On September 24, 2026, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division announced “the dismissal of more than fifty desegregation cases — from Waterbury, Connecticut, to Flagler County, Florida — ending matters that had remained on court dockets for more than half a century.” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon: “In this administration, we are ending prolonged federal oversight of these school districts because the effort does not reflect the reality of those classrooms today.” She said districts could now spend the money on students “instead of funding onerous and outdated consent decrees.”
A federal judge must agree to end each order. The Associated Press described the department's tally as more than 50 cases closed through the courts since Trump took office, with motions to dismiss in the works in many others, and a department spokesperson told CBS News that in some cases it has sought dismissal and a judge has not yet ruled. The New Republic, citing the New York Times, reported 57 cases dropped since Trump's reelection, nearly 80 percent of them in Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana.
The department says it is conducting a “case-by-case review” of the pending cases, filed in the 1960s and 1970s, and will seek dismissal once it concludes a district has achieved “unitary status,” meaning it has eliminated the vestiges of the segregated system and no longer needs federal monitoring. Kelly Gardner of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund told the AP that courts have long held that the passage of time is not enough to show discrimination has ended; release has required districts to show they removed the lingering effects of segregation, which can mean looking at extracurricular offerings, funding and facilities. The department is now intervening to close cases, she said, often without taking account of those considerations.
One released district shows what can follow. In January a federal court granted a request from the Justice Department and the DeSoto Parish School Board in Louisiana to end the district's order, which had let students transfer out of racially isolated schools with transportation provided. A few months later the district stopped accepting new transfer applications, and students in the program must return to their zoned schools once they finish the highest grade at their current school, the AP reported.
The dismissals are part of a wider retreat from civil rights enforcement in schools. Trump's April 2025 executive order directed federal agencies to stop looking for “disparate impact” (see Trump Issues an Executive Order to Eliminate Disparate Impact Liability, Gutting 60 Years of Civil Rights Enforcement). This summer the Education Department rescinded a regulation that let schools gauge discrimination by comparing outcomes across races, and told schools it is illegal to consider race when writing discipline policies. More than 75% of the Civil Rights Division's staff have resigned or retired early, CBS News has reported.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall thanked Dhillon for ending “three outdated orders” in his state: “This is just the beginning. We will keep working until every school district in Alabama is free from unnecessary consent decrees.” Kristen Clarke, a former head of the Civil Rights Division who is now general counsel at the NAACP: “This administration's relentless campaign to dismantle work done to end racial segregation in our nation's public schools is a stain on our democracy.” Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia: “When they talk about returning it to the states and making America great again, they're talking about returning to how it was before 1954.”