Law & Courts

After 50 Years, This School District Is No Longer Segregated, Court Says

By Mark Walsh — January 15, 2025 3 min read
Scales of justice and Gavel on wooden table and Lawyer or Judge working with agreement in Courtroom, Justice and Law concept.
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

A federal appeals court has declared that the Tucson, Ariz., school district, after nearly 50 years under a court-supervised desegregation plan, has reached the point where it’s considered legally desegregated.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, unanimously upheld a 2022 decision by a federal district judge in Tucson that court supervision was no longer necessary.

“Today we conclude that the district court’s work is done,” the appeals court said in its Jan. 15 decision in Mendoza v. Tucson Unified School District. “We agree that the district is now operating in unitary status under the test established by the [U.S.] Supreme Court, and, therefore, it is time to return control of the district back to local authorities.”

(Unitary status means that the district is legally desegregated.)

Unless a larger panel of the 9th Circuit or the Supreme Court intervene, the decision will bring an end to nearly a half century of court supervision for the 40,000-student district, which in 2023-24 had an enrollment that was 62 percent Hispanic/Latino, 18 percent white, 10 percent Black, 4 percent Native American, 2 percent Asian/Pacific Islander, and 4 percent multiracial.

Tucson once had, as a matter of state law, separate schools for white and Black students, and was sued in 1974 by separate classes of Black and Latino plaintiffs, leading to a comprehensive desegregation decree in 1978.

A federal district judge made preliminary findings in 2007 that the district had reached the point of being legally desegregated, but a 9th Circuit panel reversed that ruling in 2011, determining that Tucson Unified had not met all its desegregation obligations in good faith. In 2013, a plan overseen by a special master effectively became the new desegregation decree for the district, dealing in detail with students’ school assignments, transportation, staff, discipline, technology, “quality of education,” and other areas.

In rulings in 2018 and 2021 , the district court released the school system from monitoring in some of those areas, followed by its 2022 decision granting full unitary status. In those rulings, the district court recognized that in the area of student enrollment, the school district had reduced the number of schools considered racially concentrated schools and increased the number considered integrated.

The district court recognized that because Arizona has a broad school choice policy, with charter and out-of-district schools competing for student enrollment, “student assignment strategies aimed at remediating segregation are more limited, less direct, and less effective.” Since 2022, all Arizona families have had access to public funds to use at private schools or for home schooling.

Both the Black and Latino classes of student-plaintiffs appealed the district court’s unitary finding on enrollment and other areas. They argued that more could be achieved in each of the areas and that the district had not always acted in good faith in carrying out the plan.

“There was not an overall [effective] use of data by the Tucson Unified School District to show that it complied with each element of the plan,” Ernest I. Herrera, a lawyer with the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, who argued the case for the Latino plaintiffs, said in an interview.

Black and Latino plaintiffs considering an appeal

The 9th Circuit court panel addressed each area raised in the appeal, ultimately concluding that the Tucson district was acting in good faith and had achieved compliance with the desegregation plan to the extent “practicable,” the term used by the Supreme Court in several of its 1990s-era decisions that made it easier for school districts to free themselves from court supervision.

“In sum, as ongoing racial disparities become more remote in time from de jure segregation, the degree to which racial imbalances continue to represent vestiges of a constitutional violation may diminish,” said the opinion by Judge Danielle J. Forest, a 2019 appointee of President Donald Trump. “Here, the seven decades that have passed since there was legally mandated segregation must be given some weight.”

A lawyer for the Tucson district didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Herrera said: “This is an unfortunate decision.”

He said the plaintiffs are considering whether to appeal, and he agreed the district “made much progress over the decades that this case was in place, all thanks to the tenacious commitment of the class members and community leaders.”

“It’s true that some of these longer-standing desegregation cases have been coming to an end in recent years,” Herrera said. “We will continue to advocate for Latino students in Tucson and around the country.”

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Assessment Webinar
Reflections on Evidence-Based Grading Practices: What We Learned for Next Year
Get real insights on evidence-based grading from K-12 leaders.
Content provided by Otus
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
School & District Management Webinar
Breaking the Cycle: Future-Proofing Schools Against Chronic Absenteeism
Chronic absenteeism is a signal, not just data. Join us for a webinar on reimagining attendance with research & AI!
Content provided by Panorama Education
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Reading & Literacy Webinar
Trust in Science of Reading to Improve Intervention Outcomes
There’s no time to waste when it comes to literacy. Getting intervention right is critical. Learn best practices, tangible examples, and tools proven to improve reading outcomes.
Content provided by 95 Percent Group LLC

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Law & Courts Supreme Court Allows Trump Admin. to End Teacher-Prep Grants
The high court, over three justices' dissent, granted the administration's request to remove a lower court's block on ending the grants.
5 min read
Erin Huff, a kindergarten teacher at Waverly Elementary School, works with, from left to right, Ava Turner, a 2nd grader, Benton Ryan, 1st grade, and 3rd grader Haven Green, on estimating measurements using mini marshmallows in Waverly, Ill., on Dec. 18, 2019. Huff, a 24-year-old teacher in her third year, says relatively low pay, stress and workload often discourage young people from pursuing teaching degrees, leading to a current shortage of classroom teachers in Illinois. A nonprofit teacher-training program is using a $750,000 addition to the state budget to speed up certification to address a rampant teacher shortage.
Erin Huff, a 24-year-old kindergarten teacher at Waverly Elementary in Illinois, pictured here on Dec. 18, 2019, says low pay, high stress, and heavy workloads often discourage young people from entering teacher preparation programs. The U.S. Supreme Court on April 4, 2025, allowed the Trump administration to immediately terminate two federal teacher-preparation grant programs.
John O'Connor/AP
Law & Courts Groups Sue Over Trump's Cuts to Education Department Research Arm
This suit seeks the restoration of Institute of Education Sciences staff and contracts abruptly canceled by the Trump administration.
3 min read
Supporters gather outside the U.S. Department of Education in Washington to applaud Education Department employees as they depart their offices for the final time on Friday, March 28, 2025. The rally brought together education supporters, students, parents, and former employees to honor the departing staff as they arrived in 30-minute intervals to collect their belongings.
Supporters gather outside the U.S. Department of Education in Washington to applaud Education Department employees as they depart their offices for the final time on Friday, March 28, 2025. Two organizations representing researchers are suing the department in an attempt to restore the agency's data and research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences.
Moriah Ratner for Education Week
Law & Courts Supreme Court Appears Unlikely to Strike Down School E-Rate Program
The Supreme Court seems unlikely to strike down the E-rate program, though some justices questioned its funding structure and oversight.
5 min read
The Supreme Court in Washington, June 30, 2024.
The U.S. Supreme Court considers a major challenge to the E-rate program for school internet connections on March 26.
Susan Walsh/AP
Law & Courts Trump Asks Supreme Court for OK to Move Ahead With Deep Teacher-Training Cuts
The Trump administration on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to allow it to cut hundreds of millions of dollars for teacher training.
2 min read
President Donald Trump, left, holds up a signed executive order as young people hold up copies of the executive order they signed at an education event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, March 20, 2025.
President Donald Trump, left, holds up a signed executive order as young people hold up copies of the executive order they signed at an education event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, March 20, 2025. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to permit the cut of funding for teacher training programs.
Ben Curtis/AP