Some Black leaders and residents in Rankin County, Mississippi, are pushing back against a federal judge’s decision last month to release the state’s second-largest school district from a desegregation order dating back to 1970.
Attorneys for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), who represented plaintiffs in the case, condemned the July 28 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Kristi Johnson to terminate federal oversight. They argued that troublesome racial disparities in discipline, gifted program access, and staff hiring persist within Rankin County public schools.
In her ruling, Judge Johnson found that the district had satisfied its constitutional obligations to dismantle intentional racial discrimination. By granting unitary status in core areas —including student assignment, staff hiring, academic quality, and extracurriculars — the court ended nearly 60 years of judicial oversight and closed the case.
This final decree builds on a prior 2019 court order, which granted the district partial unitary status after finding that school facilities and student transportation were equitable for both Black and white students.
Noting that “perfection is not the standard” throughout her ruling, the judge wrote, “The law does not require ‘complete racial balance,’ but that the school system ‘has done all it could to remedy the segregation caused by official action.’”
Judge Johnson found that the district had maintained good-faith compliance with prior court mandates for several years. She attributed lingering racial disparities in areas like student discipline and individual school enrollments to shifting residential demographics, socioeconomic disparities, and other race-neutral factors rather than intentional discrimination.
History Of The Lawsuit
The lawsuit Adams v. Rankin County Board of Education dates back to 1967, when Black students — including named plaintiff Kenneth Adams — and their parents sued to force the Mississippi school district to desegregate and dismantle its separate and unequal dual school system.
At that time — 13 years after Brown v. Board of Education declared public school segregation unconstitutional — Rankin County had yet to integrate its schools. Black students were routinely forced to travel past nearby white campuses to reach underfunded, all-Black facilities equipped with inferior books, inadequate resources, and restricted operational budgets.
Over the years, a series of successive federal court orders in 1970, 1973, 1978, and 2012 continually refined the district’s compliance requirements. These decrees established strict guidelines across all facets of school operations, including attendance zones, classroom student assignments, faculty desegregation, facility usage, extracurricular access, and student transportation — including majority-to-minority transfer options and mandatory court reporting.
The district was tasked with operating all schools without racial discrimination while taking steps to ensure proportionate Black student participation across all academic and extracurricular activities. Court orders also mandated meaningful Black representation across professional, administrative, and non-instructional employment roles.
Intentional Resegregation vs. Changing Demographics
In August 2024, the school district filed a motion declaring it had satisfied all the categories under court supervision and asked the court to grant complete unitary status, dissolve all remaining injunctions, and dismiss the case.
The plaintiffs and the LDF strongly opposed the motion, arguing that several schools in the district were still segregated, and that Black students faced barriers to participation in advanced and specialized courses and extracurricular activities and were subjected to harsher and more frequent discipline than their white peers.
At a three-day hearing in September 2025, attorneys for each side argued for and against the notion that the district was in full compliance, presenting experts and witnesses, then submitted documents including their findings of fact and legal arguments for the court to consider.
Rankin County School District, the second largest in the state, operates 28 schools across eight attendance zones, as well as an alternative school, The Learning Center.
During the 2025-26 school year, the district enrolled 17,941 students across its primary campuses — 62.6% of whom were white, 28.9% Black, and 8.5% belonging to other minority groups.
The plaintiffs pointed out that several individual schools remained racially identifiable as predominantly Black or white. They argued that the district’s intra-district transfer policies exacerbated these imbalances by allowing white students to transfer away from schools with higher minority enrollments.
The 2012 court order clarified that the racial composition of each school within the district should remain within 20 percentage points above or below the overall percentage of Black and white students district wide.
Evaluating school enrollment data spanning five academic years—from 2020–21 through 2025–26 — Judge Johnson noted that the district’s Black student enrollment was 100% compliant across the entire period. While white student enrollment was not perfect at every campus every year, the judge observed that it still largely met the court-ordered +/- 20% target window over the five years, with only a few schools standing out as minor statistical outliers.
