EL students, including training to address the specific needs of K’iche’ speakers to overcome language barriers; and (3) did not adequately evaluate its EL programs for effectiveness, including assessing the performance of K’iche’-speaking EL students to determine if they are overcoming language barriers.

The agreement requires, among other things, that the district implement effective measures to correctly identify the languages spoken by students and parents/guardians, so that school staff do not assume K’iche’ speakers are native Spanish speakers based on their country of origin. The district also agreed to improve its practices and professional development to address the specific needs of EL students who speak K’iche’ so that they can access the same educational opportunities as other students in the district. For more information on this settlement, please see this press release (in Spanish, Portuguese, and Cape Verdean Creole).

On September 28, 2012, the Educational Opportunities Section of the Civil Rights Division entered into a settlement agreement with the Northeastern Local School District (NELSD) in Springfield, Ohio, to resolve allegations of racial harassment of African-American students in the district.

In December 2011, the Section received a complaint alleging incidents of racial harassment, including race-based death threats, directed at an African-American student enrolled at Kenton Ridge High School in NELSD. The Section's investigation of the complaint revealed that the student had been subjected to significant harassment based on race and retaliation for reporting the harassment of which the District knew or should have known. In violation of Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the District failed to investigate the alleged harassment and retaliation adequately, address it effectively, and prevent it from recurring. Because of the severe, pervasive, and persistent harassment and retaliation, the student was afraid to go to school and eventually left the district out of fear for her own safety. The investigation also revealed that other African-American students in the district had experienced racial harassment and retaliation for reporting racial harassment.

Under the terms of the agreement, the district agreed to take a variety of steps to prevent racial harassment at all of its schools, to respond appropriately to harassment that occurs, and to eliminate the hostile environment resulting from harassment. These steps include revising policies and procedures for handling racial harassment complaints; conducting trainings for faculty, staff, students, and parents; and reporting data to the Department of Justice for three years. For more information, please see this press release.

On December 31, 2020 the Section entered into a settlement agreement with the North Gibson School Corporation in Princeton, Indiana to address and prevent the discriminatory secluding and restraining of students with disabilities. The agreement followed an investigation conducted under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into a complaint that the school district inappropriately secluded and restrained students with emotional and behavioral disabilities in the district’s self-contained classrooms. Under the settlement agreement, the school district will, among other things: change its policies to prohibit use of seclusion rooms; report all instances of restraint and review whether they were justified; take steps to avoid placing students with emotional and behavioral disabilities on an abbreviated school day or homebound instruction and document those steps; create and implement a procedure for handling complaints of disability discrimination; provide appropriate training and resources to help schools implement the agreement; and appoint an Intervention Coordinator to ensure the district’s compliance with the agreement and Title II of the ADA. For more information, please see this press release.

In this matter involving the North Plainfield, New Jersey school district, the Section reviewed whether the district was providing appropriate instruction and services to English Language Learners (ELLs), as required by the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA). Based on its review of the district, the Section raised concerns about, among other things: the school district's procedures for screening new students to determine whether they are ELLs; the opportunities that ELLs have to integrate with native speakers of English in a school setting; the extent to which the district's school libraries and media centers are accessible to ELLs; and the academic support provided by the district to ELLs who enroll in general education classes. The school district and the Section engaged in good-faith negotiations about these and other issues, and on September 3, 2004, entered into a settlement agreement outlining the measures that the school district was required to take to ensure its compliance with the EEOA. The district compiled in good faith with the settlement agreement that ended on September 3, 2007.

On December 20, 2022, the Section entered into a settlement agreement with the Okaloosa County School District in Fort Walton Beach, Florida to address the discriminatory use of seclusion and restraint against students with disabilities and the district’s responses to allegations of physical and verbal abuse. The agreement followed an investigation conducted under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) based on allegations that the school district engaged in improper seclusion and restraint practices and failed to appropriately respond to known physical and verbal abuse of students. Under the settlement agreement, the school district will take proactive steps to ensure that its practices do not discriminate against students with disabilities. The district will, among other steps: continue to prohibit the use of seclusion; limit its use of restraint; clarify and improve crisis response team procedures and post-restraint procedures; report all instances of restraint and evaluate if they were justified and complied with district policy; reform district complaint procedures and improve internal district investigations into allegations of employee abuse or improper use of restraint or seclusion; develop and deliver appropriate trainings for personnel who restrain students and personnel who review restraint reports; and deliver appropriate training and resources to help schools implement the agreement. For more information, please see this letter and press release.

In this matter involving Old Dominion University (ODU) in Norfolk, Virginia, the Section conducted an investigation under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 12131 et seq. and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The Section received a complaint alleging that ODU discriminated and retaliated against a graduate student based on her disability and her related request for acknowledgement of her right to reasonable modifications of policy. The Section found that, in a series of retaliatory acts, ODU terminated the student’s relationship with her professor-advisor and his research lab, withdrew her from a professional conference where she was scheduled to present, and forced her to change her graduate course of study. On February 3, 2021, the Section entered into a settlement agreement with ODU to ensure that the University provides reasonable modifications of policy for students with disabilities. The agreement requires that ODU develop and disseminate a retaliation policy; train staff and faculty on the requirements of the ADA and Section 504; and provide compliance reports to DOJ. In addition, under the agreement ODU will pay the complainant $40,000 in compensatory damages. For more information, please see this press release.

This religious discrimination case arose after the principal of an elementary school in New Jersey prohibited an eight-year-old girl from singing a Christian song in a voluntary after-school talent show. On May 20, 2005, the student’s parents filed suit in federal district court, alleging that the school violated her constitutional rights by censoring her speech. The school defended the censorship by asserting that (1) the song had an overtly religious and proselytizing message and (2) permitting the song would have violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

On June 19, 2006, the Section filed an amicus brief in support of the student’s motion for summary judgment, arguing that the school engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination by censoring her performance based solely on the religious perspective of her song. The brief also contended that the school’s Establishment Clause justification was unavailing because the song clearly represented the student’s expression, not the school’s.

On December 11, 2006, the district court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, granting summary judgment. In its opinion, the court held that the school’s censorship of “Awesome God” constituted unlawful viewpoint discrimination because the song conformed to the talent show guidelines and the school permitted other acts with religious and “proselytizing” content. The court found that the school did not have “a legitimate pedagogical concern in distancing itself from proselytizing religious speech.” The court further ruled that the school’s Establishment Clause concerns could not justify censoring the plaintiff’s song because the performances in the talent show did not represent school-sponsored speech.

On April 12, 2011, the Educational Opportunities Section of the Civil Rights Division and the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) reached a resolution agreement with the Owatonna Public School District ("District") in Owatonna, Minnesota, to resolve a complaint regarding the student-on-student harassment and disproportionate discipline of Somali-American students based on their race and national-origin.

The complaint arose from a November 2009 fight between several white and Somali-American students at Owatonna High School and alleged severe and pervasive harassment. Following DOJ's and OCR's investigation, the Section and OCR worked with the school district to resolve the complaint. The departments gathered evidence indicating that the district meted out disproportionate discipline for the students involved in the November 2009 incident and that the district's policies, procedures and trainings were not adequately addressing harassment against Somali-American students.

The District took affirmative steps to address the harassment and disproportionate discipline of Somali-American students, and voluntarily entered into the resolution agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, the District will take all reasonable steps to ensure that all students enrolled in the district are not subject to harassment or discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin, and to respond promptly and appropriately to all reports of harassment. To that end, the District has agreed to improve its policies and procedures concerning harassment and discipline as necessary to make them effectively protect students from racial or national origin-based harassment. For more information, please see this press release.

This case involves religious harassment by students against a Jewish public school teacher in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Mr. Owen, a veteran teacher of more than 30 years, filed his lawsuit in federal district court in March 2000 after an investigation by the Detroit office of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission concluded that his complaint had merit. The United States intervened in October 2000, alleging that the L'Anse Area Schools subjected Mr. Owen to religious harassment while he was employed by the school district. The United States alleged that Mr. Owen had been the target of numerous incidents of anti-Semitic harassment by his students, including the drawing and etching of swastikas and hate messages such as "Die Jews," "Kill Owen," "KKK," and "White Power" in and around his classroom on multiple occasions and the placement of a hangman's noose on his classroom door. The United States alleged that the school district failed to take effective measures to remedy the harassment and to keep it from recurring despite Mr. Owen's repeated complaints. Further, the United States alleged that as a result of the harassment, Mr. Owen was forced to take an extended medical leave and ultimately retire from the school district.

Following discovery and an unsuccessful motion for summary judgment by the school district, the parties entered mediation, reaching a settlement agreement in March 2002. Under the agreement, which the district court approved on April 11, 2002, Mr. Owen was paid $265,000. The agreement also required the school district to review and revise its policies; train its employees to recognize, investigate and address harassment and discrimination; and educate its students about the inappropriateness of harassment and discrimination. In addition, the agreement required the district’s faculty and staff to report actual or suspected incidents of harassment or discrimination to appropriate school officials. The Justice Department monitored the school district's compliance with the settlement agreement for three years, and the case was dismissed on December 15, 2005.

In September and November 2011, the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice notified the School District of Palm Beach County that it had received complaints regarding the District's enrollment and registration practices, as well as its practices of administering school discipline. The Division then conducted an investigation, including reviewing documents and data; conducting a site visit that included tours of schools and interviews with Principals, Area Superintendents, Assistant Superintendents, District Office staff, the School District of Palm Beach County Police Department, and the Superintendent; meeting with community members and local stakeholders; and reviewing and providing comments regarding the District's enrollment and discipline policies. The United States conducted its investigation with the full cooperation of the District.

At the conclusion of the investigation, the United States and the District engaged in extensive negotiations, resulting in a settlement agreement signed by the Parties on February 26, 2013. Under the settlement agreement, the district will enroll all area students regardless of background and will provide translation and interpretation services throughout the registration process. The district will also limit the use of disciplinary measures that remove students from the classroom and implement behavior management and discipline practices that support and protect students. Among other things, the agreement requires that ELL students and parents who are limited English proficient receive translation and interpretation services throughout the enrollment and discipline processes; expands the use of language-accessible positive behavior interventions and supports ("PBIS"); places limits on the use of discipline measures that remove students from the classroom; establishes clear guidelines for when law enforcement intervention is appropriate; requires school law enforcement officers to communicate with students in a language the student understands, including by securing an interpreter when appropriate; requires providing training to give teachers and administrators the tools necessary to manage their schools in a safe, effective and positive manner; and requires expanding data-driven monitoring and accountability systems. On July 25, 2016, the parties agreed to an eighteen month extension of the Agreement.

On March 5, 2024, the Section entered into a settlement agreement with the Pasco County School District in Pasco County, Florida to resolve the department’s investigation into alleged discrimination against students with disabilities in school discipline, threat assessment practices and referrals of students to law enforcement. The agreement followed an investigation under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The investigation found that the district routinely suspended students or called police for disability-related behavior that could have been addressed through proper support and de-escalation. The investigation also found problems with how the district conducted threat assessments (a process to identify, evaluate and respond to potential school security concerns). When these assessments involved students with disabilities, the district systematically failed to consider the relationship between a student’s disability and their behavior, and whether appropriate support for the student would address the behavior that prompted the assessment. Instead, the district often unnecessarily referred students to law enforcement to be arrested or to start the process for an involuntary admission into a mental health facility under Florida’s Baker Act.

Under the settlement agreement, the school district will take proactive steps to ensure that its practices do not discriminate against students with disabilities. The district will, among other steps: ensure that personnel accurately assess disability-related behaviors, identify appropriate interventions, and monitor their implementation; hire a consultant who will assist in updating policies and practices; update its student code of conduct, threat assessment process, and law enforcement referral process to ensure that the district is adequately considering disability-related behaviors; improve data collection and analysis and regularly evaluate data to ensure students with disabilities do not face discrimination as a result of the district’s discipline, threat assessment and law enforcement referral practices. The Section will monitor the district’s implementation of the agreement and will also continue to monitor and enforce an ongoing desegregation order that covers the district.

In this matter involving sex discrimination, several high school girls and their representatives filed a complaint alleging that the South Dakota High School Activities Association (SDHSAA) violated Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Specifically, the plaintiffs contended that the SDHSAA discriminated against female athletes by requiring girls to play certain sports (basketball and volleyball) in disadvantageous seasons. Playing in disadvantageous seasons can result in substantial harms that deny female high school athletes equal athletic opportunities, including, among others, the ability to participate in interstate competition and club competition, the opportunity to be recruited for collegiate-level sports programs, and the opportunity to have the same number of games and practices as similarly-situated boys' sports teams.

On October 17, 2000, the Department was granted leave to intervene in the lawsuit as a plaintiff-party in support of the high school girls. Subsequently, the SDHSAA moved for summary judgment on the issue of whether the association was subject to Title IX and whether it is a state actor for purposes of 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Before any further briefing was completed, however, the parties agreed to engage in mediation and ultimately reached a settlement. Pursuant to the parties' stipulation, the Court entered a Consent Order on December 5, 2000, requiring the SDHSAA to schedule girls' high school volleyball during the traditional fall season and girls' high school basketball during the traditional winter season beginning with the 2002-03 school year. The SDHSAA submitted a detailed plan which was subsequently agreed to by the plaintiff-parties and approved by the Court.

