Alabama Judge Says Segregation Good for Black Kids
HERE WE GO...
Alabama Judge Says Segregation Good for Black Kids
A judge in Alabama ruled that a white community can form its own school system, citing race as a factor. What will the Trump/Sessions Justice Department will have to say about it?
BARRETT HOLMES PITNER
05.06.17 12:01 AM ET
School re-segregation is shaping up to be one of the new battles for equality in Trump’s America. Earlier this year, opponents of the desegregation policies in Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky proposed a bill in the state legislature that would destroy the county’s busing program that ensures diversity of race and income in the classroom. And now get this, from Alabama: There is, also in a county called Jefferson, a predominantly white community that may be allowed to form its own school system for the explicit purpose of separating students by race.
Last week Judge Madeline Haikala of the U.S. District Court in Birmingham ruled that the city of Gardendale can move forward with its plan to secede from the Jefferson County school system despite also concluding that race motived their decision to separate and that Gardendale had failed to meet its legal burden to prove that its separation would not impair desegregation in the county.
“We have no issue with the factual or legal findings, but the remedy fails to cure the constitutional violation,” said Monique Lin-Luse of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who represents some of the plaintiffs in this case, to The Daily Beast. “The case law is very clear. The precedent is very clear. If it is found that Gardendale’s separation would impede the desegregation of the county school system, then they should not be allowed to separate.”
As it stands, Judge Haikala’s ruling could set a precedent for allowing race to be a factor in segregation or separation cases. School districts that champion diversity in the classroom regularly must jump through legal hoops to sustain their diversity following the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Meredith v. Jefferson County Public Schools in 2006 that outlawed strict race-based quotas. Judge Haikala’s decision, however, could open the door to race being used as implement for separation and not integration.
Think about that for a minute. In 2017.
more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/06/alabama-judge-says-segregation-good-for-black-kids
= new reply since forum marked as read
