Black and Latinx Students and Their Families Head to Court To Hold the California Department of Education Accountable for Years of Inaction on Racial Discrimination in School Discipline

Trial is finally set to begin on August 13th in R.W. v. Thurmond, a case brought by Black and Latinx students and their families against the California Department of Education (CDE) and State Superintendent Tony Thurmond. The families, represented by Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County (NLSLA), the Equal Justice Society, California Rural Legal Assistance, and pro bono counsel Mayer Brown LLP, say the state has looked the other way for years as school districts across California have pushed Black and Latinx students out of classrooms and schools at rates far higher than their white peers.

The case, filed in October 2021, will be heard in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The families are asking the court to order CDE to do what it’s been required to do all along: track racial disparities in school discipline, identify districts where discrimination is happening, and do something about it.

“The state has the tools to identify discrimination and the duty to address it. What it has lacked is the will,” said Chelsea Helena, Supervising Attorney at NLSLA. “This trial is about holding CDE accountable for the students it has failed, and making sure those failures can’t continue.”

The state has access to data, which is reported by districts every year and shows which schools are suspending, expelling, and quietly “transferring” Black and Latinx students at alarming rates. The families argue that CDE has seen this data and done nothing. For the students in this case, that inaction has meant lost classroom time, inferior alternative placements, and lasting harm to their education and well-being.

If the families win, it could mean real change for students across the state’s more than 1,000 school districts, including greater oversight, better data, and finally, consequences for districts that discriminate.