In June of 2002 and shortly before the season switch was to take place, a group of parents and students filed a separate lawsuit in state court that was removed to federal court, Hoffman v. South Dakota High Sch. Activities Ass'n, C.A. No. 02-4127 (D. S.D.), seeking to challenge the Consent Order entered in the Pedersen case, or in the alternative, to delay the season switch for four more years. The Hoffman plaintiffs also filed a motion for preliminary injunction seeking to enjoin the season switch immediately. The Department moved to intervene in the lawsuit as a defendant to uphold the prior Consent Order entered in the Pedersen case and the district court granted the Department's motion to intervene. The Department also filed a motion to dismiss the Hoffman lawsuit on procedural grounds that the district court held in abeyance until after the hearing on the motion for a preliminary injunction. The district court conducted a three-day evidentiary hearing on the merits of the Hoffman case at which the Department presented evidence. Shortly thereafter, the district court issued an opinion denying the Hoffman plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction. On January 22, 2003, the district court granted the Department's motion to dismiss and dismissed the Hoffman lawsuit with prejudice.

In this matter involving the Plainfield, New Jersey School District, the Section reviewed whether the district was providing appropriate instruction and services to English Language Learners (ELLs), as required by the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA). Based on its review of the district, the Section raised concerns about, among other things: the school district's procedures for screening new students to determine whether they are ELLs; the opportunities that ELLs have to integrate with native speakers of English in a school setting; the extent to which the district's school libraries and media centers are accessible to ELLs; and the academic support provided by the district to ELLs who enroll in general education classes. The school district and the Section engaged in good-faith negotiations about these and other issues, and on June 30, 2003, entered into a settlement agreement outlining the measures that the school district will take to ensure that it complies with the EEOA. The district compiled in good faith with the settlement agreement that ended on June 30, 2006.

In April 2009, Plaintiff filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York alleging, inter alia, that the Indian River Central School District, its Board of Education, and eight of its employees violated his rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, 20 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq. On June 11, 2010, the Defendants filed a motion to dismiss the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX claims. On August 13, 2010, the United States filed a motion seeking leave to participate as amicus curiae in order to provide the court with the proper legal standards governing harassment on the basis of sex under the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX. The United States argues in its amicus brief that harassment based on sex stereotyping is a legally cognizable claim under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause; that sexual orientation harassment does not preclude a harassment claim based on non-conformity to sex stereotypes; and that a hostile environment claim in primary and secondary schools can span classes, grades, and schools.

In this matter involving the Prince William County School District, the Section conducted a compliance review to determine whether the district was providing appropriate instruction and other services to English Language Learner ("ELL") students as required by the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA). On September 5, 2013, the Section and the district entered into an out-of-court settlement agreement outlining the steps the district will take to resolve the issues identified by the United States and ensure compliance with the EEOA. Among other things, the agreement requires the district to: provide all ELL students with adequate English Language Development and sheltered content instruction by qualified ELL teachers; ensure that ELL teachers and administrators receive appropriate training; monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of its ELL programs; modify its enrollment and registration practices to ensure that students have access to educational programs regardless of race, national origin, or immigration status; provide ELL students and Limited English Proficient parents meaningful access to district and school-level information, such as discipline and special education forms and meetings; and take measures to ensure discipline is administered in a nondiscriminatory way, such as instituting cultural responsiveness training for teachers. The district-wide review and agreement grew out of an investigation of a complaint regarding the Fred Lynn Middle School. That investigation resulted in a 2010 agreement requiring remedial measures at that school, which was later amended by a 2011 agreement. This school and all others in the district are now subject to the 2013 agreement, which requires the district to report to the Section on the agreement's implementation through 2016.

In this matter involving the Providence Public Schools (“the District”) and the Rhode Island Department of Education (“RIDE”), the Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Rhode Island examined whether the District was identifying and serving its approximately 8,000 English Learner (“EL”) students as required by Section 1703(f) of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (“EEOA”). On August 9, 2018, the District and the United States entered into an out-of-court settlement agreement to address the noncompliant conditions identified by the United States and to ensure the District’s compliance with Section 1703(f) of the EEOA. Among other things, the agreement requires the District to: identify and place EL students appropriately when they enroll in school; provide adequate language services to all EL students, including those with disabilities, so that they can become proficient in English; ensure that the English as a Second Language (“ESL”) components of its EL program are taught by ESL-certified teachers; adequately train the administrators and teachers who implement the District’s EL programs; ensure meaningful communication with Limited English Proficient parents about District and school programs and activities; provide equal opportunities for EL students to participate in specialized programs; and evaluate the effectiveness of the EL program over time. On November 1, 2019, RIDE took control over the District, and on December 19, 2019, the parties agreed that the 2018 EL agreement would be binding upon both the District and RIDE. On September 29, 2021, the parties executed a letter agreement, which modifies and extends the 2018 EL settlement agreement through at least the 2022-2023 school year.

In this peer-on-peer sexual harassment case, a student alleged his rights were violated under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. More specifically, the student contended the school district failed to take adequate steps to protect him from an ongoing campaign of sexual harassment by his peers.

The harassment included: three written death threats, repeated and unwanted sexual contact, offensive and hostile verbal abuse, and other acts involving intimidation and humiliation.

In response to defendants' motion to dismiss the case, the Section submitted an amicus curiae brief in support of the plaintiff. In this brief, the Section argued a Title IX claim was appropriate because of the nature and severity of harassment involving conduct of a sexual nature. Furthermore, the Section argued the student's Equal Protection claim, challenging discrimination based on his actual or perceived sexual orientation, should not be dismissed. Following the amicus participation of the Section and mediation between the plaintiff and defendants, the case settled. In addition to monetary relief for the plaintiff, the school district modified its sexual harassment policies, applicable to both students and employees, to prohibit discrimination based on actual or perceived sexual orientation. The modified policies also describe the school district's responsibilities and the recourse available to victims of discrimination.

On September 27, 2023, the Section entered into a Resolution Agreement with the Reeds Spring School District in Reeds Spring, Missouri to resolve an investigation into the District’s response to allegations of severe and pervasive peer-on-peer harassment on the basis of sex, including sex stereotypes and sexual orientation. Under the Agreement, the District will take a number of steps to ensure it responds appropriately to complaints of harassment. These steps include training staff on how to properly identify, document and report incidents that may constitute harassment, how to conduct impartial investigations, how to communicate effectively and in a timely manner with complainants and families about allegations of harassment, and how to support students who may have experienced harassment. The District will also conduct surveys of its students, staff, and families to assess the prevalence of harassment in its schools, as well as the effectiveness of the District’s response to harassment complaints. The District will then develop specific action plans in response to information gathered in these surveys. The District will provide reports to the Section twice a year documenting its compliance with the steps outlined above. The parties expect the Agreement to be in place through the end of the 2024-2025 school year.

On August 19, 2024, the Section, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia, and the U.S. Department of Education filed a statement of interest in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in Rinderle, et al. v. Cobb County School District, et al. The plaintiffs are students and current and former educators in the District who alleged that the District’s implementation of policies prohibiting employees from using classroom instruction time to espouse personal political beliefs concerning “divisive concepts” violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The United States’ brief sets out the applicable legal standards for private retaliation claims for damages under Title IX. The brief then explains how, when assessing whether a plaintiff alleging retaliation under Title IX had a reasonable, good faith belief that a hostile educational environment based on sex existed, the Court should consider as part of the totality of the circumstances the alleged effect of the District’s policies on the educational environment.

In this matter involving the Robertson County Schools in Tennessee, the United States reviewed the status of the District's compliance with its desegregation obligations as a former de jure segregated public school system. The Section determined that the district had not complied with its desegregation obligations in the areas of student assignment and school construction. In its letter of September 5, 2014, the Section identified a series of district decisions that, over decades, impeded desegregation by building and expanding almost all-white schools while leaving African-American students disproportionately in overcrowded schools with portable classrooms. In February, 2015, the United States and the district entered into a settlement agreement to resolve the district's noncompliance with federal law. The agreement requires the district to: assign students and construct and maintain schools in a desegregated and nondiscriminatory manner; implement a new elementary school plan that furthers desegregation; eliminate overcrowding at predominately minority schools; develop a secondary school student assignment plan that will further desegregation; and provide cultural sensitivity and competency training for teachers and staff. On August 4, 2015, the United States and the district entered into another settlement agreement to further desegregation in the secondary schools through a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) magnet program and attendance zone line changes. For more information about the February 2015 agreement, please see this press release. For more information about the August 2015 agreement, please see this press release.

On August 8, 2023, the Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Idaho filed a statement of interest in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho in Roe, et. al. v. Critchfield, et. al. The plaintiffs in this case are transgender students attending K-12 public schools in Idaho who are challenging S.B. 1100, a state law that prohibits transgender students from using public school facilities, including restrooms and changing facilities, consistent with their gender identity. The United States’ brief provides its view that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their Title IX and Equal Protection Clause claims.

In this matter involving the Rowan-Salisbury School System (“the District”) in North Carolina, the Section investigated whether the District’s English Learner (EL) programs and practices complied with Section 1703(f) of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974. The investigation found system-wide failures to provide these students with the instruction and support they need to learn English and fully participate in school. On June 17, 2021, the District and the United States entered into an out-of-court settlement agreement to resolve the District’s compliance issues identified by the United States. The agreement requires the District to increase language instruction for all EL students, including those with disabilities, so they can become fluent in English. The District will also train its teachers and administrators on how to support EL students in academic subjects such as math, science, and social studies. The District will continue to improve its translation and interpretation services for Limited English Proficient parents so all parents can fully participate in their children’s education. The agreement will remain in place for three school years. For more information, please see this press release in English and Spanish.

On December 15, 2022, the Educational Opportunities Section along with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California entered into an agreement with the San Bernardino City Unified School District resolving a multi-year investigation of the district’s English learner program under Section 1703(f) of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974. During the investigation, the United States found that the district failed to offer adequate instruction to English learners, in either the English language or in core content areas like math, science and social studies. In addition, the United States identified problems with the special education evaluations conducted by the district and the services offered to English learners with disabilities. The United States also found that English learners did not have equal access to the district’s gifted programs, and advanced coursework. In the out-of-court settlement agreement the district will ensure that students receive adequate English language instruction from trained and certified personnel. It will train core content teachers on how to work with English learners, and it will update its special education policies and trainings to meet the needs of English learners with disabilities. In addition, the district will take steps to improve access to gifted and advanced programs for English learners. The agreement will remain in place for three years. For more information please see this press release in English and Spanish (español).

On June 29, 2020, the Educational Opportunities Section and United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California initiated a Title IX compliance review of San José State University (“SJSU”). The Department’s investigation principally focused on SJSU’s response to reports of sexual harassment, including sexual assault, by an athletic trainer spanning more than a decade. The Department also investigated reports of retaliation against two SJSU Athletics Department employees. After conducting numerous interviews and an extensive review of SJSU’s policies, grievance procedures, training, and response to reports of sexual harassment and retaliation, the Department concluded that SJSU violated Title IX.

On September 21, 2021, the Department reached a resolution agreement with SJSU to address its noncompliance under Title IX and issued a letter summarizing the Title IX violations. Under the terms of the agreement, SJSU agreed to take significant steps including, among others: providing resources to the Title IX Office; publicizing Title IX policies and protocols and improving SJSU’s response to complaints of sex discrimination; developing informational materials to educate the SJSU community how to report Title IX concerns; delivering training to student-athletes and SJSU Athletics employees on giving and receiving informed consent for medical treatments and athletic training services; and providing supportive measures and remedies to student-athletes who were sexually harassed by the athletic trainer. The agreement also requires SJSU to pay a total of $1.625 million in financial relief to individuals who were sexually harassed by the athletic trainer and participated in the Department’s or SJSU’s investigations. The Department will carefully monitor the University’s implementation of the agreement, which will remain in place through the 2024-2025 academic year. For more information, please see the press release.

The Tri-Creek Corporation School District in Indiana had an attendance policy that allowed for only one day of excused absences for religious observance. After a student missed more than one day for religious worship, the District’s attendance policy stated that the student would be given an unexcused absence and subjected to various sanctions including loss of academic credit, inability to make up work, and suspension. The policy also stated that legal action may be taken against the parent.

After receiving a complaint about the enforcement of Tri-Creek’s policy, the United States intervened in the case on behalf of Ruth Scheidt and her son, M.S., both adherents to the religious tenets of the United Church of God. During the 2004-05 school year, M.S. was given eight unexcused absences for documented religious attendance; teachers failed to allow him to make up classwork and the district threatened expulsion and legal action, including the filing of educational neglect charges against Ms. Scheidt. On August 10, 2005, the Section filed a brief asserting that Tri-Creek’s attendance policy violated Ms. Scheidt and her son’s right to exercise their religion freely, and Ms. Scheidt’s right to raise her son consistent with her religious beliefs.

