North Carolina School District Has Struggled With Desegregation For Nearly 50 Years

A group of black parents represented by the UNC Center for Civil Rights will ask a federal court to overturn a 2011 plan that they believe re-segregated a school district in North Carolina, the Associated Press reported.

Pitt County School's plan, approved in late 2010, reassigned students throughout the district for the next year, leaving many schools with a high percentage of minority students. According to USA.com, black students comprised about 34% of the district's population in 2010. This year, the AP reported, the amount rose to about half, leaving white students at 38%.

Pitt's attorneys will ask the court to grant the district "unitary status," ending federal oversight. Sole responsibility to uphold this falls to the school board, of which only 3 out of 12 members are black, the AP reported. According to the case brief, to attain "unitary status" schools must meet three requirements. First, comply in good faith with federal orders. Two, eliminate the former effects of segregation to the "maximum extent practicable." And lastly, operate as a single school system instead of two for each race.

Pitt County Schools have struggling with segregation for decades. This case is a continuation of Everett et. al v. Pitt County School, which began in the 1960s when a federal court found that Pitt was operating a racially segregated district in violation of students' constitutional rights. According to the district's website, the court approved a desegregation plan in 1970 but retained jurisdiction over desegregation in the district, and the case would lay dormant for nearly 40 years.

In 2008, a group of white parents reopened the case, arguing that a new elementary school discriminated against their children, according to the UNC School of Law. But the court ruled in 2009 that the school board had followed desegregation orders and worked toward "unitary status."

The current lawsuit claims that student assignment orders from 2011 segregated the school once again. For example, a new elementary school in the district has only 10% white students, the AP reported. "Once a district is declared unitary and the desegregation order is lifted ... the sad reality is that, as a result, many districts quickly re-segregate." Mark Dorosin, managing attorney for the UNC Center for Civil Rights told the AP.

Issues arise with both granting and denying "unitary status," the Yale Law Review notes, as the Supreme Court has given the lower courts no concrete instructions to help them decide when to remove federal supervision from schools.

More than 100 schools across the South still remain under federal desegregation supervision, the AP reported. The decision in the Pitt case could provoke other districts into lawsuits as well.