Civil rights lawyers filed legal action Wednesday representing students and advocacy groups in Massachusetts, claiming the state unlawfully operates racially divided schools that funnel Black and Latino children into underfunded, high-poverty districts with limited educational resources.
The legal challenge targets Massachusetts’ system of enrolling students in schools based exclusively on residential address, a practice attorneys say mirrors housing segregation within educational systems.
This litigation represents another attempt to combat educational segregation and funding disparities through state court action. Integration initiatives have declined significantly from their height decades earlier when federal authorities stepped into school systems nationwide, even before the Trump administration moved to ease court-mandated desegregation requirements in Southern states.
Nine students and four advocacy organizations from segregated school systems throughout Massachusetts brought the case, representing districts in Springfield, Holyoke, Boston, Lawrence, Brockton, Lynn, and Worcester. These districts sit adjacent to wealthier, majority-white school systems where the students cannot gain admission.
The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education responded that it lacks authority to alter district boundaries or force schools to accept students from neighboring areas. The agency stated in writing that the state has funded initiatives to close graduation rate disparities and pursued additional resources 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 state advisory council report from 2024 determined that 63% of Massachusetts schools are segregated or intensely segregated, finding the state education department had not met its oversight responsibilities. Schools with higher percentages of students of color showed poorer results in areas like graduation rates and college enrollment.
Though the state constitution promises students adequate education and equal legal protection, it has not delivered on that promise for Black and Latino students in reality, according to Jillian Lenson, senior attorney at Lawyers for Civil Rights, which brought the case alongside 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 case filed in Massachusetts state court in Suffolk County seeks to force the state to remedy inequities created by policies that place students in schools based on where they reside.
GeDá Jones Herbert, chief legal counsel at Brown’s Promise, explained the lawsuit does not demand forced integration, but rather investment in research-supported approaches that help all students.
These strategies include growing regional magnet school programs and increasing funding for under-resourced schools. While the state operates regional vocational schools and voluntary inter-district transfer programs, complicated opt-out systems and limited program capacity block equal access, according to plaintiffs.
“Black and Latino students are blocked out of access to those opportunities, and that’s unconstitutional,” Jones Herbert said.
Similar state-level legal challenges have also concentrated on tackling residential segregation effects.
In 2018, the Latino Action Network and New Jersey’s NAACP chapter, along with other plaintiffs, filed suit claiming the state’s residence-based student assignment system created racially segregated schools. In Minnesota, a 2015 case alleged that school segregation in Saint Paul and Minneapolis resulted in inadequate and unequal education for students of color.
Both cases continue moving through state court systems without final resolution.
These state lawsuits emerge as federal school desegregation enforcement has shifted. By the early 2000s, multiple Supreme Court decisions had severely restricted districts’ available tools for meaningful racial integration in schools.
State constitutions, which frequently contain equality and education provisions, can provide avenues for challenging segregation stemming from economic and housing patterns, said Robert Williams, 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.”