Shortly after the Section's intervention, the District and the plaintiffs reached a settlement that: (1) absences for religious observances will be recorded as “excused” and credit given for timely make-up work; and (2) school attendance policies will be revised to accommodate religious observances. Unlike in the past, there is now no limit on the number of excused absences a student may receive for religious observance.

In this race discrimination case, the plaintiffs sued the University of South Florida (USF), alleging that it had violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by retaliating against black players on the USF women's basketball team who had complained to university officials about discriminatory treatment by the head coach. At the summary judgment stage, the Section filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs, arguing that Title VI prohibits retaliation against individuals who complain of racially discriminatory treatment, and that this prohibition is necessary to protect the victims of racial discrimination and concerned third parties who come forward with their complaints. Prior to the court ruling on the summary judgment motion, the parties settled the case.

On January 30, 1970, the Court ordered Defendants, including the Concordia Parish School Board, to adopt a desegregation plan. Concordia Parish School District (“District”) is still operating under the requirements of this 1970 federal desegregation order and further orders mandating the desegregation of the District. A January 4, 2013 consent order addressed a new charter school’s obligations to comply with the court’s orders in the case and take measures to ensure equal access to the school.

A review of the Somerville School District in Massachusetts concerning the instruction and services provided to English Language Learners (ELLs) revealed the school district was not comporting with the requirements of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA). On November 25, 2008, the Section and the Somerville School District entered into a settlement agreement addressing concerns raised by the Section including specific provisions requiring: adequate registration, identification, and placement of all ELLs; ongoing training of all personnel involved in the registration, identification, and placement process; maintenance of a database of qualified and available translation and interpretation services; sufficient and appropriate instruction for ELLs; development of an English Language Development (ELD)/English as a Second Language (ESL) curricula; qualified and trained teachers of ELLs; the provision of adequate materials; appropriate special education services and language services for ELLs who are eligible for both services; careful monitoring of current and exited ELLs; and evaluation of the district’s ELL program.

On April 17, 2023, the Section entered into a settlement agreement with the Spokane Public Schools in Spokane, Washington to address the discriminatory use of seclusion and restraint against students with disabilities. The agreement followed an investigation conducted under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) into complaints that the school district inappropriately secluded and restrained children with disabilities and failed to use appropriate behavior interventions. The Department’s investigation concluded that the school district inappropriately and repeatedly secluded and restrained students with disabilities and did not limit its use of restraint and seclusion to emergency situations, as required by state law and the district policy. Instead, the district restrained and secluded students with disabilities to address noncompliant behavior, even when those actions appeared to escalate the behavior or when students showed clear signs of trauma. As a result, the District’s restraint and seclusion practices segregated hundreds of students with disabilities from their classmates and resulted in students missing hundreds of hours of instructional time.

Under the settlement agreement, the school district will take proactive steps to ensure that its practices do not discriminate against students on the basis of disability. The district will, among other steps: prohibit the use of seclusion; limit the use of restraint; document and report all instances of seclusion and restraint; appoint a district-level administrator to review all incidents of seclusion and restraint to ensure proper follow-up occurs; create classroom-wide Behavior Management Plans for its programs serving students with high-intensity behaviors that are based on data analysis and that promote and reinforce positive behaviors; provide copies of and explain classroom plans to parents and guardians; develop a complaint procedure and respond in a timely fashion to all complaints regarding the use of restraint or seclusion; offer counseling and compensatory education services to students with disabilities who were subjected to the district’s discriminatory practices; deliver appropriate training and resources to help schools implement the agreement; and ensure the district’s compliance with the agreement and Title II of the ADA. For more information, please see this letter, press release, and summary of settlement agreement.

In this matter involving the Stamford Public School District, the Section and the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut (“USAO”) conducted a comprehensive review to determine whether the district was providing appropriate services to English Language Learner (“ELL”) students as required by the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA), 20 U.S.C. §1703(f). On February 28, 2014, the Section, the USAO, and the district entered into an out-of-court settlement agreement to resolve the district’s noncompliance with the EEOA. The agreement requires the district to: provide language acquisition services to all ELL students until they reach the state’s English proficiency criteria; ensure that teachers of ELL students are qualified to provide these services; make appropriate language services available for ELL students with disabilities; obtain adequate materials for ELL students; and monitor students after they exit ELL services to ensure they are participating meaningfully and equally in the district’s instructional program. Under the Agreement, the district will implement a tiered services plan to ensure that ELL services are appropriate to ELL students’ English language proficiency levels, designed to address their individualized needs, and effective. The district will ensure that ELL students who are not making sufficient yearly progress receive additional ELL services. For more information, please see this press release.

In February of 1970, the District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi entered separate orders requiring the Starkville Municipal Separate School District and the Oktibbeha County School District to desegregate. In 2015, the Mississippi Legislature consolidated the two school districts, and, in 2016, the new Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District (the “District”) and the United States filed a joint motion to approve a new desegregation order. The District Court granted the motion and approved the consent order on March 3, 2016.

The consent order requires the District to eliminate segregative policies and practices in its operations regarding student assignment, faculty and staff hiring, transportation, extracurriculars, and facilities. Specific provisions in the consent order require the District to, among other things, provide equal access to gifted-and-talented and advanced programs; analyze the equity of bus assignments and routes; and hire, promote, pay, demote, discipline, non-renew, and dismiss faculty and staff without regard to race, color, or national origin. The District must also have a Biracial Advisory Committee, which will advise the District on the desegregation plan. The Section is monitoring the District’s efforts to achieve unitary status and comply with the consent order.

This case involves claims against the Department of Education of the State of Hawaii and various government officials for alleged violations of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (Section 504) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Plaintiffs alleged, among other things, that defendants intentionally discriminated against Aaron L. because of his disability (Down Syndrome), failed to provide him with appropriate special education services, and denied him a free appropriate public education, all in violation of Section 504 and the IDEA. Plaintiffs sought compensatory and punitive damages, as well as injunctive and other equitable relief.

Both defendants and plaintiffs moved for partial summary judgment. Defendants asserted that plaintiffs' claims are barred by the Eleventh Amendment. Plaintiffs asserted that they should be able to demonstrate discriminatory intent, for purposes of obtaining compensatory damages under Section 504, with evidence that defendants acted with deliberate indifference or conscious disregard for their federal rights.

In its intervention brief filed on May 25, 2001, the Section defended the constitutionality of Section 504 and the IDEA. The Section also filed an amicus brief arguing that a plaintiff seeking compensatory damages under Section 504 may rely on the deliberate indifference standard to prove discriminatory intent.

On June 18, 2001, the district court upheld the constitutionality of Section 504 and the IDEA, and ruled that a plaintiff seeking compensatory damages under Section 504 may establish intentional discrimination by showing that the defendant acted with deliberate indifference to the plaintiff's federally protected rights.

On June 30, 2011, the Educational Opportunities Section of the Civil Rights Division and the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) reached a resolution agreement with the Tehachapi Unified School District in Tehachapi, California, to resolve a complaint regarding the harassment of a middle school student based on his nonconformity with gender stereotypes. The complaint arose from the September 2010 death of Jacobsen Middle School student Seth Walsh, who took his own life at the age of 13. Following OCR's investigation, the Section joined OCR in working with the school district to resolve the complaint. The investigation found that Walsh suffered sexual and gender-based harassment by his peers for more than two school years because of his nonconformity with gender stereotypes.

As summarized in a detailed letter of findings, the departments determined that the harassment, which included ongoing and escalating verbal, physical and sexual harassment by other students at school, was sufficiently severe, pervasive and persistent to interfere with his educational opportunities, and that the school district failed to appropriately respond to notice of the harassment. The departments concluded that the school district violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Title IV of the Civil Rights of 1964, both of which prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, including harassment based on nonconformity with gender stereotypes and sexual harassment. Under the terms of the agreement, the district agreed to take a variety of steps to prevent sexual and gender-based harassment at all of its schools, to respond appropriately to harassment that occurs, and to eliminate the hostile environment resulting from harassment. These steps include adopting revised policies and procedures for handling sexual and gender-based harassment complaints, conducting trainings for faculty, staff, and students, and reporting data to OCR and DOJ for five years. For more information, please see this press release.

On July 20, 2023, the Section entered into a resolution agreement with Teton County School District #1 in Wyoming to resolve the department’s investigation into the district’s responses to alleged sexual harassment, retaliation, and disability discrimination conducted under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The agreement requires the school district to work with a consultant to review and revise its anti-harassment policies and practices and ensure it responds appropriately to discrimination complaints and adopts appropriate supportive and remedial measures using the district’s Multi-Tiered Support System. The district also will: prohibit and take reasonable steps to prevent retaliation; implement school climate assessments; implement an engagement plan; train its civil rights coordinator and other staff on their obligations under the district’s antidiscrimination policies and resolution procedures; and institute internal monitoring and auditing procedures to ensure compliance and regularly evaluate its antidiscrimination program. For more information, please see the press release.

On June 11, 2021, the Section and the U.S. Department of Education filed a statement of interest to assist the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska in evaluating the Title IX peer sexual assault and retaliation claims for damages in Thomas v. Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska, Case No. 4:20-cv-03081. In this case, the plaintiffs, current and former students of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), allege that UNL discriminated against them on the basis of sex in violation of Title IX when UNL allegedly responded to their reports of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and/or retaliation with deliberate indifference that created and/or left them in a hostile educational environment. Plaintiffs also allege that UNL violated Title IX by engaging in retaliatory actions against them in response to their reports of peer retaliation and sexual assault. In the statement of interest responding to UNL’s motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ Title IX claims, the United States set forth the proper legal standards for the court to apply to plaintiffs’ Title IX claims for damages based on alleged sexual assaults and retaliation. The United States took no position on whether plaintiffs’ allegations in their complaint state plausible Title IX claims for damages under those legal standards.

This is a longstanding desegregation case in the Western District of Louisiana, where the St. Martin Parish School Board has not fulfilled its desegregation obligations in the following areas: student assignment, faculty assignment, and quality of education in graduation pathways and discipline. To remedy the student assignment issues, the United States, the School Board, and the Private Plaintiffs represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, entered into a consent order on June 9, 2023. The 2023 consent order provides for student transfers to promote desegregation across the District and establishes a plan to develop a robust magnet program to further desegregate the St. Martinville zone. The parties are still negotiating and litigating remedial measures for creating attendance zone changes that desegregate the District’s schools. Following a period of litigation from 2021-2023 regarding the District’s compliance with a 2016 Superseding Consent Order, the District Court entered an order on May 25, 2023 that requires the District to take additional steps regarding faculty assignment, graduation pathways, and discipline. The Court will retain jurisdiction over the case and consent order, and the Justice Department will monitor the District’s compliance. For more information, please see this press release.

On July 31, 2020, the district and the United States entered into an out-of-court settlement agreement to address and prevent discriminatory discipline of students based on race or disability and to require appropriate language services for limited English proficient (LEP) parents on matters essential to their children’s education. The agreement followed a federal civil rights investigation by the Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio into complaints of discriminatory treatment of African-American students and students with disabilities in school suspensions, expulsions, and referrals to law enforcement agencies, which was conducted under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The Department also investigated under the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 allegations concerning the district’s communications with parents and guardians with language barriers. Under the settlement agreement, the district will take proactive steps to ensure its discipline practices do not discriminate against students based on race or disability. The district will, among other things, regularly review how schools handle discipline incidents to ensure non-discriminatory treatment, expand its use of positive behavior supports, and provide appropriate training and resources to help schools implement the agreement, including training for teachers, administrators, and school safety officers. In addition, for parents and guardians with language barriers, the district will ensure it communicates essential school-related information in a language that they understand so their children can access the district’s instructional programs. The United States will monitor compliance with the terms of the three-year agreement. For more information, please see this press release. On December 15, 2023, the parties executed an extension agreement, which modifies and extends the 2020 settlement agreement through the 2024-2025 school year.

The Department of Justice and the Department of Education filed a statement of interest on February 20, 2015 with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan in Tooley v. Van Buren Public Schools. In this case, the plaintiff, a transgender boy, alleges that several Michigan school districts unlawfully subjected him to harassment and denied him equal treatment and benefits based on his sex. In the statement of interest, the departments advised the court that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibit discrimination against students because of their sex, including on the basis of a student's gender identity, transgender status, or nonconformity to sex stereotypes. The departments concluded that plaintiff's allegations of sex discrimination on each of these bases under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause were sufficient to deny the motion to dismiss filed by defendant Wyandotte Public Schools.