In the 2025–26 school year, for example, districtwide enrollment data showed that 62.6% of students were white, setting the acceptable school compliance range between 42.6% and 82.6%.
“Five schools were outliers, but not by much,” Judge Johnson noted regarding white enrollment: Florence Elementary (83.7%), Florence Middle (84.1%), Flowood Elementary (41.3%), Pisgah Elementary (83.2%), and Pisgah High (84.4%).
While expert witnesses for the plaintiffs cited enrollment data at outlier schools as evidence of white flight and intentional resegregation, Christine Rossell — a desegregation expert testifying for the district — countered that overall white enrollment has declined while Black and other minority populations have grown, directly mirroring broader housing and demographic shifts in the district.
Over the last five years, the white student population in the district decreased from about 68% to 63%, while the Black student population increased from 25% to 29%.
As a result, some of the district’s minority students now have a smaller percentage of white students in their classrooms, Rossell said, “something the district has no control over.”
Judge Johnson agreed, writing in her opinion, “Everyone agrees the District is becoming increasingly diverse as Black and other minority enrollment increases and white enrollment declines. These shifting demographics … support the District’s claim that current racial imbalances are unrelated to discrimination.”
Education researcher Erica Frankenberg, an expert witness for the plaintiffs, blamed the district’s transfer policies for worsening segregation at several schools. She testified that approved intra-district transfers routinely allowed white students to move out of majority-Black schools and Black students out of majority-white schools, deepening racial imbalances.
Among the campuses she singled out was Pisgah High School, where 24 white students transferred in during the 2022–23 school year — effectively making it “more white.”
However, the district and Judge Johnson noted that 18 of those 24 transfers involved the children of district employees, following a race-neutral policy designed to recruit and retain teachers and staff. Furthermore, Judge Johnson concluded in her ruling that Frankenberg failed to analyze the district-wide impact of student transfers or prove they resulted from discriminatory intent.
Frankenberg testified that the district could take additional practicable steps to address racial imbalances at outlier schools, including redrawing attendance boundaries, establishing magnet programs, and revising transfer rules. She noted that such strategies have successfully promoted integration in school districts across the country.
The judge found that “no law requires the District to use ‘heroic measures’ to achieve racial balance.”
Education experts not involved in the case observe that public schools across the United States are increasingly resegregating as federal courts systematically bring long-standing desegregation orders to an end.
A 2019 report from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA found that Black students, who accounted for 15% of public school enrollment at the time, attended schools where Black students made up an average of 47% of enrollment.
Student of Asian background, who made up about 5% of all public school students, attended schools where 24% of the student body was Asian American.
Meanwhile, white and Latino students were the most racially segregated groups, according to the Civil Rights Project report.
White students now represent a minority of public school enrollment nationwide, comprising 44% of the 49.6 million public school students in 2022 — a drop of 12 percentage points since 2006.
Yet white students remain the most racially isolated. Despite their declining population, white students continue to attend schools where nearly seven out of 10 classmates are also white— a proportion far higher than their overall share of enrollment.
More Black Teachers
The plaintiffs argued that the district still operates schools with racially identifiable faculties and lacks sufficient Black representation in administrative and leadership roles.
Court orders require the district to ensure “proportionate” Black representation across all employment areas, including among principals, counselors, and subject-matter heads.
Nothing obligates the district to meet a faculty-specific quota, the judge wrote. However, the district applies the same plus-or-minus 20% standard to teachers as it uses to track students’ racial composition — a metric Johnson deemed “reasonable and in good faith.”
District data shows that Black staff members increased from 182 in the 2021–22 school year to 262 in 2025–26. Today, 26.4% of the district’s overall staff is nonwhite.
For teachers, the district’s five-year data showed only two schools had outlier faculties that failed to meet the +/- 20% target.
In the 2023–24 school year, one was an elementary school with a Black teacher population that exceeded 30%. In 2025–26, the sole outlier was The Learning Center, the district’s alternative school, with a faculty that hovered around 50% Black and 50% white.
