A lawsuit filed Wednesday on behalf of students and community organizations in Massachusetts argues the state is illegally maintaining schools that are racially segregated, concentrating Black and Latino students in high-poverty districts with fewer opportunities.
The lawsuit challenges the state's practice of assigning students to schools based solely on where they live, which can lead to patterns of housing segregation being replicated in school systems.
The case is the latest example of efforts to address segregation and funding inequities through state-level litigation. Even before the Trump administration began taking steps to release districts in the Deep South from court-ordered desegregation efforts, integration efforts had fallen far from their peak decades ago when the federal government intervened in school systems around the U.S.
The plaintiffs include nine students and four community organizations from segregated school districts across Massachusetts, including Springfield, Holyoke, Boston, Lawrence, Brockton, Lynn, and Worcester. The districts border more affluent, predominantly white districts where the plaintiffs are unable to enroll.
In response to the lawsuit, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education said it does not have the authority to change school district boundaries, nor the power to compel schools to allow students from other districts to enroll. It said in a written statement the state has invested in efforts to reduce gaps in graduation rates, and sought additional investments for high-poverty districts.
“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,” spokesperson Jacqueline Reis said.
A 2024 state advisory council report found that 63% of all schools in Massachusetts are segregated or intensely segregated, and that the state education department had fallen short in its oversight duties. Schools that have higher concentrations of students of color saw worse outcomes on metrics like graduation and college matriculation.
While the state constitution guarantees students a right to an adequate education and equal protection under the law, it has failed to do so in practice for Black and Latino students, said Jillian Lenson, senior attorney at Lawyers for Civil Rights, which filed the suit with Brown's Promise.
“It's not student potential, it's the conditions of their schools that drive these disparate outcomes, conditions that the state has maintained and perpetuated for decades,” Lenson said.
The lawsuit filed in Massachusetts state court in Suffolk County asks to compel the state to address the disparities that emerge from rules assigning students to schools in areas where they live.
GeDá Jones Herbert, chief legal counsel at Brown's Promise, said the lawsuit is not seeking mandatory integration, but rather an investment in evidence-backed practices that benefit all students.
Those include expanding regional magnet programs and investing more in under-resourced schools. The state has regional vocational schools and voluntary inter-district transfers, but a complex system of opt-outs and the small size of most programs prevent equal access, the plaintiffs said.
“Black and Latino students are blocked out of access to those opportunities, and that's unconstitutional,” Jones Herbet said.
Other recent examples of state-level litigation also have focused on addressing residential segregation.
In 2018, the Latino Action Network and the New Jersey chapter of the NAACP, among other plaintiffs, filed a suit arguing that the state’s system of assigning students based on their residence has created racially segregated schools. And in Minnesota, a 2015 lawsuit asserted that the segregation of schools in Saint Paul and Minneapolis led to inadequate and unequal educations for students of color.
Both cases have been winding their way through state courts, with no decisive resolution.
The state cases come amid shifts in federal enforcement of desegregation in schools. By the early 2000s, a series of Supreme Court cases had significantly limited the tools available to districts to meaningfully integrate schools on the basis of race.
State constitutions, which often have clauses enshrining equality and education, can serve as a pathway for challenges to segregation that results from economics and housing patterns, said Robert Williams, a professor of law emeritus at Rutgers University.
“The government knows about it, but it’s not the government that did it directly,” Williams said. “These cases argue that having so many different school districts that align with housing patterns and having laws that say that you have to go to school where you live, all of those things sort of amount to government segregation.”
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