The Department of Justice and the Department of Education filed a statement of interest on January 25, 2016 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in T.R. v. School Dist. of Philadelphia, No. 15-04782. This case involves Limited English Proficient (LEP) parents of students with disabilities who allege that the Philadelphia School District intentionally discriminates against them based on national origin by not providing complete and timely translations and interpretations of special education and regular education documents. In the statement of interest, the departments explained that under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 case law and federal regulations and guidance, school districts have an obligation to provide LEP parents with a meaningful opportunity to participate in their children’s education. The statement of interest also supported the plaintiffs’ claims under the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA) by explaining that “appropriate action” under the EEOA includes translations and interpretations for LEP parents. On November 30, 2016, the court issued a memorandum opinion denying the district’s motion to dismiss in its entirety and relied on the United States’ brief in the discussion of why the court was not dismissing the EEOA and Title VI claims.

On March 16, 2023, the Section entered into a settlement agreement with the Twin Valley School District in Whitingham, VT to address the District’s response to complaints of student-on-student harassment based on race and sex. The Civil Rights Division’s Educational Opportunities Section and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Vermont jointly conducted the investigation under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000c et seq. Under the settlement agreement, the school district will implement the following reforms: modify district policies and procedures to prevent and address peer harassment; undertake periodic assessments of school climate at Twin Valley Middle-High School and implement responsive programming to remedy hostile educational environments; and improve training for district employees who receive, investigate or adjudicate complaints of harassment. For more information, please see this cover letter and press release.

In this matter involving Union Public Schools, the Section examined whether the Oklahoma school district was providing appropriate services to its approximately 3,500 English Learner (“EL”) students, as required by the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (“EEOA”). On June 26, 2018, the Section and the District entered into an out-of-court settlement agreement outlining the steps that the District will take to resolve the issues identified by the United States and ensure the District’s compliance with Section 1703(f) of the EEOA. Among other things, the agreement requires the District to: provide adequate language services to all EL students, including those with disabilities, so that they can become proficient in English; ensure that the English as a Second Language (“ESL”) components of its EL program are taught by ESL-certified teachers; adequately train the administrators and teachers who implement the EL program; ensure meaningful communication with Limited English Proficient parents about District and school programs and activities; and evaluate the effectiveness of the EL program over time. The parties anticipate the agreement will remain in place through 2021.

This desegregation case was in active litigation for two years when the school district moved to have the case dismissed in November 1998. Following a review of information provided by the district, a tour of district schools and subsequent rulings by the court, the parties entered into a consent order in November 1999. The agreement set forth a plan for the district to take additional steps to desegregate the school system and to eliminate vestiges of discrimination from the former segregated system.

Under the settlement, the district agreed to: (1) implement a new elementary school assignment plan and convert two historically minority schools into magnet schools; (2) eliminate general tracks in secondary schools while keeping certain advanced and gifted and talented tracks; (3) implement reforms to its bilingual education and English as a Second Language programs; (4) develop an action plan in each secondary school to increase minority participation in extracurricular activities; and (5) implement a mentoring program to identify potential minority candidates for administrative intern and teaching positions. As a result, minority enrollment increased in advanced and gifted classes, the magnet schools enrolled diverse student bodies, and the English Language Learner program was significantly improved. On September 12, 2002, the court declared the district unitary and dismissed the case.

This English Language Learner (“ELL”) case originally arose from a desegregation order entered against the State of Texas and the Texas Education Agency (“TEA”). In 1972, the League of United Latin American Citizens (“LULAC”) and GI Forum were allowed to intervene in the desegregation case as representatives of Mexican Americans in Texas. Most recently, on February 9, 2006, LULAC and GI Forum filed a motion for further relief under the statewide desegregation order and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (“EEOA”). Their motion alleges that Texas and TEA have failed to sufficiently monitor and enforce programs for ELL students in public schools across the state, thereby wrongfully denying those students equal educational opportunities.

In their briefs responding to the motion for further relief, the state defendants claimed immunity from suit under the Eleventh Amendment and argued that the EEOA failed to validly abrogate this immunity. On July 10, 2006, the Section filed a response to these briefs, asserting that the EEOA abrogated states’ Eleventh Amendment immunity because the statute constituted a reasonably tailored legislative response to a long history of unconstitutional discrimination against national origin minorities. In its August 11, 2006 memorandum opinion, the district court agreed with the Section’s analysis and held that the EEOA abrogated the state’s Eleventh Amendment immunity.

On November 30, 2007, the United States filed a motion for further relief asserting that the Evangeline Parish School Board had failed to fully implement an earlier agreed upon school reorganization plan. The United States sought additional relief, including, either, completion of certain renovations at a majority black high school, construction of a new facility at this high school, or grade restructuring and mandatory reassignment of students from other schools to eliminate the racial identifiability of the school. On December 22, 2009, after significant litigation the court entered a consent order negotiated by the parties that requires the District to take remedial measures in the areas of personnel assignment, facilities, student assignment and quality of education.

Following the Supreme Court's decision, the Board of Visitors of The Citadel voted to admit women to its Corps of Cadets, and, in August 1996, four women joined the entering class of students. When allegations surfaced in December 1996 that two of the women had been harassed and physically abused, the United States initiated an investigation into The Citadel's assimilation efforts. This investigation was separate and apart from the contemporaneous criminal investigation initiated by federal and state law enforcement authorities.

Subsequently the court required The Citadel to submit a revised plan for the assimilation of women. This led to a consent order that, among other things, required The Citadel to: hire a full-time Assistant Commandant to coordinate the assimilation of women into the Corps of Cadets, a fulltime Dean of Women and a full-time recruiter to coordinate female recruitment efforts; institute regular, mandatory sexual harassment-prevention training of all students and staff; undertake specific efforts to recruit women; develop formal assessment tools to evaluate assimilation; hire and station eight additional adult officers in each of the barracks to increase supervision; establish a female assimilation study group to evaluate assimilation efforts and make reports to the president of the college; promptly complete all facilities modifications to accommodate women in all barracks; revise school publications to eliminate sex-restrictive language; and establish informal complaint reporting mechanisms, including the establishment of a college Ombudsman to serve as a confidential recipient of complaints of harassment or abuse. On March 28, 2002, the court entered an agreed order of dismissal to which the parents had agreed, thereby dismissing the case.

The Section filed a complaint alleging that defendants engaged in race discrimination by failing to provide equal educational opportunities for the American Indian students residing in Navajo Mountain. Specifically, the district failed to provide a secondary school located reasonably near their place of residence, as is done for all other students residing in the district. Prior to the filing of this lawsuit, American Indian students who lived in the Navajo Mountain community attended boarding schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs 90 miles away from home. The nearest district high school was 171 miles away from the Navajo Mountain area. The court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. One year later, the parties entered into a settlement agreement, and the new Navajo Mountain High School opened for classes in 1998.

This case arose out of a long-standing school desegregation suit filed by the United States against the State of Texas, Texas Education Agency (“TEA”), and various school districts. In 1971, the district court entered a desegregation order that, among other things, prohibited TEA from approving or funding interdistrict student transfers that have the cumulative effect of reducing or impeding desegregation in one of the districts. In 2003, Hearne Independent School District (“Hearne”) intervened in the underlying suit, claiming that transfers from Hearne to Mumford Independent School District (“Mumford”) had reduced or impeded desegregation in Hearne, and that TEA improperly continued to fund those transfers. In 2004, the Division filed a motion to enforce the desegregation order against TEA and Mumford.

After a bench trial, the district court found that the transfers from Hearne to Mumford reduced desegregation in Hearne, that Mumford had engaged in fraudulent conduct to circumvent the requirements of the desegregation order, and that the TEA had not complied with the order. The district court enjoined Mumford from accepting–and TEA from funding–all of the transfers that reduced or impeded desegregation in Hearne. Mumford and TEA subsequently appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

On July 24, 2006, the Fifth Circuit reversed and vacated the district court’s judgment. In its opinion, the Fifth Circuit held that the district court’s factual findings were clearly erroneous and that its remedy was overly broad. The Fifth Circuit further held that Mumford could not be held liable for violating the desegregation order without a finding that it intentionally engaged in segregative conduct because it was not a party defendant to the original desegregation lawsuit.

This is a long-standing desegregation case in the District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. On November 9, 2006, the court approved a consent decree that obliges the district to take measures in the areas of student attendance and assignment, facilities, employee assignment, and student transfers. These measures include, but are not limited to: maintaining facilities and resources at Ruth Hill, a former black school, that are comparable to those at other elementary schools; implementing new attendance zones and policies; and assigning principals and instructional staff in a manner that does not identify a school as intended for one race.

The Section assessed whether the Dublin City School District (Dublin) was complying with its school desegregation orders and applicable federal law. In the course of its review, the Section determined that Dublin’s ability grouping and heterogeneous class assignments were violating a desegregation order. The Section also determined that Dublin was using race-based class assignments to dissuade white students from transferring to the surrounding majority white district of Laurens County (Laurens) and that transfers from Dublin to Laurens were negatively impacting desegregation in Dublin’s schools. The Section attempted unsuccessfully to negotiate voluntary relief with Dublin and Laurens.

On April 15, 2004, the Section filed a motion and supporting memorandum to hold Dublin in contempt for its class assignment violations and for further relief against Dublin and Laurens to enforce an order governing interdistrict transfers. Dublin moved for unitary status, and the Section filed an opposition. Pursuant to the court’s instructions, the United States filed a motion to join Laurens as a necessary defendant and a supplemental complaint against Laurens.

On June 23, 2005, after extensive discovery, the United States and Dublin agreed to a consent order and a settlement agreement that resolved all issues between them, except for the interdistrict transfer issue. The consent order, which was approved by the court on July 1, 2005, governs student assignments to classes and schools, extracurricular activities, and transportation. The settlement agreement governs faculty, administrators, staff, gifted programs, special education, and diploma tracks. Many of the black students improperly classified as having a Mild Intellectual Disability or an Emotional/Behavioral Disorder have been exited from special education under the agreement.

On February 21, 2006, the Section moved for summary judgment against Laurens on the interdistrict transfer issue. Laurens filed an opposition, and the Section filed a reply. The Section also moved for summary judgment against Dublin. Dublin opposed by adopting Laurens’s opposition. Laurens moved for summary judgment on the transfer issue, but Dublin did not. The Section filed an opposition to Laurens’s motion and a motion to exclude Laurens’s expert report. This motion and the parties’ cross motions for summary judgment are fully briefed and pending before the court. To obtain copies of the unsealed exhibits to any of the linked documents, please call (202) 514-4092.

This case arose out of a long-standing school desegregation suit filed by the United States on August 1, 1969 against the State of Georgia and 81 individual school districts. Subsequent to substantive rulings from the District Court and the Court of Appeals, the District Court approved a comprehensive consent decree in 1974. Thereafter, in March 2013, the District Court approved a consent decree with provisions addressing each of the Green factors: (1) student assignment, including school assignment, student transfers, classroom assignment, gifted and talented, and discipline; (2) faculty and staff, including faculty assignment and faculty hiring; (3) transportation; (4) facilities; and (5) extracurricular activities. On May 25, 2017, the District Court approved a new consent decree, which replaced the March 2013 consent decree and all previous orders in the matter. The May 2017 consent decree provides that the district has satisfied its obligations in the areas of transportation, extracurricular activities, and facilities, and includes remedial measures to address outstanding concerns related to the remaining Green factors, student assignment and faculty and staff. The consent decree is intended to enable the district to establish the record needed for a declaration of full unitary status.

In the late 1980's, the litigation was reactivated when the United States and the plaintiff-intervenors moved to compel Meriwether to comply with the July 23, 1973 permanent injunction. Those proceedings resulted in an order dated June 28, 1990, which established a new student attendance zone plan, prohibited most intra-district and inter-district transfers, and required teaching and staff assignments at schools to remain within 5% of the district-wide racial percentages for teachers and staff. The court also ordered Meriwether to offer the same courses above the core curriculum at both Manchester and Greenville High Schools. In 1996, the court approved a five-year facilities plan proposed by the district. In 1999, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s approval of the plan. United States & Ridley v. State of Georgia (Meriwether Co. Bd. Of Educ.), 171 F.3d 1333 (11th Cir. 1999).

On August 28, 2003, Meriwether moved for a declaration of unitary status. The United States objected to the district’s motion. Subsequent to comprehensive discovery and negotiations, the court approved a Consent Decree on October 21, 2004, which essentially requires the district to fully implement the plan previously approved by the court and to see unitary status in 2007.

The Section intervened in a suit filed by plaintiffs who sought relief from violations of a court-ordered settlement agreement made between private plaintiffs and the district in 1976. The suit involved allegations that defendants failed to provide equal educational services to American Indian students in the district. Our complaint-in-intervention alleged that the district failed to provide equal educational opportunities to American Indian students and failed to provide an appropriate program of education for limited-English-proficient Navajo students. The case was settled by consent agreement and covered the issues raised in our complaint. The settlement called for the establishment of four committees to review the district's programs in general curriculum, special education, and bilingual education and to hear disputes that arise under the agreement. The district has adjusted its educational programs accordingly, including its program for students who are limited English proficient.

