When the Department of Justice agreed to investigate truancy courts in Texas this year—where children as young as 12 can be tried in adult criminal court for skipping or showing up late to class—it emphasized that the schools’ harsh punishments were disproportionately hurting children with disabilities and chronic illnesses. Disability Rights Texas, which brought the original complaint alongside otheradvocacy groups, cheered the news.
Now, the Justice Department brings attention to a similarly troubling school policy elsewhere—but it is focusing on a different type of discrimination in the process. The department announced last week that it had reached settlement agreements with the state of Mississippi, the city of Meridian, and the Lauderdale County Youth Court, after it had investigated them for systematically obstructing juveniles’ right to due process in different ways. The department had alleged that the policies there overwhelmingly hurt black students—hurt them to such an extent as to violate the Civil Rights Act, and the mandatory racial desegregation of the nation’s schools in the 1960s.
[For more of this story, written by Lauren Kirchner, go to http://www.psmag.com/politics-...o-racial-segregation]
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