Overall, Johnson wrote, “The Court agrees there has been remarkable improvement. In the 2017–18 school year, the district employed about 97 Black teachers; today that number is 238. Its percentage of Black teachers is about 15%, compared to a national average of roughly 7%.”
Regarding school administrators, Rossell observed that the district’s overall percentage of Black principals and assistant principals is 23% — “which is quite high for a 67% white school system” — and 2.5 times the national percentage of Black administrators.
Gifted Program and Honors Classes
The plaintiffs argued that the district’s gifted and advanced study programs tolerate racial disparities and discriminatory referral policies in violation of the 1973 court order.
Testifying for the plaintiffs, Frankenberg noted that Black students made up just 13% of Venture, the district’s gifted program, during the 2021–22 and 2022–23 school years. By contrast, white students comprised nearly 80% of the program, even as Black students accounted for more than a quarter of total district enrollment.
Under state guidelines, Venture is required “to provide an equitable opportunity for the inclusion of students who may be at a disadvantage for identification,” including “students who are culturally diverse.”
Through mass screening, the district automatically refers students who score at or above the 90th percentile for further gifted testing and performs secondary screenings for those between the 84th and 90th percentiles, the judge observed.
The screening process also uses special consideration criteria that include factors such as a student’s home environment, cultural background, learning challenges, absenteeism, family structure, and medical status.
The district also permits teachers, parents, counselors, administrators, peers, or “any other person” to refer students to Venture and allows students to self-refer. The district has made a “good-faith effort to increase [gifted] faculty diversity” and trains teachers to identify gifted students “from various ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds,” the judge wrote.
Following initial screening, a local survey committee and licensed examiners further assess and rate the students for advancement into the gifted program, using standard assessment criteria, Johnson wrote.
Judge Johnson concluded that the district’s procedures for recruiting and enrolling students into the gifted program “are race-neutral, and Mississippi law largely dictates them. … The racial disparities Plaintiffs lament have no connection to past discrimination.”
Regarding Black student participation in the program, Johnson wrote, “13% is still a significant level of participation. The Court also notes that Black student referrals for these years were 20% and 19% respectively — much closer to the districtwide Black student percentage,” adding that some Black students who were referred either failed to qualify or chose not to participate.
The opinion further noted that Black student enrollment in Venture has more than doubled over the last decade, increasing from 89 students in the 2016–17 school year to 197 in 2025–26. Black students now represent 18% of all gifted students in the district.
Progress in Advanced Placement
District data also showed improved representation for Black students in Advanced Placement (AP), dual enrollment, and honors courses, which are open to all students subject to certain prerequisites.
The district operates a needs-based fee waiver program, pays course-related fees for students who receive free or reduced-price lunch, and evaluates other students for hardship assistance.
Today, about 20% of the district’s Black students participate in advanced study programs, according to district officials.
Frankenberg examined the district’s AP English enrollment for the 2021–22 and 2022–23 school years, and “her findings were hardly jolting,” Johnson wrote.
Of the two high schools offering AP English, Brandon High School’s student body was 32.2% Black in 2021, while Black students made up 44.8% of its AP English 3 classes and 29% of AP English 4. Northwest High School was 31.2% Black in 2021, with Black enrollment reaching 29.7% in AP English 3 and 26% in AP English 4.
The following year, Brandon High enrolled a higher percentage of Black students in AP English courses than their share of total student enrollment, while Northwest High’s Black AP enrollment was only slightly lower than its overall Black student population.
“So not only are these deviations slight, Dr. Frankenberg acknowledges they improved,” Johnson wrote, noting that the plaintiffs’ expert “only looked at AP English, which is but one aspect of the district’s advanced study offerings.”
Districtwide, Black participation in AP programming during those school years was 23% — a figure the judge noted Frankenberg herself described as “a good percentage.”
Lingering Disparities In School Discipline
Plaintiffs’ attorneys argued that stark inequities in school discipline should keep the school district under court supervision.
