Dual and Unitary Systems

Achieving Unitary Status

The Supreme Court announced the most comprehensive list of items that lower courts had to examine in evaluating whether districts achieved unitary status in Green v. County School Board of New Kent County (1968). These six factors address the composition of a student body, faculty, staff, transportation, extracurricular activities, and facilities. School boards that seek unitary status must prove that officials implemented their desegregation orders in good faith, that their plans were effective in eliminating all vestiges of school segregation to the extent practicable under the Green factors, and that they have not violated the U.S. Constitution subsequent to the original judicial decrees.

In discussing desegregation and unitary status, David Armor, a well-known researcher on school desegregation, identifies the second criterion, the removal of vestiges, as the most complex. Among the vestiges that federal courts are likely to consider in formerly segregated schools systems are the maintenance of one-race schools from the period prior to the issuance of desegregation decrees through the implementation of an approved plan, a school faculty racial composition that deviates greatly from the overall district percentage, and inadequate programs to help minorities in predominantly minority schools.

Even though the Court later decided that districts could achieve unitary status incrementally in Freeman v. Pitts (1992), and that desegregation orders are not meant to operate in perpetuity in Dowell v. Board of Education of Oklahoma City Public Schools (1991), lower courts continue to apply the principles established in Green.

Pursuant to a large body of case law, school boards that failed to achieve unitary status had to receive judicial approval for any changes that they wished to make to their desegregation plans. Among the changes needing court approval today are such important items as school attendance areas or zones, the construction of new buildings or closing of old schools, and changes in teacher or student transfer policies. The burden of proof for making changes rests on defendant school boards.

Current Issues

In districts that have achieved unitary status, school officials have the same constitutional rights to act as in districts that have never operated under court orders. To succeed in a lawsuit protesting a school policy or action, plaintiffs must prove that the school board intended to discriminate and that its activity had the outcome of segregation. Thus, in unitary districts, the burden of proof to show discrimination shifts back to the plaintiffs, those charging that a school board operated a racially segregated system.

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