Conservative group sues Los Angeles schools over desegregation-era benefits

The 1776 Project Foundation filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday challenging a decades-old Los Angeles Unified School District policy that provides smaller class sizes and other benefits to schools with predominantly Hispanic, Black or Asian enrollments, the complaint says. The suit says the policy dates to desegregation remedies from the 1970s and designates schools as qualifying if their resident population is more than 70 percent nonwhite.

According to the lawsuit and the district’s website, more than 600 schools qualify and fewer than 100 do not; qualifying schools have student-to-teacher ratios of no more than 25-to-1, while nonqualifying schools may have ratios as high as 34-to-1. The complaint also says students at qualifying schools receive extra points when applying to the district’s selective magnet schools.

The plaintiffs argue that students at whiter schools receive “inferior treatment and calculated disadvantages,” and the foundation’s founder, Ryan James Girdusky, called the policy “the most blatant example of racial discrimination by a major school district in this country,” according to the filing.

The suit also contends that students of Middle Eastern descent, classified as white by the district, and students of color who attend whiter schools miss out on benefits. A district spokesman said officials were reviewing the lawsuit but did not immediately comment.

Key Topics

Politics, Los Angeles, Desegregation Remedies, Class Sizes, Magnet Schools, Ryan James Girdusky