Relying on analysis from Jamilia Blake, a professor of health behavior at Texas A&M University, they contended that Black children in Rankin County schools are punished more frequently and more severely than white children for the same conduct — and that Black students are nearly twice as likely as white students to be suspended.
From the 2019–20 school year through 2023–24, the district suspended Black students at rates 1.6 to two times higher than white students, Blake found.
Rossell, the district’s expert, conceded those ratios but noted that racial disparities in school discipline are a national phenomenon: In the 2017–18 school year, Black students accounted for about 15% of nationwide enrollment but 30% of overall suspensions. Citing several studies, she attributed those disparities to socioeconomic disadvantages among Black students.
Rossell also compared the district’s suspension rates to other unitary school districts in Mississippi, observing that Rankin County performed better than five unitary districts in the state and the nation as a whole regarding racial disparities in suspensions.
The judge found Blake’s analysis “weak,” writing that “she never makes a causal link between the racial disparities and any District-sanctioned discrimination.”
Johnson wrote that Blake “speculated” about why the district might disproportionately suspend Black students, “offering theories about teacher perceptions, ‘culturally deficient thinking fueled by stereotypes of Black students being loud and disruptive in the classroom,’ or a phenomenon known as ‘adultification'” — a bias where authority figures view Black students as older, more mature, and less innocent than their white peers.
“But she never conclusively says the District’s discrimination caused the imbalances,” Johnson wrote. “Without causation, racial imbalances are not ‘vestiges of segregation’ that concern the law here. … All plaintiffs lean on are statistics, and that is not enough.”
Meanwhile, the judge credited the district for developing a multi-tiered approach to discipline at both the school and district levels “using a well-staffed group of diverse employees,” including faculty, administrators, and behavioral specialists of various racial and ethnic backgrounds.
Johnson noted the district has invested significant time and resources into implementing Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) in schools districtwide — a national framework that emphasizes incentive-based discipline to encourage positive behavior rather than relying solely on punishment.
She wrote that the district tracks and reviews discipline data to help ensure fair treatment and identify at-risk students for additional support. The district “continues to invest in technology, recently purchasing the Panorama system that will help the district more comprehensively track student discipline,” the judge wrote.
The district provides professional development training on “how to handle kids from different cultural backgrounds,” Rankin County School District Assistant Superintendent Undray Scott testified, and is considering implementing additional PBIS training on implicit cultural bias.
Looking at academics, the court found the district has improved its overall quality of education, pointing to the fifth-lowest chronic absenteeism rate among all Mississippi public school districts and a 99% pass rate on the third-grade literacy benchmark in the 2023–24 school year.
Black students in the district achieved a higher graduation rate than white students — 93.6% compared to 92.2% — and recorded a lower dropout rate at 4.8% versus 6.8% for white students, Johnson observed. Both metrics outperformed state and national averages.
The Case Ends — But Both Sides Vow To Continue
“From the very first, federal supervision of local school systems was intended as a temporary measure to remedy past discrimination,” Johnson wrote in her July 28 order. “Now, after almost 60 years, the Court concludes its supervision.”
Angela English, president of the Rankin County NAACP, said Black parents in the branch are “deeply disappointed by this ruling,” adding that “the court ignored community members’ input about persistent discrimination and evidence from our experts and the district’s own staff. … While we are dismayed by this outcome, we will continue to fight for equal education for our Black students.”
She told Mississippi Today that despite the dismissal of the case she will continue asking for district data and records as well as monitoring school attendance zone redistricting.
“We’re not going to let up,” said English, a former Rankin County District Schools student. “We don’t intend for our children or anybody else’s children or grandchildren to have to suffer the way we did. We paid the price so they wouldn’t have to.”
In a statement, school district leadership said the judge’s decision reflects years of work by the district — an effort officials said will not end with the termination of the desegregation order.
“The district will continue building on the progress it has made with all stakeholders,” the statement said, “not because it is required by a court, but because providing every student with an excellent education and every employee with a fair and supportive workplace is at the heart of its mission.”