This case was brought by the Section in 1980 as both an education and housing desegregation case against the City of Yonkers, the Yonkers Board of Education (YBOE), and the Yonkers Community Development agency. The Yonkers Branch of the NAACP (NAACP) intervened as plaintiffs in 1981, and the case was certified as a class action on behalf of all parents of minority (black and Hispanic) children attending the Yonkers Public Schools (YPS) and all minority residents of Yonkers currently residing in, or eligible to reside in, publicly assisted housing. In 1985, the district court found that the defendants had intentionally segregated the City's public schools and housing over a forty-year period. The court order designed to desegregate the schools became known as the Educational Improvement Plan I (EIP I). EIP I, which primarily involved a magnet school program, desegregated the district with respect to student and faculty assignment.

In September 1987, the YBOE filed a cross-claim against the State of New York, alleging that the State also was liable for the prior segregation in housing and education and that there were continuing vestiges of the prior school segregation that were not being addressed by EIP I. In 1993, the district court found that vestiges of segregation existed in the YPS but that precedent from the Second Circuit precluded the court from holding the State liable as a defendant. In 1996, a panel of the Second Circuit distinguished this precedent and ruled that the State could be held liable for the prior segregation. In 1996,the City filed a third-party cross-claim against the State to obtain state contributions to the costs of implementing the school desegregation orders. In 1997, the district court held that the same vestiges identified in 1993 still existed in 1997, and it ordered the State and City to fund a remedial plan known as EIP II. These defendants appealed.

In June 1999, a panel of the Second Circuit initially reversed the district court's 1993 and 1997 vestiges findings and remanded the case to end the action. In a November 1999 decision, the panel withdrew the June 1999 decision, but maintained its reversal of the vestiges findings and remanded the case to the district court to determine if any other vestiges existed. In November 2000, the district court found that five vestiges of segregation existed in YPS as of 1997: (1) disproportionate academic tracking of minority students into the least demanding classes; (2) disproportionately high discipline of minority students; (3) disproportionately high referrals of minorities to special education; (4) inadequate pupil personnel services; and (5) inadequate services for limited-English-proficient students. The court directed the court-appointed monitor to determine whether evidence since 1997 showed that these five vestiges still existed, and it urged the parties to settle the case.

The Section and the other parties were actively involved in negotiations until they reached a settlement of the case in January 2002. In March 2002, the court conducted a fairness hearing and approved the settlement. The settlement dismissed the education portion of the case with prejudice while retaining court jurisdiction to enforce the settlement's terms. In the settlement, the parties did not agree that the YPS was entitled to a court declaration of unitary status, but rather that the YPS was unitary with respect to the six Green factors and that disputed issues regarding vestiges were resolved by the educational programs and funding provided under the settlement. The settlement required the State to provide $300 million over a five-year period to fund over forty remedial educational programs. The settlement ended on its own terms on June 30, 2006, effectively ending the case.

In this long-standing desegregation case, a consent decree negotiated between the Section and the school district was approved by the court on October 15, 2004. The consent decree includes provisions requiring the district to: cease assigning students to classrooms in a manner that creates racially segregated classrooms; conduct an investigation of racial differences in assignment to its gifted and talented program; alter its method for assigning students to honors classes; cease allowing the use of race-conscious policies or procedures in all of its extracurricular activities; and desegregate certain bus routes.

This longstanding desegregation case was filed by the United States in 1967, and a private plaintiff was granted the right to intervene in 1987. On July 23, 1969, the court approved the school district's first desegregation plan, and, in response to a motion for further relief, the court issued a new order concerning student assignment on April 20, 1987, which was subsequently modified in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2003, and 2005. On May 28, 2009, the court issued an order granting, in part, and denying, in part, a motion filed by the school district for approval of a new desegregation plan. The court subsequently declared the school district partially unitary status in the areas of transportation (March 9, 2012), faculty and staff assignment (Sept. 2, 2012), and extracurricular activities (Dec. 14, 2012). The school district also filed a motion for a declaration of partial unitary status in the area of facilities, which was denied and later renewed on August 18, 2013. On April 6, 2014, the district filed a motion for a declaration of full unitary status, which the United States opposed on June 3, 2014. On October 8, 2014, the court issued an order directing the parties to participate in mediation on all unresolved issues, and on May 21, 2015 approved a negotiated consent order that requires the district to implement a new student assignment and transfer policy; adopt new outreach and admission procedures at the district's charter and magnet schools; and implement a new student discipline policy.

In this long-standing desegregation case involving the Bertie County (North Carolina) Board of Education, the Section commenced informal discovery to assess whether the school district was complying with its desegregation order and applicable federal law. Based on its review of the district, the Section identified concerns regarding the school district’s assignment of students, faculty and staff assignments, and student transfer policies. The school district and the Section engaged in good-faith negotiations about these and other issues, but were not able to develop a mutually satisfactory agreement.

On September 26, 2002, the Section filed a motion requesting further relief. In its supporting memorandum of law, the Section asked the district court to order the school district to develop a new desegregation plan that would address vestiges of segregation in student, faculty, and staff assignments as well as student transfers. On April 22, 2003, the district court issued an order granting the Section's motion and directing the school district to file a new desegregation plan to address the vestiges identified in the Section's motion.

On December 19, 2003, the school district filed its proposed desegregation plan. After discovery and negotiations, the Section filed a response to the plan on February 24, 2005. In this response, the Section objected only in part to the proposed student assignment plan, which would have failed to desegregate Askewville Elementary School to the extent practicable. The Section also recommended consideration of more effective alternatives for desegregation and raised the issue of the poor condition of JP Law Elementary School, a small historically black school with declining enrollment. The parties reached an interim agreement on these lingering issues, which culminated in a consent order entered on June 24, 2005. This order called for the reconfiguration of attendance zone lines for Askewville, an independent facilities assessment of the elementary and middle schools in the district, and the development of a new student assignment plan.

Following the completion of the facilities assessment and further negotiations, the parties reached agreement about student assignment, transfers, and facilities. This agreement, reflected in the court-approved consent order of March 17, 2006, established a timeline for closing Askewville and JP Law Elementary Schools and required the re-drawing of elementary school attendance zone lines. The order also prohibited the consideration of race in classroom assignments in other elementary schools and enumerated annual reporting requirements. Finally, the order declared that the school district had complied with its desegregation obligations with respect to transportation, extra-curricular activities, and faculty and staff assignment.

This longstanding school desegregation case was initiated by the United States in 1970. On January 13, 2017, the United States and the Hendry County School Board filed a joint motion for declaration of partial unitary status and sought court approval of a stipulation governing faculty and staff recruiting and student discipline. On January 23, 2017, the court granted the parties’ motion, declaring that the school district had achieved partial unitary status with respect to student assignment between schools, transportation, facilities, and extracurricular activities. The court also approved the parties’ stipulation regarding faculty and staff recruiting and student discipline and will retain jurisdiction over these areas.

In 1980, the United States filed suit against the Chicago Board of Education alleging the board was violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Titles IV and VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by unlawfully segregating students in its schools on the basis of race and national origin. On the same day the United States filed its complaint, the parties filed a school desegregation consent decree the court entered on September 24, 1980.

In January 2003, the court directed the parties to examine the continued viability of the 1980 consent decree. The parties evaluated the board’s compliance with its desegregation obligations and jointly developed a modified consent decree sought to achieve the goals of the original consent decree under the changed factual and legal circumstances facing the board. On March 1, 2004, the Court approved the modified consent decree, which required the board to fulfill obligations in the following areas: student assignment; faculty assignment; facilities; transportation; compensatory and supplemental programs; desegregation funding; discipline; higher level course offerings; extracurricular activities; and English Language Learner (“ELL”) programs.

The United States moved to enforce the modified consent decree on four occasions. On one such occasion, the United States filed a motion to enforce the board’s desegregation funding obligations and its duty to provide majority-to-minority (“M-to-M transfers”). The board filed an opposition, and the United States filed a reply. On December 7, 2004, the court issued an opinion in favor of the United States. On August 26, 2005, the United States filed a motion to show cause because the board once again failed to comply with its desegregation funding duties. The board filed an opposition, and the United States filed a reply. On September 21, 2005, the court ruled that the board’s 2005-06 desegregation budget did not comply with the modified consent decree. The parties resolved this dispute through a stipulated settlement the court approved on November 9, 2005.

In the fall of 2005, the court asked the parties and amici to file position papers on whether the modified consent decree should be dismissed or continued in an altered form. The parties filed briefs requesting court approval of a second amended consent approving the parties’ settlement with slight modifications. The August 10, 2006 order requires the board to: continue magnet and specialized schools, offer M-to-M transfers, monitor open enrollment transfers to ensure they do not negatively impact desegregation, fund compensatory programs at racially isolated schools, take steps to diversify the applicant pool for principals, and provide adequate services to ELL students.

On February 16, 2008, the United States filed a motion to enforce the ELL provisions of the 2006 amended consent decree. The United States argued the board had failed to comply with these ELL provisions in three ways: (1)the board had not demonstrated 30% of its special education ELLs were appropriately served, (2) thousands of ELLs received no ELL services or untimely and inadequate ELL services, and(3)the board failed to provide native language instruction and materials for many of its Transitional Bilingual Education programs. After conducting fact and expert discovery, the parties participated in a twelve-day trial in early 2009 regarding whether the board had achieved unitary status in all areas. At the trial, the board sought dismissal of the entire case, and the United States vigorously opposed dismissal of the ELL provisions. On February 20, 2009, the United States filed a post-trial brief, urging the court to require the board to file a proposal regarding how it intends to operate the magnet and specialized schools so the court can assess the board’s good faith, and to order appropriate relief to ensure ELLs receive the services required by the August 10, 2006 order. The parties await a ruling from the court.

On February 20, 2009, the United States filed a post-trial brief, urging the court to require the board to file a proposal regarding how it intends to operate the magnet and specialized schools so the court can assess the board’s good faith, and to order appropriate relief to ensure ELLs receive the services required by the August 10, 2006 order. On September 3, 2009, the United States filed a supplemental brief in light of the Supreme Court ruling in Horne v. Flores. On September 24, 2009, the court vacated the August 10, 2006 order and dismissed the case.

In this longstanding desegregation case, January 7, 2009, the Court entered a consent decree negotiated by the parties finds the district unitary in all areas except student assignment and quality of education. Pursuant to the terms of the consent decree, the District will seek the Southeastern Equity Center’s assistance in the administration of disciplinary measures and ensuring students equal access to admission in the District’s gifted programs.

This school desegregation lawsuit was initiated by the United States on November 30, 1970. On April 1, 1971, the court ordered defendants to implement a desegregation plan, which was modified by subsequent court orders in 1979, 1981, and 1992. On June 30, 2008, the court approved a consent decree declaring the school district partially unitary in the areas of student assignment, transportation, extracurricular activities, and facilities. To address the United States' concerns that a number of Valdosta's schools were racially identifiable in terms of the demographics of school-based personnel, the 2008 consent decree required the Board to take additional steps to meet its obligations in the areas of faculty and staff. The Board was required to develop personnel policies and procedures related to the recruitment, hiring, and assignment of faculty and certified staff; to assign school-based personnel so that no school would be racially identifiable by its faculty; to maintain applications for employment for a three-year period; and to submit periodic compliance reports to the United States and the court. On March 21, 2011, the Board filed a motion for unitary status and motion to dismiss. The United States, finding that the Board had not fully complied with the terms of the 2008 Consent Decree, opposed the Board's motions in a response filed on November 21, 2011. Following settlement negotiations, the parties agreed to a consent order, approved by the court on February 29, 2012, which modifies and extends the terms of the 2008 Consent Decree for two years. Pursuant to the 2012 Consent Order, the Board agreed to withdraw its motion for unitary status and motion to dismiss. For more information on the 2012 Consent Order, please see this press release.

In this desegregation case, the United States determined that the Calhoun County school district was permitting students to transfer to any school in the district without regard to the impact these transfers had on the school district's desegregation obligations. The United States and the school district agreed on a transfer policy that governs the transfer of students within the school district and to other school districts. The parties presented the transfer policy as part of a consent decree that was submitted to the federal district court for its consideration and approval. In 2004, the parties also agreed to the consolidation of all middle school grades at one school located in the district. This agreement was approved by the court and became effective in the 2004-05 school year.

In 2001, the Section received complaints from Asian students at Lafayette High School (LHS) in Brooklyn, NY that alleged numerous instances of national origin discrimination. This discrimination took many forms, ranging from inadequate services for English Language Learner (ELL) students to school officials’ indifferent reaction to persistent verbal and physical peer harassment of Asian students. In one well-publicized case, four Chinese students returning to LHS for their senior year were informed that they had graduated the previous year, though guidance counselors had erroneously informed them otherwise. School officials initially prohibited the graduated students from returning to high school for an additional year of college preparation, notwithstanding the fact that it was too late for them to apply for college admission or receive financial aid. In other cases, Asian students at LHS who assumed they were on track to graduate were forced to return for additional semesters after falling one or two credits short of their graduation requirement when counselors failed to schedule them for the correct classes.

