BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Four more Alabama school districts have been declared unitary and released from decades-old federal desegregation cases in the last week. Russellville City Schools was the latest. A federal judge granted the district’s request to end oversight Wednesday afternoon, just hours after holding a hearing in Tuscaloosa.
U.S. District Judge Edmund LaCour Jr. granted a joint motion from Russellville City Schools and the U.S. Department of Justice, finding that the district had complied in good faith with its desegregation order and achieved unitary status.
His order, entered at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, ended the remaining desegregation requirements and closed the case.
Russellville joins Athens City, Morgan County and Marion County schools, whose cases were all closed Sept. 29, in being declared unitary and released from federal oversight.
Six Alabama school desegregation cases have now been closed in recent months, while motions seeking dismissal are pending in nine others.
The activity is part of a broader Justice Department effort to close old school desegregation cases that have remained on federal court dockets for decades.
The department announced Sept. 24 that it had dismissed more than 50 desegregation cases nationwide and said it was conducting a case-by-case review of remaining cases. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said prolonged federal oversight in many districts no longer reflects conditions in their schools today.
Many of the Alabama cases now being closed share a similar history. Federal courts found the districts were operating unitary school systems in the 1970s, but instead of dismissing the cases completely, judges moved them to inactive dockets and left injunctions in place.
That is what happened in Russellville.
A 1975 order found that Russellville and nine other school systems had been operating unitary systems for the previous three years and that concerns about compliance with the 1967 order had been satisfactorily resolved.
Russellville City Schools Motion for Dismissal by Trisha Powell Crain
The detailed desegregation injunction was dissolved and replaced with a narrower permanent injunction barring racial discrimination in student assignment, employment, transportation, construction and transfers.
The case was then placed on the court’s inactive docket, where it could be reopened if needed.
During Wednesday’s hearing, LaCour asked whether lawsuits alleging racial discrimination in student assignment, hiring or employment had been filed against the district since that order. Justice Department attorney Benjamin Ogilvie said there had been none.
Russellville school board attorney Daniel McDowell called Superintendent Tim Guinn as the only witness.
Guinn testified that the district operates four schools and that every student in the same grade attends the same school, meaning students are not assigned among multiple schools within the district.
Current enrollment figures presented at the hearing showed 161 Black students among 2,553 students districtwide, or 6.31%. White students make up about one-third of enrollment.
Hispanic students now make up the majority of Russellville’s enrollment, accounting for between 55% and 56% of students this school year, Guinn said.
The district’s racial composition has changed significantly since the desegregation order was put in place in 1967.
In 1968, Reedtown School served grades 1 through 9 and was 100% Black, while the district’s other schools were overwhelmingly white. Districtwide enrollment at the time was 16% Black and 84% white. LaCour asked what had happened to Reedtown School.
Guinn said it closed in 1972 and is now operated as a community resource center by a nonprofit organization.
The National Education Association was also an original plaintiff-intervenor in the case. Recent filings say the organization has not participated in the Russellville case for decades and never had a bargaining unit in the district.
LaCour asked Wednesday whether the Justice Department had contacted the NEA regarding the dismissal. Ogilvie said the NEA is a labor organization with no bargaining authority in Russellville and that he was unaware of the organization seeking to participate in the case.
The judge cited Russellville’s one-school-per-grade structure in Wednesday’s order, writing that every student has attended the same school for each grade since 1972.
He also pointed to evidence that race had not played a role in student assignment or personnel decisions and that no racial discrimination lawsuits tied to the 1975 order had been filed against the district.
Meanwhile, the pace of filings continues. New joint motions seeking dismissal have been filed in cases involving Cullman County, Sheffield City, Shelby County and Sumter County schools.
The current wave is not the first effort to close Alabama’s lingering desegregation cases. Federal courts dismissed 49 Alabama school desegregation cases between 2002 and 2008.
Nearly 30 Alabama school districts remain under federal school desegregation orders, and in 13 of those districts, court cases remain active and under close federal monitoring.