Racial Discrimination in School Discipline

Department of EducationDepartment of Justice

Mar 20

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division jointly released a resource document that highlights recent investigations of school discipline policies. This document features various investigations of discrimination in student discipline on the basis of race, color, or national origin under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Departments’ Title VI regulations. This is a clear statement that the Biden administration plans to step up similar enforcements, with the threat of pulling federal education funding from schools with insufficient racial parity in school discipline outcomes. Given past case law, the legal basis for applying disparate impact to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act is questionable.

The Obama administration issued a “Dear Colleague” letter in 2014 that led many schools to alter their diciplinary practices so that they achieved racial parity without inquiring into the underlying root causes of the prior discrepancies. It also launched hundreds of protracted investigations to enforce these demands. The letter initially received support from the national leadership of teachers’ unions, but eventually drew angry opposition from teachers subject to lengthy investigations and restrictions on out-of-school punishments. The Trump administration withdrew many of these guidelines and substantially reduced the number of systemic investigations.