After a lengthy investigation the United States filed a complaint against the City of New York and the Board of Education of the New York City School District on February 2, 2004. The United States alleged violations of Title IV of the Civil Rights Act stemming from defendants’ failure to ameliorate the hostile environment for Asian students at LHS, and further charged that defendants violated the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA) by failing to take appropriate action to help ELL students overcome their language barriers. Four months later, the parties entered into a consent decree that obliged defendants to develop a compliance plan to remedy the transgressions alleged in the United States’ complaint. The Section, in collaboration with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York, is currently monitoring the defendants’ performance under the compliance plan to ensure that there is no recurrence of the events that gave rise to the complaint.

The Section brought suit against Virginia in 1990 under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, after receiving a signed, written complaint from a female high school student in Virginia about the males-only admission policy of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI). In 1996, the Supreme Court ruled that Virginia had failed to justify its exclusion of women from VMI's unique educational program.

Following the Supreme Court's decision and VMI's admission of women in 1997, the Section monitored the integration of women into the institution. As a result of a March 21, 2000 Order requiring Virginia to provide more extensive information on its integration efforts at VMI, the Section reviewed reports regarding male and female students in the areas of recruitment and admissions, retention, financial aid, gender relations, physical training, and women's varsity athletics. The Section worked cooperatively with Virginia to resolve its concerns arising from information contained in the reports, and, as a result, the parties signed and the court entered a Joint Motion for Dismissal on December 6, 2001.

On February 23, 2024, the District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas approved a consent order in the England School District desegregation case to ensure the District broadens its recruitment efforts and conduct hiring on a non-discriminatory basis. As part of the consent order, the district will be required to:

• Collect data on the race of applicants for administrator and Certified Staff vacancies, track whom the District interviews, selects and hires for those positions, and to document the reasons for the hiring decisions;
• Maintain a recruitment and retention team;
• Ensure vacancies are properly advertised on employment sites, social media, and local sources of publicity;
• Develop recruiting partnerships with specific colleges; and
• File with the Court twice yearly status updates and share the information in those status reports with the public at school board meetings.

The court will retain jurisdiction over the consent order during its implementation, which is expected to last two years, and the Justice Department will monitor the district’s compliance.

On December 6, 2016, the District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas approved a consent order to address the remaining issue in the Watson Chapel School District desegregation case, the administration of school discipline. The consent order will replace the use of punitive discipline with more positive approaches as part of an overall focus on improving student achievement and school climate. As part of the consent order, the district will be required to:

• Revise its Code of Conduct, which currently allows the harshest discipline to be imposed for the most minor offense, to instead strictly limit the use of exclusionary discipline, including prohibiting expulsions or out-of-school suspensions for offenses that do not threaten safety;
• Stop the use of corporal punishment, which has been disproportionately applied against black students and undermined the creation of a positive school climate;
• Assess the district’s support services for students with disabilities to ensure that students, particularly students of color, are not disciplined for their disabilities; and
• Enter into an agreement with the law enforcement agencies that provide School Resource Officers to the district that makes clear that Officers will not become involved in enforcing school discipline rules, prevents students from being arrested for minor misconduct and requires the Officer to provide a report to the District any time the Officer becomes involved in an incident at a school.

The court will retain jurisdiction over the consent order during its implementation, which is expected to last three years, and the Justice Department will monitor the district’s compliance. For more information, please see this press release.

In this long-standing desegregation case involving the Covington County (Mississippi) School District, the Section had concerns about the district’s two virtually one-race schools, how the district’s staff assignment and school construction have reinforced those two virtually one-race schools, and the district’s use of race in extracurricular activities and awards (to include race-based homecoming queens). Despite the fact that the district overall enrolled about half-black students and half-white students, the district nevertheless maintained one virtually one-race black elementary school, Hopewell (grades K-6), and one virtually one-race white attendance center, Seminary (grades K-12), that enrolled over 60% of all of the white students in the district. Hopewell is the only school in the district without a neighborhood middle or high school. Upon graduating from Hopewell, Hopewell students attended grades 7-12 at a majority black middle and high school (ranked passing and Level III in academic achievement by the state) about 10-12 minutes by bus from Seminary (ranked highest achieving and Level V in academic achievement by the state). The district and the Section engaged in good-faith negotiations about these and other issues, but were not able to develop a mutually satisfactory agreement.

On November 25, 2003, the Section filed a motion requesting further relief and a memorandum of law in support of that motion. In its filings, the Section asked the district court to order the school district to develop a new desegregation plan that would address vestiges of segregation in student assignment, staff assignment, school construction, and extracurricular activities.

On April 28, 2005, the United States filed a motion for partial summary judgment, challenging the district’s race-based extracurricular activities. The district then agreed to enter into a Consent Decree that required it to cease any practices utilizing a student’s race, color, or national origin in the selection or eligibility for participation in any extracurricular activity and to develop written racially non-discriminatory extracurricular activity policies.

On March 8, 2006, after additional discovery and extensive settlement discussions, the district and the United States entered into a Consent Decree resolving the remaining issues in the case. As a result of this Consent Decree, the district made the following modifications, among others, to its existing desegregation plan for the following school year: (1) all students attending Hopewell for grades K-6 will attend Seminary for grades 7-12, thereby eventually desegregating Seminary for grades 7-12; (2) the district committed to publicize its Majority-to-Minority transfer program; (3) the district committed to implement a compensatory enrichment program at Hopewell (a pre-K program) with the primary purpose to “enhance education” at Hopewell and the secondary purpose to “encourage white students who reside in other attendance zones” to attend Hopewell; (4) the district is required to conduct a facilities organization study and to submit all plans for construction and renovation to the United States prior to commencing any construction and renovation at Seminary; and (5) the district is required to engage in a comprehensive analysis of the bus routes for Hopewell students in order to reduce the length of all such bus routes to the extent practicable.

This longstanding school desegregation case was initiated by the United States in 1970. On February 21, 2018, the United States and the Jackson County School Board filed a joint motion for declaration of partial unitary status and sought court approval of a stipulation governing faculty and staff recruitment, hiring, and promotion, and student discipline. On February 23, 2018, the court granted the parties’ motion, declaring that the school district had achieved partial unitary status with respect to student assignment between schools, transportation, facilities, and extracurricular activities. The court also approved the parties’ stipulation regarding faculty and staff recruitment, hiring, and promotion, and student discipline and will retain jurisdiction over these areas. For more information, please see this press release.

This school desegregation lawsuit was initiated by the United States on June 8, 1966. In a decree dated August 1, 1969, the Court ordered a desegregation plan for the district's schools, subsequently modified by a 1970 order and 1971 consent decree. Pursuant to a Fifth Circuit Decision, dated July 13, 1979, the public laboratory schools at Grambling State University and Louisiana Tech University were added to the case. A 1984 consent decree addressed the desegregation obligations of the lab schools. In 2011, following a unitary status review, the Department of Justice submitted a status report to the Court identifying areas of noncompliance by the defendants. The school board filed responses to the status report on September 15, 2011 and October 15, 2011. Grambling State University and Louisiana Tech University each filed responses on October 17, 2011. Following negotiations, the Department of Justice and the school board submitted a superseding consent order, approved by the Court on May 24, 2012, which granted the Board partial unitary status in the areas of faculty, staff, transportation, extracurricular activities, and facilities. The superseding consent order required the board to implement a school pairing plan to desegregate the four K-5 elementary schools in the board's Ruston attendance zone and to implement revised intra-district student transfer policies. For additional information on the superseding consent order, please see this press release.

On June 2, 2015, the Court approved a supplemental consent order, in which the Board agreed to address the Division's concerns regarding the Board's classroom assignment practices at the four elementary schools located in the Ruston attendance zone. Under the supplemental consent order, the Board will implement the following key changes at the four elementary schools: (1) assign students to homerooms so that the percentage of black and white students in each homeroom reflects the percentage of black and white students in each grade level at each school; (2) refrain from grouping students into homerooms based on students' perceived abilities and ensure that students of all academic levels are assigned to each homeroom; (3) ensure that no homeroom class has more than forty percent special education inclusion students; and (4) transform the Advanced Learning Academy ("ALA") program into a school-wide, racially diverse enrichment program designed to develop the gifts and talents of all students (if the Board chooses to continue operating the ALA program). For additional information on the supplemental consent order, please see this press release.

In 2002 and 2003, private plaintiffs brought suits against the he Lowndes County school district asserting non-compliance with its desegregation obligations, primarily in West Lowndes, an almost all-black area of the district, pursuant to a pursuant to a desegregation order that the district has been operating under since 1970. In 2004, these complaints were consolidated with the United States’ case, and in January 2006, the Court signed a consent order requiring the district to make significant changes to further desegregation. The district was to make improvements to the virtually all-black high school to make them comparable to the majority white high schools including district requirements to: purchase land adjacent to the West Lowndes High School and build a baseball field, upgrade facilities at the virtually all-black high school to make them comparable to the majority white high schools, create band and football practice fields at the virtually all-black high school, remedy short-comings at the virtually all-black elementary and middle schools including upgrading certain classrooms, renovating an auditorium/gymnasium, and removing unseemly sewage lagoons on these premises, implement educational programming at the West Lowndes Middle and High Schools to foster future AP and advanced classes at the high school, teaching advanced classes (AP) on par with the array of course offerings at the majority white schools even if only requested by one child, and to cease using race-conscious policies in the selection of extracurricular activities such as class superlatives and homecoming courts.

In 2007, the Section determined the district was not in compliance with the 2006 order. Nonetheless, on August 21, 2008, the District filed a motion for unitary status. The Section opposed the district’s motion and moved to enforce the 2006 order on the grounds the district: (1) failed to built a baseball facility as ordered (2) failed to install facilities improvements properly resulting in leaks at the entryway to the building; (3) failed to develop policies and procedures related to advanced instruction; and (4) failed to recognize continued complaints of racial harassment and discrimination by community in the district’s majority white schools. On October 15, 2008, the parties withdrew their motions, initiated negotiations, and on February 3, 2009, the court entered a consent order requiring the district to repair the baseball field and entryway at the virtually-all-black high school, develop and support an advanced instruction curriculum (AP) at the virtually-all-black middle school and high school, and adopt and implement a non-discrimination policy to systemically address continued community and parent concerns.

In 1978, the United States sued the Marion County School District (Florida) for maintaining a segregated school system. In 1983, the district court approved a Stipulated Agreement of the parties that, among other things, implemented a plan for further desegregation of the district, including the conversion of two de jure and almost 100% black schools into a district-wide magnet. Since that time, the court entered a decree in 1995 and a modified decree in 2004 to resolve the outstanding desegregation issues. The 2004 modified decree clarified the requirements in the 1995 decree and set forth detailed provisions regarding student assignment (including a policy on out-of-area transfers), the magnet schools, new school construction, staff assignment and recruitment, and the district's reporting obligations.

After finding noncompliance with the extant desegregation order in this case, the Division negotiated a settlement agreement with the district in 2001. In 2003, the school district moved for unitary status and dismissal of the case despite its noncompliance with the 2001 agreement. The Division filed an opposition to the motion on grounds of noncompliance. Following briefing on the issues, the parties negotiated a new agreement that required the district to take specified steps in the areas of student and faculty assignment. Under the agreement, the district agreed to establish a magnet program at a historically black school, to strictly enforce its student transfer policies, and to assign faculty and staff in a way that does not perpetuate the historic racial identifiability of the district's schools. In 2007, the district again moved for unitary status. The Division filed an opposition and a motion for further relief on the grounds that the district had failed to comply with the portions of the 2003 agreement pertaining to transfer policies and faculty assignment.

On July 21, 1966, the United States initiated this lawsuit against the Richland Parish School District. On July 31, 1969, the Court entered a decree setting forth a plan to desegregate the school district. In 2010, the United States with the cooperation of the School Board began a comprehensive review of the School Board’s compliance with its obligations under the operative court orders in this case. Upon completion of its review, the United States concluded that the School Board satisfied the requirements for unitary status with respect to facilities, extracurricular activities, and transportation. On March 17, 2013, the Court granted the District’s consent order declaring partial unitary status and dismissal in the areas of facilities, transportation and extracurricular activities. The parties continue to negotiate the remaining areas of student assignment, faculty, and staff.

This longstanding desegregation case was filed by the United States in 1970. On August 14, 1970, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Jacksonville Division, issued an order requiring the District to adopt and implement a school desegregation plan. On August 17, 1971, the Court amended its previous desegregation order and required the District to implement a student assignment plan in accordance with the principles established in Swann v. Charlotte Mecklenburg Bd. of Educ., 402 U.S. 1 (1970), and to follow provisions regarding faculty desegregation, transportation, school construction and site selection, student transfers, and extracurricular activities. On May 7, 1980, the Court removed the case from its active civil docket but the District remained subject to the 1971 Order, including its reporting obligations. On October 26, 2016, the Court entered an order granting the parties’ Joint Motion for Declaration of Partial Unitary Status and for Approval of Stipulation regarding Faculty and Staff Recruiting. The order declares the District partially unitary with respect to student assignment, including student transfers, facilities, transportation, and extracurricular activities. In addition, the order approves the Parties’ Stipulation Regarding Faculty and Staff Recruitment. The Section is monitoring compliance with the 2016 Order and Stipulation.

