Massachusetts accused of segregating schools by race and class

A lawsuit filed Wednesday challenges alleged school segregation in Massachusetts, arguing that boundary lines are trapping many low-income students of color in segregated, low-performing school districts and denying them the right to the adequate education guaranteed by the state constitution.

The suit, filed in Suffolk County Superior Court in Boston, challenges policies that bar students from attending public schools outside their home districts in most cases. Plaintiffs include nine children who go to school in districts with high concentrations of poor, Black, and Hispanic students. In each instance, their district neighbors one or more wealthier, whiter school districts with higher test scores and more experienced teachers.

“Massachusetts’ district lines and school assignment policies foster and maintain segregation, with scant opportunities for students to attend schools beyond those boundaries,” the suit alleges. “Even where Black and Latino schoolchildren live just a stone’s throw away from higher-performing, lower-poverty school districts, the Commonwealth’s district lines and school assignment policies deprive these students of the educational opportunities that the State concentrates in predominantly white school districts.”

Defendants include several state education officials. The suit alleges that they have “long been aware of this entrenched segregation and the harm it causes” but failed to implement a “meaningful plan to address it.”

A spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education had no immediate comment.

Plaintiffs also include four community organizations. They are represented by the advocacy groups Lawyers for Civil Rights and Brown’s Promise and by pro bono counsel from the law firm WilmerHale.

The lawsuit seeks a comprehensive state plan for school integration. Lawyers representing the plaintiffs point to several possible solutions, including more regional magnet and vocational technical schools that draw students across district lines and supporting voluntary interdistrict transfer programs to make it easier for students to attend school in another district.

Historically, most discussion of school segregation has centered on how individual school systems assign students to schools within their districts. This lawsuit challenges a form of segregation that is far more widespread today: the racial and economic differences between districts in the same metropolitan area.

In Massachusetts, the suit alleges, this system “locks neighborhood residential segregation into its public schools.”

The suit is not based on the U.S. Constitution, which was the basis for the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case. In 1974, the Supreme Court ruled that, in most cases, federal courts are not allowed to order cross-district desegregation plans. In 2007, the high court said that schools are barred from considering race in student assignment, even when their goal is racial integration.

Instead, the new lawsuit relies on the Massachusetts state constitution’s guarantees of the right to an adequate education and to equal protection under the law.

This is not the first lawsuit to challenge school segregation based on the state constitution. Lawsuits are pending in New Jersey and Minnesota, and a lawsuit in Connecticut was settled after years of litigation.