Where They Draw the Line: School Secessions and the Resegregation of Public Schools in the United States
Locals in Baton Rouge refer to Florida Boulevard as their “Mason-Dixon line.” Footnote #1 content: See Molly Hennessy-Fiske, For Some Residents, Racial Tensions Invoke Reminders of a Segregation-Era Baton Rouge, L.A. Times (July 19, 2016), https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-baton-rouge-race-20160718-snap- story.html [https://perma.cc/AF4J-YBXM]. An overwhelming majority of the black residents in Baton Rouge are found North of Florida Boulevard, while most white residents are found South of Florida Boulevard. Footnote #2 content: See id. The racial make-up of the schools in Baton Rouge tells a similar story of stark segregation. Footnote #3 content: See Adam Harris, The New Secession, Atlantic (May 20, 2019), https://www.theatlantic.com/education/ archive/2019/05/resegregation-baton-rouge-public-schools/589381/ [https://perma.cc/9FKS-N9P2]. Top-rated majority-white schools in South Baton Rouge like the LSU Laboratory School receive an A or B rating under the Louisiana Department of Education’s grading system, while majority-black schools in North Baton Rouge like Broadmoor High School receive a C or D rating. Footnote #4 content: See id.; Louisiana Believes, Performance Scores, https://www.louisianabelieves.com/resources/library/ performance-scores (last visited Jan. 21, 2021) (click on the 2016 results for School and District Performance Scores) [https://perma.cc/44F7-3T6F]. The apparent differences in the racial makeup of Baton Rouge’s schools is one of the many side effects resulting from state and federal courts’ failure to adhere to the integration that Brown v. Board of Education mandated years ago. Footnote #5 content: See Neva Butkus, Separate and Unequal: School Segregation in Louisiana 65 years After Brown v. Board, Louisiana Budget Project (May 17, 2019), https://www.labudget.org/2019/05/separate-and-unequal- school-segregation-in-louisiana-65-years-after-brown-v-board/ [https://perma.cc/4TWM-JMMK]. From the moment the Supreme Court held that segregated schools deprived students of equal protection of the law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, white parents began adopting creative techniques for keeping their children in majority-white schools. Footnote #6 content: See id. Immediately following the Brown decision, parents began enrolling their children in private schools where the students were almost exclusively white. Footnote #7 content: Id. Others packed their belongings and fled from the more racially diverse districts to areas where black residents simply could not afford to live. Footnote #8 content: See Davis v. East Baton Rouge Parish Sch. Bd., 721 F.2d 1425, 1438 (5th Cir. 1983). Courts aided this effort by alleging that discretion provided to local school officials in determining how to fix the segregation issue left them with their hands tied. Footnote #9 content: See Bd. of Educ. of Oklahoma City Pub. Sch., Indep. Sch. Dist. No. 89, Oklahoma Cty., Okl. v. Dowell, 498 U.S. 237, 247-48 (1991). However, today some white parents have discovered an even easier approach to avoiding integrated schools. While in the past, white “flight” required parents to pack up their homes and head to new suburban neighborhoods, Footnote #10 content: Alana Semuels, White Flight Never Ended, Atlantic (July 30, 2015), https://www.theatlantic.com/ business/archive/2015/07/white-flight-alive-and-well/399980/ [https://perma.cc/4YVE-PU4S]. secession provides an easier option. Footnote #11 content: See Harris, supra note 3. With secession, white “flight” is now as simple as signing a peti-tion. Footnote #12 content: Id. Once enough petition signatures are gathered, an arbitrary fence-like boundary is erected around predominantly white neighborhoods and keeps white students and resources in and black students and low-income households out. Footnote #13 content: Id.
Secession occurs when well off families that are disproportionately white break-away from school districts comprised of low-income families that are disproportionately Black or Hispanic. Footnote #14 content: See Lauren Camera, School District Secession Accelerate School Segregation, Wash. Ctr. Equitable Growth (Sept. 4, 2019), https://equitablegrowth.org/gerrymandered-school-districts-perpetuate-segregation-by-keeping-low- income-students-out-which-is-bad-for-economic-growth/ [https://perma.cc/X3R4-6H46]. While the process of seceding varies from state to state, the result of successful secession is largely the same: high-income students who are overwhelmingly white hoard their plentiful resources in a new school district, and low- income students who are usually Black or Hispanic are left to make do with what is left. Footnote #15 content: See Edbuild, Fractured: The Accelerating Breakdown of America’s School (updated 2019) [hereinafter Fractured], https://edbuild.org/content/fractured/fractured-full-report.pdf [https:// perma.cc/T9R5-KACJ]. Since 2000, over one hundred communities have attempted to secede. Footnote #16 content: Id. Seventy-three of those attempts have been successful while another seventeen are still ongoing. Footnote #17 content: Id. These efforts have been initiated in states as liberal as California and states as conservative as Alabama. Footnote #18 content: Id. This trend reveals that white parents across the country still oppose the integration demanded in Brown years ago and that courts are unwilling to resist their attempts to resegregate schools.
This paper argues that to accomplish the integration demanded in Brown and protect black students’ right to an adequate education, courts must proactively limit secession attempts and acknowledge localism as a harmful vehicle for resegregation rather than a harmless policy decision. Part II provides a brief history of the Supreme Court’s enforcement of Brown after the Brown II decision and its subsequent retrenchment away from the Brown decision in the decades that followed. Part III introduces secession and reviews nationwide trends in the movement while displaying the harms secessions have inflicted on students of color. This section uses instances of secession in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Memphis, Tennessee to give readers a clear picture of how secessions impact students of color. Part IV argues that localism is an inadequate justification for secession and that courts analyzing the legality of secessions should use the theory of destructive localism to guide their analysis. Finally, Part V contends that in addition to courts’ embracing destructive localism, Congress should also adopt a statute similar to Section Five of the Voting Rights Act as a tool for actively policing secessions.
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