In this longstanding school desegregation case, the district court entered an order on December 18, 2014, approving the proposed consent order jointly submitted by the United States and the Suffolk City School Board. The consent order modified the School Board's student assignment plan by establishing zone lines for a new elementary school and implementing a voluntary majority-to-minority ("M-to-M") transfer program that furthers desegregation in the district. On March 20, 2017, the district court approved a subsequent consent order that declares the district has achieved partial unitary status in the areas of facilities, extracurricular activities, transportation, and faculty and staff assignment. The consent order retains judicial supervision over the area of student assignment--including the implementation and expansion of the M-to-M program, anticipated changes to school attendance zones, and student disciplinary practices--through the 2019-20 school year. For more information, please see this press release.

The United States filed this school desegregation case in 1980. The Court entered a Consent Order shortly thereafter on February 8, 1980. On April 17, 1980, the Court approved the District’s Desegregation Plan, which went into effect for the 1981-1982 school year and was subsequently modified with the Court’s approval in 1992, 2002, 2010, and 2015. In the fall of 2017, the District proposed a new student assignment plan for elementary and middle schools called “Focus 2018.” On April 30, 2018, the parties filed a joint motion and stipulation to obtain court approval of Focus 2018 and address the School Board’s forthcoming steps to further desegregation in other areas of the case. On June 7, 2018, the Court approved the new plan and the stipulation, which required the parties to identify agreed upon action steps regarding the other areas by August 31, 2018. On that date, the parties filed a joint motion and stipulation regarding consent decree compliance. On September 4, 2018, the Court approved this second stipulation, which requires the District to further desegregation by ensuring non-discrimination in student discipline, equitable student transportation, and continued review of high school programs and student enrollment practices. The stipulation also established monitoring and reporting requirements to promote District compliance with the Consent Order.

On July 15, 2015, the United States sent its findings to the State of Georgia stating that the State’s administration of the Georgia Network of Educational and Therapeutic Support (GNETS) program violates Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act by unnecessarily segregating students with disabilities from their peers in school. The State fails to ensure that students with behavior-related disabilities receive services and supports that could enable them to remain in, or return to, the most integrated educational placements appropriate to their needs.

On August 23, 2016, the United States filed a lawsuit against the State of Georgia in federal district court to remedy violations of the ADA pertaining to the State’s failure to provide thousands of public school students with behavior-related disabilities with appropriate mental health and therapeutic educational services and supports in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs. The lawsuit alleges that, as a result of the manner in which Georgia plans, funds, administers, and delivers its mental health and therapeutic educational services through the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support Program (“GNETS Program”), students with disabilities are unnecessarily segregated and provided unequal educational opportunities in GNETS Centers and Classrooms, where they are isolated from their non-disabled peers, when they could be served in general education classrooms. The lawsuit further alleges that other students with behavior-related disabilities are placed at serious risk of segregation in the GNETS Program. For more information, please see this press release.

In this desegregation case, the Section determined the McComb Municipal Separate School District had violated the terms of the governing desegregation order and federal law by clustering white students into particular classrooms in a manner resulted in a significant number of segregated, all-black classrooms at the District’s two elementary schools. Additionally, the District was impermissibly using raced-based procedures to select students for certain school-sponsored accolades, including McComb High School’s homecoming queen and court. These procedures had the effect of establishing separate elections for black and white candidates.

In March 2004, the district moved for unitary status. The United States filed a response and a motion for further relief. After discovery, the United States filed an opposition to the District’s motion for unitary status, which stated the United States' objections to unitary status in the areas of student assignment and extracurricular activities, but stipulated to unitary status and dismissal in the areas of transportation, hiring of faculty and administrators, facilities, and resource management. On July 13, 2006, the Court held a hearing to address the areas of dispute. The Court issued a memorandum opinion and order on April 18, 2008, that denied the district’s motion for unitary status and ordered the district to devise an assignment policy that results in meaningful racial interaction for all of the students attending the two elementary schools in question. To execute the requirements of the Court’s order, the court entered a consent decree on September 18, 2008, negotiated by the parties that establishes protocols for student assignment at the two elementary schools and establishes voting procedures for McComb High School’s homecoming court.

The Simpson County School District is under a desegregation order and a 1983 Consent Decree specifically governing employment procedures. The District moved for unitary status in November 2001, and the United States thereafter participated in discovery to evaluate the district's progress toward complete desegregation. The United States learned in March 2003 that the District was not following the specific hiring procedures mandated by the 1983 Consent Decree. To address allegations of racial discrimination in employment, the Consent Decree requires the District actively to recruit black applicants for faculty and administrative positions and to do so by advertising all such vacancies outside the district in regional newspapers and with various universities in the state. The District, however, followed a policy of advertising vacancies first within the District and then outside the district only if no qualified applicants were found within. The United States learned that the District sought to fill three vacancies in principal positions this past winter following that practice rather than the procedures mandated by the Consent Decree. Because the District employed no black personnel with the administrative certification necessary for the positions, the District made the positions available only to white persons and considered no black applicants for the job. The practice therefore contravened the purpose of the 1983 Consent Decree, and the United States filed a motion with a supporting memorandum in April 2003 and a reply to enforce the employment procedures detailed therein. A hearing was held on the motion in July 2003, and the court subsequently granted the United States' motion. The court's order required the District to reopen the three principal positions for the 2004-05 school year and to advertise the vacancies according to the requirements of the Consent Decree. Subsequently, the district moved for unitary status and we opposed. The court ruled in our favor and the district has appealed.

In this longstanding desegregation case, the Wayne County School District is subject to several court orders prohibiting the use of race in classroom assignment decisions and inter-district student transfers that impede the desegregation of the district's schools. In an August 10, 1970 order, the court ordered the district to adopt a desegregation plan, which was modified by several subsequent orders. On May 16, 2006, the court approved a consent order, which declared the district partially unitary in the areas of faculty assignment, staff assignment, transportation, extracurricular activities, and facilities. The 2006 consent order required the district to address the impermissible use of race in classroom assignment decisions at Waynesboro Elementary School (WES). On August 8, 2008, the court approved a consent order increasing the district's reporting requirements. In 2011, the United States notified the District of its determination that WES officials continued to use race as a factor in classroom assignment decisions and that white students residing in a majority-black attendance zone were impermissibly transferring to schools in a majority-white zone. To address these issues, the parties agreed to a consent order, approved by the court on January 3, 2012, requiring the district to adopt a random assignment system for classroom assignment at WES and to take steps to stop impermissible student transfers.

In December of 2009, the Section received a complaint from the Asian American Legal Defense Fund (AALDEF) on behalf of community advocates and Asian students at South Philadelphia High School (SPHS) in Philadelphia, PA that alleged numerous instances of national origin discrimination. This discrimination took many forms, including indifferent reaction to persistent verbal and physical peer harassment of Asian students. This discrimination culminated in one well-publicized instance where Asian students were violently attacked by their peers in and around school grounds. These attacks led to roughly a dozen Asian students being sent to the hospital, twenty-two suspension hearings and the transfer of several students to disciplinary or other schools.

After a lengthy investigation the United States filed a complaint and settlement agreement against the School District of Philadelphia and the School Reform Commission on December 15, 2010. The United States alleged violations of Title IV of the Civil Rights Act stemming from defendants’ failure to ameliorate the hostile environment for Asian students at SPHS, and further charged that defendants violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution due to their deliberate indifference to known instances of severe and pervasive harassment. The settlement agreement obliges defendants to develop an action plan to remedy the transgressions alleged in the United States’ complaint. The Section, in collaboration with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, is currently monitoring the defendants’ performance under the action plan to ensure that there is no recurrence of the events that gave rise to the complaint.

In this school construction case, the Section investigated the school district's plans to build a new elementary school in a particular section of Tunica County, Mississippi. This district has a majority black population, and concerns were raised that the proposed school would serve primarily white students and would cause further housing segregation in the county.

Because the school district was under order to desegregate its schools, the district had to obtain the court's approval for its plan. The Section submitted a brief providing the relevant legal standards for evaluating both the need for a new school and the appropriateness of the proposed location. Shortly thereafter, the parties entered into a consent order. As a result of the November 29, 1999 consent order, the District’s new elementary school was built two miles south of the originally proposed location, at a site that is closer to existing black communities.

In the course of reviewing the West Carroll Parish school district's compliance with its desegregation orders, the Section identified zone jumping within the district and student transfers from outside of the district. As a result, the United States negotiated Agreed Modifications to the Residency Verification and Transfer Provisions of the 1991 Consent Order, which were approved by the Court on August 11, 2003. The Section continues to monitor the district’s compliance with these strengthened transfer obligations and the elimination of its race-based homecoming election practices.

To address the persistence of three virtually all white schools and two other racially identifiable schools in this eight-school district, the Section proposed five student assignment plans to further school desegregation. The district rejected the proposed plans, and the Section filed a motion for further relief on November 29, 2005. The United States argued that the district never desegregated these three white schools and that the pre-Swann desegregation plan implemented by the district falls short of eliminating the vestiges of discrimination to the extent practicable. The district filed an opposition, which also served as a motion for unitary status, and the Section filed a reply.

On December 22, 2006, the United States filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that the evidence obtained in discovery established that the district had failed to eliminate its one-race schools to the extent practicable. The district moved for summary judgment on the grounds that it had achieved unitary status in the area of student assignment to schools. The United States filed an opposition to the district's motion on January 12, 2007, and a reply in support of its own motion on January 26, 2007. On February 14, 2007, the court issued a ruling granting the United States' summary judgment motion and denying that of the district. The court found that the district had failed to eliminate the vestiges of discrimination to the extent practicable and ordered that the trial set for February 26, 2007, proceed to consider an appropriate student assignment plan. In lieu of going to trial, the district and the United States reached agreement on a new desegregation plan in a three-year consent order, which the court approved on March 21, 2007.

On April 10, 2012, the Educational Opportunities Section of the Civil Rights Division and the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) reached a resolution agreement with the University of California, San Diego ("UCSD"), in San Diego, Calif., to resolve an investigation into complaints of racial harassment against African-American students on campus.

The investigation and settlement focused on multiple incidents beginning in February 2010, including public displays of nooses and a Ku Klux Klan-style hood, and the hosting of an off-campus party where students were invited to dress as stereotypes of African-Americans, as well as UCSD's response to the incidents. Following DOJ's and OCR's investigation, UCSD voluntarily entered into a resolution agreement with the departments.

Under the terms of the resolution agreement, UCSD will take steps to prevent racial harassment on campus, respond appropriately to harassment that occurs, and eliminate any hostile environment resulting from harassment. The university has agreed to revise its campus policies and procedures related to racial harassment to ensure they are consistent with federal civil rights laws; maintain an Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination to receive, investigate, and resolve complaints of harassment and discrimination; and provide mandatory trainings for staff and students on the university's anti-discrimination policies and procedures. The university also voluntarily initiated a number of additional programs to address campus climate issues, and the departments will monitor the implementation of those programs to evaluate their impact on resolving the departments' concerns. For more information, please see this press release.

On March 18, 2024, the Department notified the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) that the University had violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The Department found that from 2015 to 2020, UMBC failed to respond adequately to known allegations of sex discrimination in the Athletics Department. As a result, a former head coach engaged in sex-based harassment, including sexual assault, of male student-athletes, as well as discrimination on the basis of sex of female student-athletes, on an ongoing basis for years.

On April 3, 2024, the Department and UMBC reached a settlement agreement to address UMBC’s noncompliance with Title IX. The agreement followed the Department’s March 18, 2024 letter notifying UMBC that it did not comply with Title IX when, between 2015 and 2020, it failed to respond adequately to known allegations of sex discrimination in the Athletics Department. Under the agreement’s terms, UMBC will, among other things, ensure sufficient staffing and funding to maintain an effective Title IX compliance program; employ full-time staff to support individuals who have experienced sexual assault; promote greater awareness of its revised Title IX policy and protocols; provide targeted training to student-athletes and Athletics Department staff; create a policy outlining behavioral expectations for coaching staff; and implement climate surveys to identify and respond to the needs of student-athletes. The agreement also requires UMBC to pay up to $4.14 million in financial relief to individuals who the Department found experienced sex discrimination by the former head coach. The Department will monitor the UMBC’s implementation of this agreement, which will remain in place through the 2028-2029 academic year. For more information, please see the press release and plain-language summary of the agreement.

On May 1, 2012, the Civil Rights Division formally launched a Title IX compliance review and Title IV investigation of the University of Montana-Missoula's (the University) handling of student reports of sexual assault and sexual harassment. That same day, the Division launched a companion investigation of the University's campus police under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (Section 14141), and the anti-discrimination provisions of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (Safe Streets Act). See May 1, 2012 Press Release.

