Racially segregated public schools have been illegal in Massachusetts since before the Civil War, and nationwide since the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision 72 years ago this month.
Even so, segregation persists to this day in the state’s K-12 system, effectively depriving tens of thousands of Black and Latino students of their constitutional right to an adequate education, a new state lawsuit argues.
The high-profile state legal challenge—filed May 20 in the Suffolk County Superior Court—adds new fuel to the decades-long push from civil rights advocates nationwide to promote racial integration in public schools. Plaintiffs including nine K-12 students and four community advocacy organizations are seeking a comprehensive plan from the state with concrete benchmarks and timelines for integrating schools.
“The fact that it’s 2026 and the state has this national reputation as a model but is continuing to exclude Black and Latino students from the best opportunities the state has to offer is simply unacceptable,” said GeDá Jones Herbert, chief legal counsel for Brown’s Promise, one of three legal groups representing the Massachusetts plaintiffs.
The case also serves as a response to restrictions the Trump administration and Republican-led states have imposed in recent years on efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in schools and beyond.
The second Trump administration has yanked $25 million in Biden-era grants aimed at desegregating urban schools; threatened financial penalties for districts that promote racial equity; attempted to lay off dozens of lawyers tasked with enforcing civil rights in schools; and lifted federal desegregation orders that have been in place since the 1960s.
“You may have heard [the Trump administration’s motto], ‘Send education back to the states,’” Herbert, who previously managed school desegregation cases at the Legal Defense and Educational Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said in an interview Wednesday. “Whether or not we agree with that, I think the thing we can agree with is that states, regardless of the federal government, have an obligation to serve their students.”
The Trump administration contends that diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools violate federal civil rights laws, and that it’s “prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education.”
In a statement from an agency spokesperson, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education emphasized its commitment to racial equity, but added that the legislature has the authority to change school district boundaries and enact new funding formulas.
“The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education believes that all students, no matter their income level, race/ethnicity, language, or disability, deserve schools where they are known, valued, and have the support they need to succeed,” wrote Jacqueline Reis, the agency’s communications director. “Massachusetts leads the nation in student achievement, and we are committed to building on this progress to strengthen our education system for every student in our state.”
A spokesperson for Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, didn’t respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
Segregation causes Black and Latino students to lose educational opportunities, plaintiffs argue
According to the legal complaint filed this week, the legacy of housing discrimination is partly to blame for the prevalence of school segregation in Massachusetts.
In the mid-20th century, the state pushed school districts to consolidate, and many did—but districts in communities where most residents were Black and Latino were largely left out of the restructuring.
The result, plaintiffs argue, is that Black and Latino students in Massachusetts disproportionately live in low-income communities with under-resourced public schools.
One plaintiff—an 8-year-old Black student—attends school in Brockton, where more than 80 percent of students are Black and Latino, and nearly three-quarters of students are from low-income families. In three nearby districts, fewer than 20 percent of enrolled students are Black and Latino, and fewer than one-quarter come from low-income families.
Research consistently shows that white students and students of color alike benefit from attending racially integrated schools. That’s in part because race and socioeconomic status are closely intertwined, and schools in impoverished areas tend to have fewer resources than schools in wealthy communities.
Massachusetts officials aren’t unaware of these realities. The state’s Racial Imbalance Advisory Committee released a report in 2024 highlighting that 60% of the state’s students attend a racially segregated school, and that students attending the most segregated schools perform demonstrably worse on academic exams.
The committee urged the state at the time to develop a meaningful plan to combat segregation in schools.
“We are filing this lawsuit because the state has yet to do so,” said Jillian Lenson, a senior attorney at Lawyers for Civil Rights, another of the three firms on the Massachusetts lawsuit.
The details of that plan are up for debate, plaintiffs’ lawyers said. But the complaint suggests a few evidence-based policies that plaintiffs hope state policymakers will consider.
Massachusetts could follow the lead of more than a dozen other states and expand “open enrollment” flexibility for students to choose public schools that best fit their needs. At least 1.6 million students in states with open enrollment policies attend a public school other than the one they were assigned, according to a 2025 analysis by the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank.
The state could also expand regional career and technical education schools, which bring together interested students from a range of communities.
Solutions that go unmentioned in the lawsuit, however, include forced school assignments and mandatory busing.
“We laud those who made sacrifices to get us where we are today. We also have been very intentional about making sure that we are prioritizing the benefits of integration, and not repeating any of the harms that resulted from prior efforts,” including the loss of Black teachers from the profession, Jones Herbert said.
States are facing a barrage of legal challenges over education policy
The road ahead for the Massachusetts case is likely a long one.
Plaintiffs in Minnesota since 2015 have been pursuing a legal challenge to school segregation that has yet to go to trial. Just last week, the New Jersey Supreme Court declined to immediately hear a statewide school segregation case first filed in 2018.
State-level court battles over education segregation are running parallel to other pushes for court-mandated education reform. The U.S. Constitution doesn’t include a federal right to education, but most states constitutions do.
Ongoing lawsuits argue that school funding formulas in Alaska, California, Florida, Kentucky, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin fail to guarantee sufficient educational opportunities for all children. Meanwhile, plaintiffs in Arkansas, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming are challenging the constitutionality of state subsidies for private education.
These cases can get results. A judge has tasked Arizona lawmakers with fixing the state’s investments in school building construction by the end of this year. Lawmakers in Wyoming recently debated court-ordered school funding improvements while crafting the state budget.
Still, lawyers in the Massachusetts have no illusions of an easy fight ahead.
“Our clients are prepared to fight for what is right,” Jones Herbert said. “We’re very confident and comfortable in our legal arguments, and hope that the state will agree and do the right thing.”
