2,044 events on record Subscribe September 10, 2026
Standing Record home The Standing Record A non-partisan record of US democratic norms —
and the events that erode them.

U.S. District Court dismissed DeSoto Parish's 1967 school desegregation order at DOJ, Louisiana AG's request, without a desegregation finding

On January 5, 2026, U.S. District Judge S. Maurice Hicks Jr. granted a joint motion by the U.S. Department of Justice and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill's office to dismiss a 1967 federal desegregation order governing the roughly 5,000-student DeSoto Parish School Board in northwest Louisiana. It was the second Louisiana desegregation decree the Trump administration and Murrill's office have had dismissed through "joint stipulated dismissals" that require no finding that a district actually ended segregation, following an earlier dismissal of a 1966 Plaquemines Parish order. Murrill said the ruling gives DeSoto Parish "its school system back"; no independent finding that segregation had been eliminated in the district was reported.

Jurisdiction
Federal
Location
DeSoto Parish, Louisiana

Abuses documented

Actors

On January 5, 2026, U.S. District Judge S. Maurice Hicks Jr., appointed by President George W. Bush, granted a joint motion by the U.S. Department of Justice and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill's office to dismiss a federal school desegregation order governing the DeSoto Parish School Board, a roughly 5,000-student district in northwest Louisiana. The case dated to 1967, when DOJ sued the district for maintaining racially segregated schools a decade after Brown v. Board of Education; a 1970 order required DeSoto Parish to eliminate "vestiges of segregation" and file periodic compliance reports with the court.

The dismissal was the second Louisiana desegregation decree lifted through what the Trump administration's Justice Department and Murrill's office have carried out as a series of "joint stipulated dismissals" -- motions that require no independent finding that a district has actually eliminated segregation, only that the parties no longer dispute the case. Murrill's office had previously secured dismissal of a 1966 Plaquemines Parish order on the same basis and was separately pursuing dismissal of a Concordia Parish order, which a federal judge had initially declined to dismiss without a desegregation finding before the Fifth Circuit backed the dismissal on appeal. About a dozen Louisiana districts remain under similar orders.

Murrill said in a statement that the dismissal gives "DeSoto Parish...its school system back" and thanked President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi for "helping us to finally end some of these cases." She has separately argued the orders now "force people to make racially conscious decisions, which would ordinarily violate the Equal Protection Clause." DeSoto Parish Superintendent Clay Corley said the dismissal "does not change DeSoto Parish schools' commitment to educational excellence." No independent evidentiary finding that segregation had been eliminated in the district was reported; the joint motion argued only that the parties had not disputed the case since 2014.

Why we recorded this

Civil-rights consent decrees exist to bind a district to federal oversight until segregation is proven eliminated, not until the parties simply stop disputing the case. A federal court dismissed the 1967 desegregation order governing DeSoto Parish's schools on a joint motion from the Justice Department and Louisiana's Attorney General that required no evidentiary finding that segregation had ended -- only that no party had objected since 2014. This is the second such Louisiana dismissal secured this way, part of a Justice Department campaign to wind down Civil Rights-era desegregation orders on that basis. Ending court enforcement of a remedy without confirming the harm it addresses has been cured removes a structural safeguard while leaving open whether the underlying violation it targeted has actually been resolved.

Sources

  1. Louisiana attorney general releases DeSoto Parish School Board from 1967 desegregation order — KSLA primary accessed September 2, 2026
  2. Trump officials and Louisiana put an end to another decades-old school desegregation order — Associated Press primary accessed September 2, 2026
  3. Judge Ends School Desegregation Order at Trump Administration's Request — Education Week investigative accessed September 2, 2026
  4. Case: U.S. v. Desoto Parish School Board — Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse secondary accessed September 2, 2026

See also