Shortly thereafter, the Division combined its Title IX compliance review with one initiated by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Title IX and Title IV both prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs. After conducting numerous interviews and an extensive review of the University's policies, grievance procedures, investigative practices, training, and responses to reports of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and retaliation, the Division and OCR identified a number of areas where the University needed to take further steps to ensure compliance with Title IX and Title IV.

On May 9, 2013, the Division and OCR reached a resolution agreement with the University to resolve their findings under Title IX and Title IV, and the Division reached a separate agreement to resolve its findings under Section 14141 and the Safe Streets Act. Under the terms of the Title IX-Title IV agreement, the University agreed to take significant, additional steps to: prevent sexual harassment and assault; to respond promptly and effectively to reports of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and retaliation; and to fully eliminate the effects of the hostile environment resulting from such harassment. These steps include: adopting revised policies and procedures for handling sex-based discrimination complaints, conducting training for all employees and students, disseminating information more clearly and broadly about how to report sexual harassment and assault, conducting annual climate surveys to assess students' knowledge of these issues and any barriers to their reporting, and evaluating the effect of the Agreement's remedies over time to ensure that they are effective. The Division and OCR will carefully monitor the University's implementation of the Agreement to ensure that the relief it provides reaches students quickly.

On December 5, 2014, the Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office, New Mexico, formally launched a Title IX compliance review and Title IV investigation of the University of New Mexico's (the University) handling of student reports of sexual assault. Title IX and Title IV both prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs. After conducting numerous interviews and an extensive review of the University's policies, grievance procedures, investigative practices, training, and responses to reports of sexual assault and sexual harassment, DOJ issued a Letter of Findings on April 16, 2016 which identified a number of areas where the University needed to take further steps to ensure compliance with Title IX and Title IV.

On October 17, 2016, DOJ reached an agreement with the University to resolve their findings under Title IX and Title IV. Under the terms of the Title IX-Title IV agreement, the University agreed to take significant, additional steps to: prevent sexual harassment and assault; to respond promptly and effectively to reports of sexual harassment and sexual assault; and to fully eliminate the effects of the hostile environment resulting from such harassment. These steps include: adopting revised policies and procedures for handling complaints of sexual harassment, conducting training for all students and responsible employees, disseminating information more clearly and broadly about how to report sexual harassment and assault, conducting annual climate surveys to assess students' knowledge of these issues and any barriers to their reporting, and evaluating the effect of the Agreement's remedies over time to ensure that they are effective. DOJ will carefully monitor the University's implementation of the Agreement to ensure that the relief it provides reaches students quickly. For more information, please see this press release.

On November 10, 2010, the Section entered into a Settlement Agreement with the University of South Carolina to resolve the Section’s investigation into allegations of race discrimination on campus. Under the Agreement, the University agreed to improve its policies and practices for receiving, investigating, and resolving complaints discrimination in a timely and effective manner and agreed to train students and employees on their responsibilities under the University’s policies, including when and how to report incidents of racial harassment or discrimination. Under the Agreement, the University agreed to adopt revised anti-discrimination and harassment policies before the start of the 2011-12 school year and to initiate training during the spring 2012 semester. On September 6, 2011, the Agreement was modified. For more information, please see the press release.

In this matter involving the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), Tennessee, the Department investigated a complaint alleging, in part, that UTHSC violated of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), 42 U.S.C. §§ 12131, et seq., by failing to reasonably modify policies, practices, and procedures when it employed a threat assessment process and placed a student on a mandatory medical leave of absence from her academic program because of her mental health condition without first considering accommodations to facilitate her continued enrollment. On July 22, 2016, the Department and UTHSC entered into a Settlement Agreement that prohibits the university from discriminating against any person on the basis of disability and from excluding any person with a disability from participation in or benefiting from its services, programs, or activities. In addition, the Agreement requires UTHSC to change its leave and withdrawal policies, and provide annual ADA training to faculty and staff. UTHSC also must ensure that the process it uses to evaluate a student’s request for accommodation or reasonable modification of policies is conducted independently from other campus administrative or discipline processes, and that any threat assessment involving a student with a disability is supported by an appropriate factual record and based on legitimate safety concerns, and not on speculation, stereotypes, or generalizations about persons with disabilities. Finally, the Agreement allows the complainant to recover $45,000 in compensation, and requires UTHSC to amend the student's academic record; destroy specified documents, including the complainant’s medical records; and take other steps to remedy the alleged discrimination.

After learning of allegations that Utah State University (the “University”) failed to respond to numerous reports of serious student-on-student sexual assault, the Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah (collectively, the “United States”) initiated a Title IX compliance review of the University. The United States reviewed the University’s response(s) to sexual assault and harassment complaint(s) over a more than four-year period. After conducting numerous interviews and an extensive review of the University’s policies, grievance procedures, training, student education efforts, and responses to reports of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and retaliation, the United States identified areas of noncompliance with Title IX.

On February 12, 2020, the United States reached a settlement agreement with the University to address the areas of noncompliance. Under the terms of the agreement, the University agreed to take significant steps including, among others: revising its notice of nondiscrimination and relevant sexual harassment policies, procedures, and practices; responding promptly, equitably, and adequately to known sexual harassment that has created a hostile environment; and training students and employees on University policies and federal laws pertaining to sexual harassment, how and to whom they can report allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation, the resources available and how to access them, and the University’s Title IX grievance procedures and potential outcomes. The United States will carefully monitor the University’s implementation of the agreement, which will remain in place through the 2022-2023 academic year. For more information, please see the press release.

On July 28, 2020, the United States executed a letter agreement with the University, extending the deadlines in the original settlement agreement. On May 20, 2024, the United States and Utah State University executed an extension to the agreement through the 2024-25 academic year.

On January 13, 2003, the Westfield High School L.I.F.E. Club and some of its student members filed a complaint and motion for preliminary injunction, alleging that the Westfield Public Schools and officials discriminated against their religious beliefs by refusing to allow them to distribute pamphlets containing a religious message, even though defendants permitted the distribution of secular pamphlets by these same students the year before. The plaintiffs alleged that this violated their rights to freedom of speech under the First Amendment, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and their rights to equal protection under the laws pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment.

The United States filed a motion to participate as amicus curiae in this matter, as the United States is charged with enforcement of Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which authorizes the Attorney General to seek relief if a school deprives students of the equal protections of the laws. The Court granted the United States' motion on February 26, 2003.

The United States filed a brief in support of plaintiffs' preliminary injunction. The United States argued that the school's restrictions on plaintiffs' speech violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments proscribing government regulations of speech that discriminate against a particular point of view – here a religious viewpoint.

On March 17, 2003, the Court granted the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction, enjoining defendants from prohibiting the students and the L.I.F.E. Club from distributing literature to fellow students, during non-instructional time, based on the content of the literature.

On June 16, 2003, the Court entered a Consent Decree in which the district agreed to use a revised Free Speech Policy and not to impose any prior restraints upon the plaintiffs to distribute literature unless the distribution failed to comply with the policy.

In this matter involving the Westminster Public Schools, the Section and the District of Colorado USAO examined whether the District was identifying and serving its English Learner (“EL”) students in compliance with the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (“EEOA”). EL students comprise approximately 46% of the District’s student population. On February 27, 2018, the District and the United States entered into an out-of-court settlement agreement to resolve the District’s noncompliance with the EEOA and ensure that EL students receive the support they need to succeed in the District’s educational programs. Under the agreement, the District will: identify and place EL students appropriately when they enroll in school; ensure that all ELs, including those with disabilities, receive adequate language services so that they can become proficient in English; provide ELs with access to appropriate grade-level content within the District’s Competency Based System; train teachers and administrators who implement the EL program adequately; monitor the academic performance of current, former, and long-term EL students; evaluate the effectiveness of the EL program over time; and ensure meaningful communication with Limited English Proficient parents about District and school programs and activities. The parties anticipate that the agreement will remain in place for three full school years.

On August 31, 2015, the Division formally launched a Title IX investigation and compliance review of Wheaton College after receiving a complaint regarding the College’s handling of a student’s report of sexual assault. The Division reviewed the College’s response to sexual assault and harassment complaints over an approximately three and a half-year period. After conducting numerous interviews and an extensive review of the College’s policies, grievance procedures, investigative practices, training, student education efforts, and responses to reports of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and retaliation, the Division identified areas where the College needed to take further steps to ensure compliance with Title IX and its regulations. On September 21, 2106, the Division reached a settlement agreement with the College to address these areas and bring it into compliance. Under the terms of the agreement, the College agreed to take significant, additional steps to: prevent sexual harassment and assault; respond promptly and effectively to reports of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and retaliation; and fully eliminate the effects of the hostile environment resulting from such harassment. These steps include, among others: revising its policies, procedures, and investigative practices to ensure the prompt and equitable resolution of sexual assault and harassment allegations; adequately investigating and responding to allegations of retaliation by students who reported sexual harassment or assault; taking sufficient action to fully eliminate sex-based hostile environments; and adequately training individuals designated to coordinate its Title IX efforts. The Division will carefully monitor the College’s implementation of the agreement, which will remain in place for at least three school years. For more information, please see this press release.

In this matter involving the Wicomico County Public School District in Maryland, the Section conducted an investigation into complaints that the District’s student discipline policies resulted in the discriminatory suspension of black and Latino students and students with disabilities, in violation of Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000c et seq., which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, or religion in public schools and institutions of higher education, and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12132, and its implementing regulations, 28 C.F.R. Part 35, which prohibits discrimination based on disability in services, programs and activities provided by State and local government entities.

After the investigation, the United States and the District negotiated and entered a voluntary out-of-court settlement agreement on January 19, 2017. Under the settlement agreement, the district will take steps to create positive and inclusive learning environments in all Wicomico County schools, including by timely responding to requests for reasonable modifications to District disciplinary policies, practices and procedures; providing students with supports and interventions before excluding them from school; limiting the use of discipline measures that remove students from the classroom; ensuring that discipline consequences are fair and consistent; establishing clear guidelines for when law enforcement intervention and other emergency response measures are appropriate; providing training to give teachers and administrators the tools necessary to manage their schools in a safe, effective and positive manner; and building data-driven monitoring and accountability systems.

On July 2, 2024, the Section entered into a settlement agreement with the Wichita Public Schools to address discrimination against 1) Black students in the district’s administration of school discipline and the referral of student conduct to law enforcement, and 2) students with disabilities in the district’s use of seclusion and restraint and operation of specialized schools. The agreement followed an investigation conducted under Title IV and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Under the settlement agreement, the school district will take proactive steps to ensure that its practices do not discriminate against students on the basis of race or disability. The district will, among other steps: eliminate the use of seclusion; restrict restraint of students to instances when their behavior poses an imminent danger of serious physical harm to the student or another person; provide appropriate interventions and supports to students with disabilities; develop a district-wide code of conduct, formalize and standardize dress code policies, and create a behavior intervention protocol to ensure the nondiscriminatory administration of discipline and to prohibit unnecessary exclusion of students from the school environment; create a system of district-level monitoring of schools’ administration of student discipline to ensure nondiscrimination; prohibit school security and law enforcement from becoming involved in minor student misbehavior that does not pose a safety concern, thereby avoiding criminalizing routine school discipline matters; ensure that it employs professionals with the requisite expertise and training to run and staff specialized schools for students with disabilities; provide counseling and compensatory education to students who have been repeatedly secluded; and create an office to monitor the district’s seclusion and restraint practices to ensure compliance with the agreement and assist district staff in providing required interventions and supports. For more information, please see this letter (in Spanish), press release (in Spanish) and summary of the agreement (in Spanish).

In this matter involving the Worcester, Massachusetts public school system, the Section conducted a review to determine whether the district was providing appropriate instruction and services to English Language Learner ("ELL") students as required by the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 ("EEOA"). After determining that the school district was not complying with the requirements of the EEOA, the United States entered into an out-of-court settlement agreement with the school district on January 26, 2009. Under this agreement, the school district agreed to take the following steps, among others, to: establish protocols for registration and identification; train faculty and intake staff concerning proper data entry for tracking; ensure timely, adequate and appropriate ELL services; provide translation services for parents and guardians, train ELL teachers, provide appropriate materials for ELL classes, ensure special education students are not denied appropriate ELL services, and monitor current and exited ELLs.

On July 10, 2012, the United States entered into a supplemental agreement with the school district that addressed, among other things, the school district's duty to: adequately test students for English language proficiency; properly train personnel involved in the identification and registration of ELLs; monitor and track the academic achievement of former ELLs; and ensure that classroom instruction provided to ELLs is delivered by teachers who are qualified to teach ELLs. After determining that the school district was still not in compliance with the 2008 and 2012 Agreements, the United States entered into a comprehensive second supplemental agreement with the district on July 11, 2016. The 2016 agreement replaces the 2008 Settlement Agreement and 2012 Supplemental Agreement and aims to address, among other issues: inadequate ESL and sheltered content instruction for ELLs, the need for more qualified ESL and sheltered content teachers, services and procedures for ELLs with disabilities, and insufficient translations and qualified interpreters for LEP parents.